[tinyman392]

Thanks. I’d appreciate you checking it out before I blow 40 on an apple cck. I have an old aftermarket cck and it didn’t work but it may be the cck not the phone. It connected and the headphone recognized it (the headphones beeped) but no audio came through the phone speakers.

Note I didn't actually try a new CCK, I just plugged in a USB-C to Lightning cable that came with my iPhone. Realistically it should be no different, but it might be. I actually have no clue where my CCK is right now.

 

[clerkpalmer]

Note I didn't actually try a new CCK, I just plugged in a USB-C to Lightning cable that came with my iPhone. Realistically it should be no different, but it might be.

I actually think the CCK has converter in there that is necessary.

 

[clerkpalmer]

Anyone find a useful way to EQ these

 

[clerkpalmer]

Note I didn't actually try a new CCK, I just plugged in a USB-C to Lightning cable that came with my iPhone. Realistically it should be no different, but it might be. I actually have no clue where my CCK is right now.

I ordered a new CCK kit from amazon and switched from my Pixel over LDAC to my iPhone wired using Qobuz highest setting. Still experimenting but to me the sound is improved - much less congestion than over BT in loud passages. Separation and dynamics seem improved. Placebo? I don't think so. Sound seems much more comparable to my wired Ananda set up this way. Maybe not all the way there but the gap is tighter. This is a really nice setup.

 

[clerkpalmer]

Tonight is a night of questions - anyone noticed faster battery drain over usb?

 

[1-MiC]

If you have the wired Ananda's, why go through so much trouble with the wireless? I'm only asking because eventually I'll upgrade past the Ananda's. But a Bluetooth can? That does seem interesting to me. Even if i knew it was of lesser quality.

 

[tinyman392]

If you have the wired Ananda's, why go through so much trouble with the wireless? I'm only asking because eventually I'll upgrade past the Ananda's. But a Bluetooth can? That does seem interesting to me. Even if i knew it was of lesser quality.

The only reason you’d want to do this is if you wanted the convenience of Bluetooth. The cost is that there is no analog pass through with the Ananda BT. So you have to wire through the DAC/amp that the Ananda BT uses.

 

[clerkpalmer]

If you have the wired Ananda's, why go through so much trouble with the wireless? I'm only asking because eventually I'll upgrade past the Ananda's. But a Bluetooth can? That does seem interesting to me. Even if i knew it was of lesser quality.

I sold the wired version as I was intrigued by the BT version. Many reviews felt the tonality was superior to wired. Overall, I think it was a mistake. The wired is better and while BT is convenient, the drawbacks (poor battery, lack of passive mode, smaller soundstage and less detail) aren’t worth it. The wired ananda is a special headphone. I’m leaning toward returning the BT.

 

[1-MiC]

Ah I see! Sorry, I thought you had both currently. I had read some of your other posts, and must have only read what I wanted to read!

Yes If someone tells me they have Ananda with less detail, smaller stage, then it certainly eats into some of what makes the Ananda so great. You're left with good tonality and a smooth sound. Lots of cans do that IMO.
Budget allowing, assuming there is still a good amount of enjoyment, I could see a use case for the BT Ananda's and maybe make the leap to an Arya or try a different company altogether for a wired counter-part.

 

[tinyman392]

I ordered a new CCK kit from amazon and switched from my Pixel over LDAC to my iPhone wired using Qobuz highest setting. Still experimenting but to me the sound is improved - much less congestion than over BT in loud passages. Separation and dynamics seem improved. Placebo? I don't think so. Sound seems much more comparable to my wired Ananda set up this way. Maybe not all the way there but the gap is tighter. This is a really nice setup.

I ended up purchasing a CCK from Best Buy today when I was out looking for a remote start for my car. I have no clue where my old one is and gave up looking for it. With the CCK the volume increments are more linear which is extremely nice to have! Though this makes sense too since the phone itself is kind of controlling the volume increments vs the headphone.

Connected to the CCK the headphones do sound better. The bass sound a lot less congested and there’s a bit more detailing in them. The bass also doesn’t sound nearly as thick nor the midrange as veiled. These are small things, but they do make the headphone sound much better. Though like you, I’m not sure if it’s a placebo effect or not. I’m using Apple Music to listen with (AAC 256). I’m assuming that the differences here would be that the iPhone is decoding the AAC into a WAV format before sending it to the headphone vs the BT mode where the iPhone sends an AAC digital stream to the headphones which decode it to WAV then do its thing with it. But again I can’t be completely sure.

 

[clerkpalmer]

I ended up purchasing a CCK from Best Buy today when I was out looking for a remote start for my car. I have no clue where my old one is and gave up looking for it. With the CCK the volume increments are more linear which is extremely nice to have! Though this makes sense too since the phone itself is kind of controlling the volume increments vs the headphone.

Connected to the CCK the headphones do sound better. The bass sound a lot less congested and there’s a bit more detailing in them. The bass also doesn’t sound nearly as thick nor the midrange as veiled. These are small things, but they do make the headphone sound much better. Though like you, I’m not sure if it’s a placebo effect or not. I’m using Apple Music to listen with (AAC 256). I’m assuming that the differences here would be that the iPhone is decoding the AAC into a WAV format before sending it to the headphone vs the BT mode where the iPhone sends an AAC digital stream to the headphones which decode it to WAV then do its thing with it. But again I can’t be completely sure.

Biggest issue is going wired seems to clobber the battery and I don’t know why. I read some reviews claiming the same. Doesn’t seem to make sense why wired would draw more power.

 

[tinyman392]

Biggest issue is going wired seems to clobber the battery and I don’t know why. I read some reviews claiming the same. Doesn’t seem to make sense why wired would draw more power.

The only thing I could think of would be the raw bit rate that’s being fed. Over BT LDAC and HWA both peak out around 900 KB/s (or about 1 MB/s) from what I understand. Standard lossless/WAV would follow the 1411 KB/s (or about 1.5 KB/s), higher quality being even higher if your device supports it (higher bit depth or sampling rate will multiply this). So at minimum the headphone DAC would need to process 1.5x more data per second compared to using BT. For the most part, however, if you’re using APT-X HD, you’re likely actually lower towards the 500 KB/s (0.5 MB/s) which would mean the DAC would be processing 3x more data per second. With AAC, I’d assume it peaks at 256 KB/s so we get a 6x power use wired for the DAC. Obviously I’m ignoring the BT radio itself right now, I’m not sure how power hungry it would be compared to a full-fledge DAC/amp that’s in the headphone though.

But the only thing that does stick out to me is the processing that needs to be done with a WAV format being sent over vs the various BT codecs it’s using. I could be mistaken on some of. The numbers since most are clipped from Wikipedia.

 

[tinyman392]

Biggest issue is going wired seems to clobber the battery and I don’t know why. I read some reviews claiming the same. Doesn’t seem to make sense why wired would draw more power.

Sorry for double post, I just noticed something. If I have the Ananda BT connected to my iPhone it shows up in the AirPlay settings twice, once as a USB DAC and once as a BT headphone (see screenshot below). So even when wired, it’s still connected to BT. This will drain the battery like no other on top of what I’ve said above... If I press the multi-function button it will actually pause the music on my iPhone, however because I’m controlling the phone through a BT device, it’ll switch the source to be the BT headphone. So if I play, the phone will send music to the Ananda through BT (so nothing will actually play). So BT is connected and fully functional.

Note I don’t know what firmware my Ananda BT is on. It may be up to date it may not be. If it’s not, there is a possibility that this has been patched out. I don’t have a Windows computer handy to update the firmware which is extremely annoying (same with Audeze actually).

 

[clerkpalmer]

Sorry for double post, I just noticed something. If I have the Ananda BT connected to my iPhone it shows up in the AirPlay settings twice, once as a USB DAC and once as a BT headphone (see screenshot below). So even when wired, it’s still connected to BT. This will drain the battery like no other on top of what I’ve said above... Note I don’t know what firmware my Ananda BT is on. It may be up to date it may not be. If it’s not, there is a possibility that this has been patched out. I don’t have a Windows computer handy to update the firmware which is extremely annoying (same with Audeze actually).

Good find. Interesting. Maybe disconnect BT. I asked HFM and they said the higher bitrates are the culprit but maintaining a BT connection can’t help.

 

[tinyman392]

Good find. Interesting. Maybe disconnect BT. I asked HFM and they said the higher bitrates are the culprit but maintaining a BT connection can’t help.

The bitrates does make sense (as described above). I don’t think it’s as simple as shutting off BT on your phone though... The headphone likely will continue to search for the device it’s trying to connect to. It may shut off after it fails a connection X times or for X seconds, but it may not. There is no way to know for sure if the BT on the headphone’s end shuts off. It is worth exploring though to see if it improves battery life.