[Sonic Defender]

  They are claiming 3 times the bitrate with LDAC, but they're really vague when challenged on how they actually achieve that. 
APTX has always had a small amount of hiss to my ears.
 
Anyway, the future of BT audio is probably in BT 5.0 rather than LDAC, with its' drastically increased bandwith.

BT 5 means nothing without the Codec to take advantage of it so without Apt X HD or LDAC for instance, BT 5 means nothing beyond the ability to support greater bit rates.

 

[amirage]

Guys, I'm really confused here whether to buy these or not. The reviews are simply great across the board. I own a pair of Westone UM30PRO and they sound brilliant via my cowon J3. Has anyone compared Westones (or Shure or IEMs with triple drivers) with MDR1000X? Do they sound really different at the same volume level? I had already paid about $400 for the Westones and I'm really not sure if I should go ahead with the MDR1000X i.e. will it really sound different compared to the UM30PROs? Or, would it be worth it to put the money on a Hi-res player such as the Astrell & Kern JR or the Cowon Plenue series?
 
Please help

 

[Soundofmusic]

  BT 5 means nothing without the Codec to take advantage of it so without Apt X HD or LDAC for instance, BT 5 means nothing beyond the ability to support greater bit rates.

Of course, but with 8 times the current 352 kpbs limit of A2DP, you could basically run uncompressed or at least a lossless realtime codec like aptx lossess or TTA.
 
It will yield a new iteration of BT headphones and mobile BT chips with lossless codec support, then the remaining problems with BT audio will be latency/packet loss and the need to cram a decent dac/amp into the price of the headphones.
 
LDAC is just a proprietary, temporary stepping stone, imo.

 

[kelly200269]

Personally I have my doubts that there would be much difference from say Apt X to LDAC. What do you think? I haven't been able to test so my opinion is simply conjecture.

I'm pretty sure that LDAC is Sony 'hype', and just a way to avoid them paying Qualcomm royalties to use Apt-X.
On listening, albeit without rigorous A-B 'blind' testing, I can't tell any difference whatsoever between Apt-X and LDAC. BOTH are great for wireless use, IMO.

 

[rkw]

I'm pretty sure that LDAC is Sony 'hype', and just a way to avoid them paying Qualcomm royalties to use Apt-X.

 
But Sony isn't avoiding Qualcomm royalties — most of their Bluetooth headphones have aptX.
 
This is just Sony being Sony again. They want to do things their own way and try to impose it on the industry, which usually doesn't want to follow along.

 

[Sonic Defender]

   
But Sony isn't avoiding Qualcomm royalties — most of their Bluetooth headphones have aptX.
 
This is just Sony being Sony again. They want to do things their own way and try to impose it on the industry, which usually doesn't want to follow along.

I don't know, it seems that Sony is trying to offer an alternative and all companies want to have marketplace advantages/dominance if possible. It is debateable if LDAC offers a substantive alternative as compared with Apt X HD, but I tend to prefer more marketplace players and Sony may keep Qualcomm honest and pushing to innovate. It is nice that LDAC is going to be natively supported in Android O and that Sony has apparently really been helping Android improve the audio aspect of the OS.

 

[kelly200269]

But Sony isn't avoiding Qualcomm royalties — most of their Bluetooth headphones have aptX.

This is just Sony being Sony again. They want to do things their own way and try to impose it on the industry, which usually doesn't want to follow along.

Yes, but they will probably only pay per model/item it's used In? If it's not incorporated into the DAPs, then it must mean more money for Sony, and less for others.
And as for Sony going their own way? Yeah. Take H.A.T.S., Betamax, Minidisc and ATRAC. I think we'll soon be adding LDAC to that growing list... lol

 

[Pass]

Yes, but they will probably only pay per model/item it's used In? If it's not incorporated into the DAPs, then it must mean more money for Sony, and less for others.
And as for Sony going their own way? Yeah. Take H.A.T.S., Betamax, Minidisc and ATRAC. I think we'll soon be adding LDAC to that growing list... lol

Don't forget tho that Sony won the HD format war, with its Bluray rapidly detroning the HD DVD.
 
I salute Sony in this regard, with all the tech they pushes/pushed, they sure got some over the time. Who knows, maybe LDAC is a future-winner!

 

[Sonic Defender]

 
Don't forget tho that Sony won the HD format war, with its Bluray rapidly detroning the HD DVD.
 
I salute Sony in this regard, with all the tech they pushes/pushed, they sure got some over the time. Who knows, maybe LDAC is a future-winner!

I agree, and I'm old enough to remember the VHS Betamax war, and while it didn't fly, Betamax was widely considered to be the technically superior format, but it didn't win the marketing war.

 

[Swaggygd9]

 

[okpj]

Hi guys, update on my experience.
 
SONY vs BOSE
I compared to Sony with Bose QC35. The sound quality of the Bose is lower, while the NC is just a veeery little bit better. They feel lighter and the cups seems more fresh than the Sony's but i had no possibility to try them for long time. My hears touch a bit the internal of the Sony, in the Bose not.
 
NOISE CANCELLING and COMFORT
Off course, the more i use the Sony and more the sound quality from the speakers improves.
During a flight that i did 3 days ago, they really helped me to feel better. I had 3 children around me. One the seat in front, one in the seat back and one on the opposite (but one line back). All of them screamed most of the time (1 hour and half flight).
With NC on and with a soft music at mid-low volume i almost felt no sound around me. Very good also to reduce the airplane noise.
Sometimes i enlarged the cups to see the difference and everytime i thanked the Sony's for isolate me from that hell (it was one of the loudest flight in my life, not only for the babies).
I felt a bit hot on the hear.
 
TOUCH FUNCTION
The touch cup doesn't work if you connect the cable, except for the function that let your hear around you if you touch the cup with full hand. That works everytime.
Speaking about the touch cup, it is nice but i didn't appreciated so much. Sometimes i wanted to increase the volume and maybe my movement was not perfectly vertical, so i accidentally moved to the next song.
I prefer fisic buttons, so i think i will use touch function only if am uncomfortable to take the phone. Off course during this first days i did more test than tipical usage.
Furthermore, due to i am not used to this touch cup, sometimes i touched it and i did something that i didn't wanted. Usually one song step forward.
 
BATTERY LIFE
I would like to have a function to let me understand the battery capacity. For example, i have a Sena S20 intercom on my helmet. When i switch it on, a blue led blinks 1-2-3 or 4 times depending of battery %. Simple and effective.
I used them for about 15 hours, i will charge soon before to fully empty the battery.
 
PRICE
This week (Italy) the price of both, Sony and Bose, on Amazon suddenly dropped. When i bought the Sony i paid them 361 €. Then they increased to 380 € and now they are 318 €.
The Bose were 350 €, then 380 €and now 309 €.
I cannot explain these up and down in 10 days...

 

[BenKatz]

 
But Sony isn't avoiding Qualcomm royalties — most of their Bluetooth headphones have aptX.
 
This is just Sony being Sony again. They want to do things their own way and try to impose it on the industry, which usually doesn't want to follow along.

 


This makes no sense. So another company (Sony) going into the bluetooth audio codec market where Qualcomm has a MONOPOLY basically is somehow bad, "Sony being Sony" ? This is how you get better quality in any industry. It's a little something called COMPETITION, dude .

And also, besides the fact that it's OBVIOUSLY good that another company is trying to break a monopoly (aptx, aptx HD by Qualcomm), and monopolies are the worst things for us, the consumers, LDAC isn't "hype" by any means. If you don't believe me, a long time LDAC user, read the reviews.

Also Sony incorporates Qualcomm's APTX into all of their devices already, and also offers LDAC for other companies. And in case you're not aware of the technical data and thus think it's only hype - look at the specs: Qualcomm's latest AptX, called aptx HD, is rated at 570Kb/s transfer rate (clearly below CD quality), while LDAC is at 990Kb/s (almost high-res). Now whether there's a big difference, can't tell, but I can certainly tell you I can clearly tell the difference between 330 kb/s (mp3) and 1000+kb/s (16 bit flac/cd quality), so if my device has LDAC, I'll use LDAC over aptx/aptxHD any day.

Thanks for revolutionizing bluetooth audio quality, Sony

But then again, if you think it's just hype, or hate Sony for some reason, you're welcome to remain locked into Qualcomm's APTX monopoly and enjoy lower quality audio.

 

[rkw]

But then again, if you think it's just hype, or hate Sony for some reason, you're welcome to remain locked into Qualcomm's APTX monopoly and enjoy lower quality audio.

 
Not disputing the technical merits of LDAC or hating on Sony. Just feeling deja vu about how this will likely turn out.

 

[Soundofmusic]

 
But Sony isn't avoiding Qualcomm royalties — most of their Bluetooth headphones have aptX.
 
This is just Sony being Sony again. They want to do things their own way and try to impose it on the industry, which usually doesn't want to follow along.

 


This makes no sense. So another company (Sony) going into the bluetooth audio codec market where Qualcomm has a MONOPOLY basically is somehow bad, "Sony being Sony" ? This is how you get better quality in any industry. It's a little something called COMPETITION, dude .

And also, besides the fact that it's OBVIOUSLY good that another company is trying to break a monopoly (aptx, aptx HD by Qualcomm), and monopolies are the worst things for us, the consumers, LDAC isn't "hype" by any means. If you don't believe me, a long time LDAC user, read the reviews.

Also Sony incorporates Qualcomm's APTX into all of their devices already, and also offers LDAC for other companies. And in case you're not aware of the technical data and thus think it's only hype - look at the specs: Qualcomm's latest AptX, called aptx HD, is rated at 570Kb/s transfer rate (clearly below CD quality), while LDAC is at 990Kb/s (almost high-res). Now whether there's a big difference, can't tell, but I can certainly tell you I can clearly tell the difference between 330 kb/s (mp3) and 1000+kb/s (16 bit flac/cd quality), so if my device has LDAC, I'll use LDAC over aptx/aptxHD any day.

Thanks for revolutionizing bluetooth audio quality, Sony

But then again, if you think it's just hype, or hate Sony for some reason, you're welcome to remain locked into Qualcomm's APTX monopoly and enjoy lower quality audio.

They are really *****-footed about explaining how they cram 990 kpbs into the 352 kpbs max of A2DP, I got the feeling they are using lossy fallback compression and creative marketing of the theoretical max bitrate.

 

[Onetwothree]

Need some help in trying to decide between the Sony 1000x and the Boss QC35's.

I'm going to use these in an open office and this is my priority list,

1. Noise cancelling
2. Headset quality
3. Comfort
4. Music (Sound Quality)

I've read that the Sonys noise canceling is slightly better but that there isn't a whole lot of difference, just about a tie with Bose. The Sonys do have those touch features that may be useful in the office so that's a plus but not major.

Now I've read that the microphone for the Bose is better and this is one of the reasons I may go with the Bose. I need a headset for work because being in an open office is simply noisy and this will be the main purpose for these headphones. How much of a quality difference is there?

I know the Bose are very comfortable because I've tried them and these won't be used for music very much and not for critical listening either so I'm not concerned about the sound quality difference.

So what's the call quality like for these? It'll be used with an iPhone 6 Plus if that makes a difference.