[potix]

Walking around with your phone in your pants right next to your leg? As I said, it works fine as long as I can move the phone away from my body.

Yes, of course. But when you are outside, radio waves pollution can cause that kind of issues when an high bitrate codec is involved.

 

[charleski]

Yeah, thought so…
So it looks like it’s not worth bothering about high-bitrate codecs if you carry the phone next to your body.

This has nothing to do with radio pollution, as that’s going to be a lot higher indoors with WiFi competing for space on the 2.4GHz band, and BT has lots of ways to deal with that. But it can’t dodge the fact that your body is very effective at soaking up transmission power.

 

[Nick24JJ]

Personally, I'm not bothering with FiiO's LHDC beta implementation anymore. Yes. I can hear some difference compared to the default aptX Adaptive, but their beta does not sound/feel right to me, so why should I bother setting it up inside Bluetooth Settings every time? The worst is my feeling that FiiO has abandoned the UTWS5... People here are asking various questions, they are expressing concerns and even complaints, and FiiO is completely absent... And, when a rep is paying us the "honour" to respond, it will either be a generic, non-helpful, reply or telling us that "this or that request" cannot be implemented/cannot happen.

 

[charleski]

Personally, I'm not bothering with FiiO's LHDC beta implementation anymore. Yes. I can hear some difference compared to the default aptX Adaptive, but their beta does not sound/feel right to me, so why should I bother setting it up inside Bluetooth Settings every time? The worst is my feeling that FiiO has abandoned the UTWS5... People here are asking various questions, they are expressing concerns and even complaints, and FiiO is completely absent... And, when a rep is paying us the "honour" to respond, it will either be a generic, non-helpful, reply or telling us that "this or that request" cannot be implemented/cannot happen.

I think the major issue is that it doesn't degrade down to the lowest bitrate gracefully and you get weird tonal shifts as frequency sub-bands are lost. But I'm not sure how much of that can be governed on the receiver end. If there were a switch in the Control app allowing it to advertise to the phone as limited to 48kHz (so you don't have to switch every time it connects) that might help prevent it trying to pack worthless data into the stream, though.

I think people are just going to have to accept that LDAC isn't going to happen without a hardware change - Sony doesn't want to undercut the fees they get from LDAC-licensed chips. It would be nice to have a proper ten-band EQ in the Control app, but I suspect I'd just end up sticking with Wavelet anyway.

 

[Spektykles]

Here is a bunch of UTWS5 old and new firmwares that I collected Google Drive

 

[emlin]

Here is a bunch of UTWS5 old and new firmwares that I collected Google Drive

I think they are all old. Nothing new.

Despite the promises...

 

[Spektykles]

I just post my collection so you can test which fw gave the least trouble and best SQ. In my testing with the defective mic UTWS5, I found the old fw made the mic very quiet (but still unusable), new fw made the horrible noise I reported. So its doing something other than faulty HW.
I read somewhere that Fiio said a new fw will come out at September. Not sure where is it now

 

[potix]

Xiaomi Pad 5, Android 12, Miui Global 13.1.3. I can set 900kbps but the phone can't stay on this setting, reverting to 500kbps (this wasn't happening on redmi note 10 pro). LHDC codec can be stored under utws5 bluetooth settings.
Did anyone try any new phone with Snapdragon 8+ gen1, like Zenfone 9, Motorola Edge 30 Ultra, Oneplus 10T, Xiaomi 12T pro?

 

[charleski]

Xiaomi Pad 5, Android 12, Miui Global 13.1.3. I can set 900kbps but the phone can't stay on this setting, reverting to 500kbps (this wasn't happening on redmi note 10 pro). LHDC codec can be stored under utws5 bluetooth settings.
Did anyone try any new phone with Snapdragon 8+ gen1, like Zenfone 9, Motorola Edge 30 Ultra, Oneplus 10T, Xiaomi 12T pro?

According to the Fiio support guy who posts here the Utws5 doesn't support 900kbps.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/fii...ver-the-world-2022-04-30.959856/post-17147816

 

[potix]

According to the Fiio support guy who posts here the Utws5 doesn't support 900kbps.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/fii...ver-the-world-2022-04-30.959856/post-17147816

On a Redmi Note 10 pro the earhooks were stably connected at 900kbps. Maybe it depends on the codec implementation on the transmitting device.

 

[LionelH2]

FIIO, any update on next firmware release?

 

[SomeGuyDude]

Okay so I just gotta know, is this indeed good enough to replace something like a Qudelix 5k? I'm using the Fiio FD5 and these are HEAVILY tempting right now.

 

[eswng679]

Okay so I just gotta know, is this indeed good enough to replace something like a Qudelix 5k? I'm using the Fiio FD5 and these are HEAVILY tempting right now.

As a Q5K owner myself, I don't think they can replace the Q5K, unless you want a "true wireless" set up. The Q5K offers unmatched customization in its price category, balanced / SE outputs and sounds amazing. The Q5K mobile app is top-tier. The UTWS5 has a lot less features, does not have EQ or LDAC and finicky charging. The FiiO app is alot less refined, even basic. That said, they sound decent enough and I definitely enjoy them from a convenience standpoint.

 

[LionelH2]

I would agree. I’m using them with the Timeless and they do sound very good. That said, there is no support for LDAC and LHDC doesn’t even work with FIIO Daps at this point.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

As a Q5K owner myself, I don't think they can replace the Q5K, unless you want a "true wireless" set up. The Q5K offers unmatched customization in its price category, balanced / SE outputs and sounds amazing. The Q5K mobile app is top-tier. The UTWS5 has a lot less features, does not have EQ or LDAC and finicky charging. The FiiO app is alot less refined, even basic. That said, they sound decent enough and I definitely enjoy them from a convenience standpoint.

It's really just sound I care about. LDAC is great but I feel it's similar to lossless files in that it's less about a tangible sonic difference and more just that it's good to know you have it. I don't EQ anything, balanced is irrelevant for IEMs and doesn't affect the sound directly, all the bells and whistles might be nice but all I care about is in the ears how much of a difference they have between them.

Moreover, LDAC is far more finicky than people realize. I'd be willing to bet on the majority of people's devices they're not getting a steady 990, but bouncing between 990 and 660 (if not 330) haphazardly and not noticing when it occurs. Given that I listen to music at 320kbps, AptX is plenty. I just gotta know how much compression/artifacts/noise/etc the Fiio imparts.