[monsieurfromag3]

Bluetooth will not cancel the benefits of the 5K’s superior, dedicated audio section.

 

[Lurk650]

Weird. this is no longer available on Amazon in the US. Sign of a new model coming out?

In stock Feb 16...def no new model coming out so soon

 

[fsi22]

i forgot to ask is this using ldac or aptx? i heard that aptx might cut out but LDAC has no issues

I use aptx and ldac. no issues in my pocket.

 

[Nolbert0]

So... does LDAC transmit lossless when playing redbook on 990?

 

[rkw]

So... does LDAC transmit lossless when playing redbook on 990?

It is lossy. Lossless redbook transmission is not possible using the current Bluetooth specs. The bandwidth is not high enough.

 

[PeterMac]

I do not think lossless is necessary to anything. I can't even tell difference between AAC VBR 320kbps and FLAC. Where LDAC can go up to 990kbps so. Lossy compresion is 100% fine not noticeable for anyone , problem is loudness war this thing ruin songs quality.

 

[Nolbert0]

It is lossy. Lossless redbook transmission is not possible using the current Bluetooth specs. The bandwidth is not high enough.

Thought so. Thanks for the confirmation. I though the bandwidth was enough at 990 for FLAC but oh well. Lossless redbook over bluetooth will be first nail in the coffin for wired headphones, methinks.

I do not think lossless is necessary to anything. I can't even tell difference between AAC VBR 320kbps and FLAC. Where LDAC can go up to 990kbps so. Lossy compresion is 100% fine not noticeable for anyone , problem is loudness war this thing ruin songs quality.

Agreed. Especially for mobile use. My entire collection of music on my phone is all AAC at 160mbps after I did a rudimentary listening test of different AAC bitrates to lossless. On most tracks, I couldn't tell the difference between 128 and 160 but the crowd noises on live recordings were super obvious (and to a lesser extent very splashy cymbals) so I erred on the side of caution and encoded a decent chunk of my lossless library to 160. Since AAC can be re-encoded to itself without loss of quality, my 5K is set to AAC. It is the the most 'efficient' codec IMO. It took using an iPhone for a year to get over my unfounded snobbery over AAC. Everything else about the Apple experience, I hated.

 

[Dobrescu George]

I made a video review about the 5K Bluetooth Receiver from Quedelix

 

[Mossey]

This is super unscientific but I have a number of fairly recent phones and haven't been able to find any 'phone A vs phone B' comparisons on connectivity with the Qudelix so thought I'd super briefly post my impressions:

Pixel 4 XL - seems to have excellent LDAC performance and will maintain a hard 990kbps up to around 3-4 metres when in LoS, when left on best effort with the 'aggressive' latency setting though the qudelix app, still seems to result in a 990kbps setting the vast majority of the time when within typical cable lengths. Seems to scale well at distance and even though walls, basically never falls below 492kbps.

Also really surprised by how little latency seems to appear in sound transmission with LDAC.

I generally dislike this phone but I can't seem to fault its LDAC performance.

LG V50 - pretty much poops itself on forced 990kbps, even within typical cable lengths and pretty much always defaults to 330kbps when left at best effort - really really bad

Pixel 3 XL - seems to be the middle of the bunch, doesn't like fixed 990kbps but is still decent, generally tends to default to 660kbps when left at best effort

iPhone 6S, obviously always AAC but seems to maintain pretty good transmission at range, obviously not the newest iPhone here but it's the latest model I still have that works.

Sounds just OK, this is kind of annoying because I really want to go back to iOS but yeah, AAC while not bad, still does sound inferior to LDAC here, which whilst that shouldn't be a massive surprise given the signficant technical superiority of LDAC over, even Apple's very good implementation of AAC through Bluetooth does seem to manifest itself in at least a reasonably noticeable way. Hopefuly better on newer iPhones, but not especially sure why it would be.

Cheers.

 

[mart1272]

This is super unscientific but I have a number of fairly recent phones and haven't been able to find any 'phone A vs phone B' comparisons on connectivity with the Qudelix so thought I'd super briefly post my impressions:

Pixel 4 XL - seems to have excellent LDAC performance and will maintain a hard 990kbps up to around 3-4 metres when in LoS, when left on best effort with the 'aggressive' latency setting though the qudelix app, still seems to result in a 990kbps setting the vast majority of the time when within typical cable lengths. Seems to scale well at distance and even though walls, basically never falls below 492kbps.

Also really surprised by how little latency seems to appear in sound transmission with LDAC.

I generally dislike this phone but I can't seem to fault it's LDAC performance.

LG V50 - pretty much **** itself on forced 990kbps, even within typical cable lengths and pretty much always defaults to 330kbps when left at best effort - really really bad

Pixel 3 XL - seems to be the middle of the bunch, doesn't like fixed 990kbps but is still decent, generally tends to default to 660kbps when left at best effort

iPhone 6S, obviously always AAC but seems to maintain pretty good transmission at range, obviously not the newest iPhone here but it's the latest model I still have that works.

Sounds just OK, this is kind of annoying because I really want to go back to iOS but yeah, AAC while not bad, still does sound inferior to LDAC here, which whilst that shouldn't be a massive surprise given the signficant technical superiority of LDAC over, even Apple's very good implementation of AAC through Bluetooth does seem to manifest itself in at least a reasonably noticeable way. Hopefuly better on newer iPhones, but not especially sure why it would be.

Cheers.

Thank you, this is very interesting. How is the sound compared to directly plugging an IEM into the headphone jack of that iPhone 6 and LG with the quad dac? (Pixel doesn't have a jack right?). Do you notice a difference? Currently using an iPhone SE 2016 so would be very interested in that. Thanks so much!

 

[Mossey]

This is super unscientific but I have a number of fairly recent phones and haven't been able to find any 'phone A vs phone B' comparisons on connectivity with the Qudelix so thought I'd super briefly post my impressions:

Pixel 4 XL - seems to have excellent LDAC performance and will maintain a hard 990kbps up to around 3-4 metres when in LoS, when left on best effort with the 'aggressive' latency setting though the qudelix app, still seems to result in a 990kbps setting the vast majority of the time when within typical cable lengths. Seems to scale well at distance and even though walls, basically never falls below 492kbps.

Also really surprised by how little latency seems to appear in sound transmission with LDAC.

I generally dislike this phone but I can't seem to fault it's LDAC performance.

LG V50 - pretty much **** itself on forced 990kbps, even within typical cable lengths and pretty much always defaults to 330kbps when left at best effort - really really bad

Pixel 3 XL - seems to be the middle of the bunch, doesn't like fixed 990kbps but is still decent, generally tends to default to 660kbps when left at best effort

iPhone 6S, obviously always AAC but seems to maintain pretty good transmission at range, obviously not the newest iPhone here but it's the latest model I still have that works.

Sounds just OK, this is kind of annoying because I really want to go back to iOS but yeah, AAC while not bad, still does sound inferior to LDAC here, which whilst that shouldn't be a massive surprise given the signficant technical superiority of LDAC over, even Apple's very good implementation of AAC through Bluetooth does seem to manifest itself in at least a reasonably noticeable way. Hopefuly better on newer iPhones, but not especially sure why it would be.

Cheers.

Should add that this was mainly tested with regular 16/44 FLACs or MQA stuff (which can also range from stuff that is originally 16/44 or up to 24/96 before unfolding) - I personally can't perceive any difference between regular flacs and MQA anything.

 

[Mossey]

Thank you, this is very interesting. How is the sound compared to directly plugging an IEM into the headphone jack of that iPhone 6 and LG with the quad dac? (Pixel doesn't have a jack right?). Do you notice a difference? Currently using an iPhone SE 2016 so would be very interested in that. Thanks so much!

The Qudelix on LDAC is superior to the wired quad DAC.

2 reasons:

1. The quad is inherently noisy, the qudelix isn't.

2. My biggest gripe with the LG quad DAC is that there is a really weak low gain setting for anything with an impedance below 50omhs that cannot be reliably changed, which, for most iems is fine but as soon as you introduce something that's still low impedance but is also power hungry basically results in really poor performance and often volume and drive levels far below optimal.

Planar's are an excellent example of this.

The Qudelix doesn't have this problem.

With stuff that's above 50omhs it is generally quite good and beats any other phone I've listened to although there is a particular 'house sound' of ESS Sabre stuff that I like less than Cirrus Logic DAC's which generally led me to listen to wired, low impedance things through my regular lightning DAC on iPhone. The lightning dac legitimately drives them better and louder.

Obviously the qudelix is using ESS but the additional drive and excellent peq/geq functionality kind of makes that a moot point.

I need to do more listening to compare 6S wired vs Bluetooth performance.

 

[PeterMac]

I made built-in microphone test in Qudelix 5K, compare also to FiiO BTR3.

 

[jsmiller58]

I made built-in microphone test in Qudelix 5K, compare also to FiiO BTR3.

Wow, that is a pretty clear choice for microphone quality!

 

[TK33]

This is super unscientific but I have a number of fairly recent phones and haven't been able to find any 'phone A vs phone B' comparisons on connectivity with the Qudelix so thought I'd super briefly post my impressions:

Pixel 4 XL - seems to have excellent LDAC performance and will maintain a hard 990kbps up to around 3-4 metres when in LoS, when left on best effort with the 'aggressive' latency setting though the qudelix app, still seems to result in a 990kbps setting the vast majority of the time when within typical cable lengths. Seems to scale well at distance and even though walls, basically never falls below 492kbps.

Also really surprised by how little latency seems to appear in sound transmission with LDAC.

I generally dislike this phone but I can't seem to fault its LDAC performance.

LG V50 - pretty much **** itself on forced 990kbps, even within typical cable lengths and pretty much always defaults to 330kbps when left at best effort - really really bad

Your experience with the V50 is interesting. I mostly use my 5K with a V60 (sometimes with my PC) and have never had an issue playing LDAC 900 (aside from my issues at the beginning where the LG V60 kept defaulting to aptX adaptive and I had to eventually disable aptX adaptive on the 5K). Aside from toggling the Best Sound Quality in connection type in bluetooth settings, I didnt have to force 990 in Developer Options.
Obviously a different model but maybe the newer chips have a better bluetooth antenna?

I agree with your other comment regarding 5K vs quad DAC. Quad DAC is super annoying with planars (have to force aux mode using another cable and even then you dont get High Impedance Mode) and you don't really get much of a benefit with IEMs. I wish LG would have made ot a little more flexible...but then again you can't even automatically alphabetize apps in the stock launcher.

Qudelix 5K parametric EQ is also excellent. The convenience of bluetooth with great SQ and user flexibility is what this device is really about.