Radsone EarStudio ES100
May 4, 2019 at 8:27 PM Post #4,563 of 6,673
Has anyone compared the es100 to the audiolab m dac nano? Is the mdac worth the extra money?

Hmm seems to have both upsides and downsides compared to the Es100

It's looks better designed, including a volume wheel.
Also wireless charghing

BUT only 6 hours of battery life in the "enchanted mode"...

Just give me the ES100 but with an awesome design! Including wireless charging. :)
 
May 4, 2019 at 8:32 PM Post #4,565 of 6,673
Hmm... I do like some nice wheels, but how’s the enhanced mode (aptx or aac) vs es100 (aptxhd)?

I read a review that says its closes the gap a lot, but not quite there. The major downside is the 6 hours battery life in the enchanted mode.... Imagine that after 1-2 years of battery degradation :frowning2:

But I do love their design approach, having a clean device without a clip, but with a included leather pouch with a clip. Also a single wheel that functions both as volume management and skip/back.

Along with wireless charging.
 
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May 4, 2019 at 8:39 PM Post #4,567 of 6,673
I just saw in your signicher Elecom EHP-SH1000. A serious contender for a basshead two dd 12.5mm+11.6mm, Wow that's a good find. Do you have any review how they perform with es100 ?

Didn't wrote any review about it, but it is my default 'fun' IEM to listen to these days. The only advice I'll give is that you will need to change the stock eartips as those really hinder the IEM performance. With the right eartips, this thing really rocks.
 
May 5, 2019 at 11:26 AM Post #4,568 of 6,673
LDAC has nothing to do with the amp in the thing, its the transport, which is CD quality or better I think.
It's CD quality or worse. It only gets up to CD quality (lossless) if you fiddle with the settings in your source device to force it to operate at 16-bit / 44.1 kHz / 990kbps (on Android 8 this is hidden in Developer Settings and has to be redone after every reconnect, not sure if Pie has made it any more accessible). Otherwise you will be getting lossy compression and lower than CD quality, with any other settings, including the default 32/96/adaptive-bitrate.
 
May 5, 2019 at 11:49 AM Post #4,569 of 6,673
My LDAC connects at 96khz 32bit samples every time without screwing around with anything. It may be lossy but at that point, thats so far above CD quality it shouldn't do anything in the audible region.

LG G7 if it matters. The only phones that actually sets LDAC to highest quality every time.
 
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May 5, 2019 at 1:00 PM Post #4,570 of 6,673
My LDAC connects at 96khz 32bit samples every time without screwing around with anything. It may be lossy but at that point, thats so far above CD quality it shouldn't do anything in the audible region.
Above CD quality is one thing, audible is another thing. If you just want no audible artifacts then aptX @352kbps and even SBC @328kbps can be enough, through the right DAC/amp (like the ES100 but also similar offerings from FiiO and MPOW can do a good enough job).

If you want CD quality through Bluetooth there is no other solution than LDAC forced@909kbps, 16-bit, 44.1 kHz (with the possible exception of LHDC, but that's not available in phones yet). Everything else has worse than CD audio quality, even LDAC at different settings, including 32/96. In fact, LDAC at 32/96 with adaptive bitrate might take itself down to 330kbps (if you're in a busy Bluetooth environment with bad connection) and then it will measure worse than SBC. See here: https://www.soundguys.com/ldac-ultimate-bluetooth-guide-20026/
 
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May 5, 2019 at 3:51 PM Post #4,571 of 6,673
LDAC at 32/96 with adaptive bitrate might take itself down to 330kbps (if you're in a busy Bluetooth environment with bad connection) and then it will sound worse have higher noise floor above 18kHz than SBC. See here: https://www.soundguys.com/ldac-ultimate-bluetooth-guide-20026/
Fixed it. We need to be precise about what the article actually says. The author was careful about avoiding any judgement about the subjective sound quality of any of the codecs.

In my experience, SBC sounds significantly worse than the others (aptX, AAC, LDAC), even if its measured noise floor is reasonable by comparison.
 
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May 5, 2019 at 4:42 PM Post #4,572 of 6,673
Fixed it. We need to be precise about what the article actually says. The author was careful about avoiding any judgement about the subjective sound quality of any of the codecs.
Correct - "measures worse" is not the same as "sounds worse", as I had just pointed out at the beginning of the same post. :p

But I don't know where you got the conclusion that "hi-res" LDAC @330kbps is worse than SBC only above 18k. It actually has worse noise right around 10k, which most people can hear all the way into old age, and then it has something that looks like extra harmonic distortion around 13-14k as well. SBC measurement for comparison: https://www.soundguys.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/SBC-Bluetooth-Noise.jpg

Of course, as we know from NwAvGuy and other sources, problems below -85 dB are not audible in the vast majority of real-world listening scenarios, and as such most of what we're seeing on these graphs, even stuff above the "16-bit (no dither)" threshold, is not going to be audible. But even while acknowledging this, the "hi-res" 330kbps LDAC setting still comes out poorly, with that 10k noise rising up as far as -75 dB and becoming possibly audible in very good listening environments (which doesn't happen for SBC anywhere on the spectrum).
 
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May 5, 2019 at 8:59 PM Post #4,573 of 6,673
Didn't wrote any review about it, but it is my default 'fun' IEM to listen to these days. The only advice I'll give is that you will need to change the stock eartips as those really hinder the IEM performance. With the right eartips, this thing really rocks.

I want those Elecom EHP-SH1000's!

I have some Elecom 3570's "Grand Bass" iems, and I really like them (very fun). Thanks for mentioning the SH1000's.
 
May 5, 2019 at 11:08 PM Post #4,574 of 6,673
....

But I don't know where you got the conclusion that "hi-res" LDAC @330kbps is worse than SBC only above 18k. It actually has worse noise right around 10k, which most people can hear all the way into old age, and then it has something that looks like extra harmonic distortion around 13-14k as well. SBC measurement for comparison: https://www.soundguys.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/SBC-Bluetooth-Noise.jpg

Of course, as we know from NwAvGuy and other sources, problems below -85 dB are not audible in the vast majority of real-world listening scenarios, and as such most of what we're seeing on these graphs, even stuff above the "16-bit (no dither)" threshold, is not going to be audible. But even while acknowledging this, the "hi-res" 330kbps LDAC setting still comes out poorly, with that 10k noise rising up as far as -75 dB and becoming possibly audible in very good listening environments (which doesn't happen for SBC anywhere on the spectrum).

The scary bit is that a site can write such a technical report with all the comparison and making a lot of claims without telling us a single bit of testing condition / equipments. I find that very troubling even if the conclusion might be sound.
 
May 6, 2019 at 3:57 AM Post #4,575 of 6,673
The scary bit is that a site can write such a technical report with all the comparison and making a lot of claims without telling us a single bit of testing condition / equipments. I find that very troubling even if the conclusion might be sound.
It's not that scary, remember this is a test of digital signal -> codec -> digital signal, so the only problem is if they're decoding it with some SoC that also applies DSP functions or effects, and I don't think they were quite as stupid as to include that kind of stuff in the analysis. :)
There's one comment reply that sort of addresses this, but no specific equipment is named: "We had a little help from friends in the industry, but no, we use certified devices to perform our tests—no tech cannibalism necessary."
 

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