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Changed headphones to Bluetooth

Kevbaz

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Hi,
I’ve always been against wireless/Bluetooth headphones, I simply assumed they would have poor performance. No real reason beyond what I read online and assumption the compressing in Bluetooth would be audible.
Last week I bought some JBL Club Pro+ TWS paired to my iPhone running Qobuz and I can’t put them down. I can listen to music anywhere in the house now, on the move, at work and I can’t hear anything that makes them “worse” than my DCA closed X wth RME ADI DAC.
I think I’m starting to believe that either I have poor hearing or the more costly headphones/DAC don’t really offer anything better for me in terms of audible sound quality.
Also I can EQ the JBL IEMs with the app :) but I love the Harman tuned out of the box sound.
Does anyone else use Bluetooth, if so do you experience lower sound quality vs wired.
Kev
 

DonR

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I have used an Aukey BT adapter on my Sennheiser HD598SE headphones that are usually wired and noticed very little difference for the most part. The biggest issue was the lack of bass as the poor little amp in the adapter was unable to drive much below 100Hz.
 
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Kevbaz

Kevbaz

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I was pleasantly surprised how much bass the JBL club pros have, listening to the Bladerunner sound track you can hear some great lows :) and they sound clean.
Kev
 

Gene LeClair

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Yes, Bluetooth is underrated.

I've been using Powerbeats Pro for two years as my jogging/gym/outdoors headphones. My expectations were really low. How good can Bluetooth earbuds be? And from Apple subsidiary, eww?

Well, they've been great! The sound is much better than I thought it could be. It's not mind blowing or anything, but it sounds good and doesn't need much eq either.

Through the years I've had multiple Sennheiser in-ear headphones, the regular kind, and I'm never going back to wired buds again. Each of them broke after a few years when the cable started loosening. When at the gym or jogging, the cable gets easily tangled into something and, at worse case, the headphones get violently pulled from your ears.

The other great thing is how effortless the BT buds are. When I go out and take them out of their case and in my ears, the music automatically switches from my speakers to my earbuds. That's the coolest thing ever.
And (almost) never needing to use pause/play is also nice.
 
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Kevbaz

Kevbaz

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Katji

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Stating which BT codec.
..."Compare apples with apples."

Does anyone else use Bluetooth, if so do you experience lower sound quality vs wired.

If person experienced/perceived lower/higher SQ., then versus which Bt codec. There is a substantial diference between SBC and aptX HD or aptX LL or LDAC.
Then there is the headphones. If cheap-whatever headphones/earbuds, it is probably less likely that the difference will be noticed. Because the distortion is so much more that it masks or covers the difference between codecs or Bt versus wired that would otherwise be apparent.

Parameters, otherwise it is not even valid as subjective comparison. In other words, pretty much meaningless.
 
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Kevbaz

Kevbaz

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To be honest I don’t know what compression or codec the JBL Club Pro+ TWS use so not sure if I should expect any degradation n sound quality, dynamic range.
Think I need to go read up on Bluetooth and the various codecs :)
Kev
 

Katji

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The wiki is quite good but it gets quite technical, more than you need. Google results are good enough though.
 

MayaTlab

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Think I need to go read up on Bluetooth and the various codecs :)

Just my 2cts based on subjective listening tests : while the type of codec may matter, so does the implementation - even for codecs for which the owners have a tight grip over it (aptX). It's not uncommon for me to notice some rather odd artefacts for a combination of source / receiver devices that can't be explained by the codec alone nor even the usual settings issues (such as SBC's bitpool).
Ex : when I received my Qudelix 5K I noticed that playing some tones or tracks at lower frequencies produced a fairly audible, mid-frequency tone when using SBC. That didn't happen with any other receiving device when set to SBC, even when connected to the same source. I sent Qudelix a message with details on how to reproduce the problem and it was fixed in a latter update.

Does anyone else use Bluetooth, if so do you experience lower sound quality vs wired.

I find that whatever SQ drawback current, modern BT implementations have, are negligible in comparison to the benefits one can theoretically derive from making headphones active (which can be done wired, but is most often done through wireless implementations) - mainly the use of DSP to correct for some FR issues and let the engineers focus on challenges that can't be solved with DSP, or feedback mechanisms.
Emphasis on "theoretically", as I get the sensation that it's rather rare that the best use is made of these possibilities.

One of my favourite audio purchases lately is the Qudelix 5K, precisely because it enables me to consider most wired, passive headphones like active headphones, to a certain degree at least. And I'd much rather listen to PEQed headphones through the 5K wirelessly in AAC from iDevices than without EQ, wired.
 
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Kevbaz

Kevbaz

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Agree with the above, the JBL Club Pro+ TWS sound very balanced and I can EQ them if I needed to. I’ve had no issues with lack of power with the inbuilt amp so as a package I think wireless headphones are a great choice.
It also looks like a lot of effort from the larger mainstream manufacturers are in wireless ANC headphones than wired ones.
Kev
 
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