I need to eat a little crow, or whatever it is you eat after realizing that you publicly and unfairly maligned some headphones.
After disabling ANC the Creative Aurvana Ace have become a keeper for me. The bass is now very controlled and the sound stage is cohesive. I was up late last night replaying everything anything I could think of. The xmems driver is truly more revealing than anything else I've heard.
Also, enabling what my pixel 8 pro calls Experimental LE Audio in the Bluetooth connection settings now allows these to connect without issue, but I can't get into the app. I'm not sure what codec it is using because developer options now only shows this
All told it is sort of hard to describe the sound that xmems bring. They somehow broaden the soundscape tremendously, but at the same time, at least with these, the depth is sometimes lacking. Raising the volume helps, though, which in this case is not too bad because there is no discernible distortion.
At $150 spent ages ago, these are very much worth keeping for. But I think It's probably worth waiting for whatever Noble cooks up with its xmems Fokus. Given the whole dual driver thing, I think it may be a case where ANC could be a sound spoiler, so I wouldn't be concerned for now if that's not a feature. I'll wait for the xmems Cyprus for that.
Aside from the effects on the sound, how is the quality of the ANC on the Aurvana Ace compared to other earbuds like Sony Sennheiser ect?