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1 year agoI worry that you say you get “distortion” using them wirelessly.
It could be that you have a faulty pair, though more likely you are listening too loudly and will damage your hearing.
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Cake day: October 23rd, 2023
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I am a big fan of my APM - they are an easy listen, comfortable, ANC is great and for an Apple Ecosystem user (phone, laptop etc) they are a joy to use.
I just ordered some Bathys last week in the sale here in NZ for around US$480 and should get my hands on them this week.
I had a brief listen in the store and they sounded great, but looking forward to giving them a proper assessment shortly. Indeed I see my use cases for the APM and the Focals very similar to yours.
I don’t think I would have bought them full price, but with that discount, they became pretty attractive!
p. Hey - I am always open to learning from the experts!
j. If you can teach me or show me the best resource to understand the terminology that I don’t understand, then I am all yours.
r. “Note Weight” as per OP is a good start and I would love to get to grips with “Musicality”.
t. biggest brained arr headphones user
I know most of those words, but I am having trouble parsing this.
That’s probably on me dude - apologies.
Hmm - I think you may have actually been listening to eggs.
Common mistake for a beginner audiophile to make.
A meaningless, subjective and unquantifiable property that some audiophiles like to apply to gear - in the same way that Wine Nerds say things like "Has notes of unwashed Levis, enmeshed with a hint of a teen mother’s regret" when reviewing some cheap Merlot.
See also “musicality”, “texture”, “immediacy”, “slam” etc…
Very likely involved at one or more components of the total supply chain, yes.
If not the main construction, then in the gathering or the processing of the resources and materials that go into the end product.
Yes, them.
Because they are made with cheap components and materials by indentured workers to indifferent levels of QC?
Got some new Focal Bathys for the US$ equivalent of $460.
Not arrived yet.
Like most ANC, wireless headphones, the XM5 is designed to work optimally with its own built in DAC and AMP.
Whenever you switch them “on” they will always be using the internal architecture - I think you *can* use them powered off via 3.5mm but they will not sound their best.
Your best bet with them is just to use them over Bluetooth using LDAC and “quality” preference from the Sony app.
If you are happy with your current IEMs then don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
Go ahead and listen to other brands, designs, price points etc if you like and then you can either make an informed decision based on something you have heard and liked yourself, or you can stick with what you have.
(FWIW, I really like my U4s - they sound great, I like the fact you can actually tweak the sound slightly with the different Apex modules, they are well made and they fit me really well.)
I bought an Astell & Kern SR35 recently, so I didn’t have to keep messing around with converting my FLACs to ALAC or AAC and using bloody iTunes to get my music on to my phone.
Previously I was able to fit my lossless library onto my 512Gb phone when converted down to AAC, but I now I just have a 1Tb SD in the DAP which is synced with my local digital library (Roon) and the A&K works great.
Battery life is pretty decent, it is very small and pocketable and has plenty of power to drive my IEMS and Open Backed cans. Works with Roon & Tidal too when needed.
I have a “FreeSync” job setup on my media PC and very few weeks I push the latest library to the SD card and off we go.
…to add, it was kind of nice to come full circle! I bought my very first “big boy” DAP back In 2003 and it was an iRiver H120. I still have it and it still works, so coming back to Astell & Kern 20 years later (iRiver became A&K) tickled me.
There shouldn’t be any audible difference in timbre/tone between competently made solid state amps running within spec
Humans are very sensitive to small changes in volume but often mistakenly attribute this change to other nebulous sound qualities that they might be seeking such as “clarity” “dynamics” “punch” or negative ones such as “veiled” “muffled” “dull” etc.
When people “test” amps in store or at home, they always just use their ears to approximate a consistent listening volume and they will mostly get it wrong.
I have yet to see any compelling double-blind, volume-matched tests where people have been able to consistently distinguish between different models and tiers of competently made solid state amps. If the differences are so pronounced, then it should be trivial to conclusively prove this once and for all and end the debate (ditto cables, power conditioners, DACs etc)
I agree that when you introduce tubes into the mix, they indeed can audibly colour the sound and if you like that colour/distortion, then fair enough!
At the end of the day, amplifiers should *amplify* and not change the tone or dynamics of the signal it is being fed.
If you didn’t volume match from an external tool at the listening position, then you haven’t carried out “basic listening tests” either…
So I got my Bathys today.
First impressions - a bit underwhelmed TBH and very glad I only spent about 60% of full retail.
Vs APM, the timber and sound of instruments and layers is definitely better but not dramatically so.
After an hour or so of quick, limited unscientific A/B testing from Tidal:
It will take a while to give them a fair shake and I know it can take a while to appreciate a new set of cans, but honestly leaning to selling them on as they are nowhere near better sounding enough Vs the APM to overlook the areas they are worse in.