The small tips are pretty small. (I can't get a seal with the smalls. I can get a seal with the medium and large no problem. The problem I have (for now - I have had these for 1 day so far) is keeping the seal. With LDAC and a good seal I think they sound great for bluetooth buds (true wireless or otherwise)
I am not an Apple expert, but Sony chose to ditch APTX and APTX-HD on these buds in favor of their home-grown codex: LDAC. LDAC sounds great IMHO, but leaves Apple users behind since Apple does not support LDAC. I think Apple users are better off with the XM3 and its support for APTX-HD. Why no APTX-HD on $280 buds? Who knows?
Apple does not support APTX either
I sold my AirPods Pro after getting the XM4 buds. They slap them in every way except multipoint connectivity which I don’t use. Super happy I got them as the AirPods Pro didn’t offer enough sound quality
It’s an impressions thread, with room for all impressions and questions!
My guess is Apple didn't want to implement any hi-res codec in their products because of the limitations of bluetooth, so they worked better than android and other producers on aac.
I'm not super familiar with this person's content but I do remember that the review was quite objective IMO and favourable. May have been some of their other videos tho, they have multiple ones on the XM4.
next couple days
Well that at least should allow you to use ldac rather than aac and ldac from my Sony A55 does sound better than aac from my iPhone, but I doubt that will fundamentally change your feelings about the XM4So I just deleted my video on these. I’m going to reupload a longer or more detailed take on what exactly I hear, because some people were really really upset by how short I was and - admittedly - how my very dissatisfied take came off as condescending.
In the moment of recording, I genuinely just felt so disappointed in what I heard that I couldn’t help but reflect that emotion in my voice as I laughed at my own feelings. But I think it came off like I was laughing directly at people for enjoying these. To be honest, that’s the part that I feel bad about. I don’t feel bad about my feelings hearing them, those feelings are true to what I heard.
But, I could do a lot more to show people I can consider potential issues with codecs, with how the tuning may be more favorable to others aside from myself, and help people understand what my bad experience was by being very specific - rather than brief and flippant.
As we speak I’m heading to a store to buy an Android phone. No joke. If people believe it’ll make a difference, I ought to give it a shot for a full and detailed take.
It’s the right thing to do!
A more thorough video incoming
Any suggestions for a phone to get? Do all androids, even the cheapest, have LDAC in equal quality?
Potentially the Pixel 4a? It's probably one of the cheaper options as well. I'm no expert though on which phones have which capabilities, to be fair.
POCO F3 is a great buy and I had no LDAC issues at all
I don’t know, I’ve been iPhone since it first came out in Europe and have never owned or used an Android phone
