A bit more colored, obviously

I might be wrong but this looks like a Keychron K2 to me.

Spotify on best quality is 320kbps Vorbis (a patent-free alternative to MP3). It should be virtually indistinguishable from lossless for human ears (while using about 3 times less bandwidth / storage).

Here's a blind test comparing 128 kbps MP3, 320kbps MP3, and lossless. See if you can hear the difference ;-) Personally I can hear the difference between 128kbps and the rest most of the time, but not between 320kbps and lossless.

Note that Vorbis is slightly better than MP3 if I remember correctly, so if you can't hear the difference between lossless and 320kpbs MP3, you likely won't hear the difference between lossless and 320kpbs Vorbis either.

I'd go to "Settings" -> "USB audio" -> "Limit sample rate" and make sure "No limit" is selected.

This should eliminate software downsampling (which eats into the phone's battery life for no reason) but unlike bit-perfect mode it will still allow you to use UAPP's built-in EQ if you want to.

You savage

> Do you think Sony, Sennheiser will sell lots of their devices without?

Probably not, and I suspect that was kind of the point. We could simply have increased SBC's bitrate and enjoyed high quality music with our existing SBC gear, the end. But instead, a company saw the money-making potential of this situation, bought the rights to an audio codec designed in the 80s, and pushed for it to be used with Bluetooth by marketing it as "HD audio" (which it wasn't really, at least for the original non-HD aptX). Headset makers got to sell more headsets ("Oh you want to use this fancy new codec? A shame it doesn't work with your current headset, you'll need to buy a new one. Too bad!" - sad Pikachu face) creating more electronic waste in the process, Qualcomm got to collect licensing fees from millions of encoders and decoders around the world, and consumers obviously got to pay for all this (who else?) Other companies saw this and joined the game with their own codecs, and the Bluetooth audio landscape is now this huge mess we all know, with a plethora of codecs competing against each other, and an endless list of platform-specific incompatibilities and limitations. All this when the solution was right there from the start: SBC...

I'm not saying SBC doesn't have room for improvement, especially regarding latency, but it was designed to be capable of much more than what we ended up using it for. It was supposed to support adaptive bitrate for example, but AFAIK this was never implemented correctly.

So yes my opinion of aptX is pretty negative, because IMO this is a typical case of consumers getting abused to make corporations even more money, when there were some much more elegant (but less lucrative) solutions available. Bluetooth audio could have been so much better... Oh well, rant over.

Exactly. To be honest I suspect they only made their encoders free to use on Android because they figured it would increase their market penetration (more aptX support on Android means more aptX-compatible headsets sold) which in turn would allow them to make even more money on decoder licensing fees (for headsets) than they would have otherwise (since fees have a "per-device" component). This move isn't for the greater good, it's for money, which truth be told they make a pretty good job at extracting from a technology that dates back to the 1980s.

Which is a shame because SBC is objectively a better codec than aptX. I'm not even kidding. Ever heard of SBC XQ? It's a higher-bitrate version of SBC (same codec, better settings) just like aptX HD is simply aptX with a higher bitrate. Funny thing is, the Bluetooth specification only suggests encoder settings up to 328kbps for SBC, so until recently no encoder ever bothered to go higher. But it turns out most headsets can decode SBC up to 730kbps. The people who discovered this came up with higher-bitrate encoder profiles, and named them SBC XQ.

And not only is SBC supported by every Bluetooth headset ever made because this is mandated by the Bluetooth specification (and aptX isn't), but unlike aptX, SBC uses psychoacoustic modeling, which gives it a better perceived sound quality than aptX for the same bitrate. The result is SBC XQ can beat aptX HD in terms of sound quality while using a comparable bitrate, and works with almost every headset in existence, even older ones. Universal support, better quality/efficiency, and no additional fees required: aptX has literally no reason to exist other than filling Qualcomm's pockets. SBC XQ has already been implemented on Linux (via Pipewire) and LineageOS-based Android ROMs, let's hope it will come to mainstream Android (AOSP) soon.

Not exactly, this change only concerns Android:

> In a statement to Rahman, Qualcomm confirmed Android OEMs don’t need to pay the company for licensing to access aptX and aptX HD encoders. They are now a part of the AOSP Apache license, and free to use. [...] This means any developer creating a custom Android-based ROM can now add support for Qualcomm aptX or aptX HD without ripping them from a licensed build.

But also:

> "As per our usual business processes, the licensing of aptX [will remain] unchanged apart from contributing the aptX and aptX HD encoders to AOSP."

So licensing fees are still required to use Qualcomm's aptX and aptX HD encoders outside of Android.

I just sent you a DM.

Not sure I follow what you're saying about Tidal. On my phone it seems to work just fine with Wavelet (cumbersome but free) and Poweramp EQ (fully parametric, not free but cheap). There's also UAPP with the optional PEQ (more expensive though, and a different UI than the Tidal app). It won't give you any volume headroom, but offloading the EQ processing to your phone might help a little with the 5k's battery life, or allow you to use a Bluetooth receiver without EQ but with a bigger battery.

Edit: on second thought, I have enabled the enhanced session detection feature for both Wavelet and Poweramp EQ (Poweramp calls it "Advanced player tracking"). That's why I can EQ Tidal. It's a bit of an involved process, but well worth it to be able to EQ pretty much any application (even Reddit!)

> While the audible effect is low, the science is accurate, balanced should give you a lower noise floor (even if any particular amp has a pretty low noise floor).

While I'm definitely a noob on the matter, I think I've read somewhere that it should be the opposite: since balanced uses two amps per channel instead of one, with each amp introducing its own noise, the noise floor is basically doubled. So unless you're listening to double the volume just because you're using a balanced output, you'd end up with a lower SNR. Does that make sense? Maybe it's a balancing act (pun unintended) between amp and EMI noise?

Again, not pretending I know what I'm talking about, I'm just genuinely curious about this stuff.

Yeah these little dongles sure sound good for the money, I'm definitely happy with mine! Only issue with the iBasso is it requires you to use the buttons to set the volume even when using it on a computer, since it doesn't support volume control through USB at all. Strange design decision, and with 100 volume steps it can be a little tedious, but it's pretty much my only complaint. It sounds great, so that's what matters most!

I just shared a very simple EQ profile in another comment, if you want to give it a try. I do like the Etymotics tonality with the treble boost, but oratory1990's preset also sounds good, just different. I haven't tried his Harman preset though, usually not a fan of these. But the Etys sound great to me now, I'm definitely keeping them, hopefully it will work for you too!

Edit: here's oratory1990's USOUND1V1 preset with some treble boost on top, it sounds a little bit different, but oh so good:

Preamp: -7.0 dB
Filter 1: ON LSC Fc 180 Hz Gain 3.0 dB Q 0.710
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 300 Hz Gain -0.8 dB Q 1.000
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 1000 Hz Gain 4.5 dB Q 1.300
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 1370 Hz Gain -7.2 dB Q 1.000
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 2500 Hz Gain -2.3 dB Q 2.000
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 8000 Hz Gain 7.5 dB Q 1.000
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 11000 Hz Gain -5.0 dB Q 5.000

Hope this helps!

Ok time for a little update. After a lot of experimenting, and to the surprise of probably nobody but myself, my ER2XR aren't faulty, Etymotics are just massively darker than what I had anticipated. That's what reading reviews of audio gear on the Internet gives you, I guess...

Nothing an EQ can't fix though, so I tried oratory1990's USOUND1V1 EQ preset with promising results, despite the USOUND1V1 target throwing the Etymotics' tonality out the window. What really did it for me was the 8kHz boost, although 5dB just wasn't enough for my taste, so here's what I settled on for now:

Preamp: -7.2 dB
Filter 1: ON PK Fc 8000 Hz Gain 7.5 dB Q 1.000
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 11000 Hz Gain -5.0 dB Q 5.000

What it looks like. Usual disclaimer, this is what I like, for the music I listen to, and may not suit anybody but me. However I can finally listen to music without feeling the need to push the volume to unreasonable levels just to hear some treble. The Etymotics now sound great to me too! I can finally understand where the praise comes from, and just witnessed myself bobbing my head to some music while writing this.

Huge thank you to everyone who took the time to help! You saved the Etymotics for me. I might give the tuning kit a try in the future, but for now I'm perfectly happy with this simple EQ profile. Cheers!

Ooh the 7Hz dongle, I was eyeing this one for a bit before settling on the iBasso DC03Pro (the hardware physical volume buttons sold it for me, looking at you Android). Can I ask what you think of the 7Hz one?

Also thank you so much for sharing your experience with the Etys, at least I know I'm not alone 😅 Crazy how reading reviews and random comments gave me totally unrealistic expectations about them...

After reading the reply of u/thatcarolguy in another thread I'm about to try a much more heavy-handed approach to EQing them, will definitely keep you updated. Thanks again!

Thank you so much!! I was kind of losing my mind over this haha... The XR's bass isn't that bad, but the treble still sounds soft even when using oratory1990's preset with a 5dB boost at 8k. Even stronger EQ it is, then! For real, thank you 🙏

What's puzzling me is that what I hear doesn't match those FR charts. My Yamahas sound a bit weird but are still fun, they were my only pair for almost a decade and I didn't feel the need to upgrade until they developed a channel imbalance. But to me the Etymotics sound bad, almost phone-like, and I have a hard time understanding how what I hear could get any praise, much less the cult following they seem to have... It feels like a lot of $20 chifi IEMs could do better, and the 7Hz Zero actually do, hands down. Which is why I suspect some ear canal shape incompatibility (given their unusual insertion depth), a faulty unit, or something along those lines. I'm seeing an audio nerd friend soon, I'll ask her what she thinks about them, but at that point it would take some "Eureka moment" for me to keep them. Thank you for spending the time trying to help me though...

Thanks for your input! Yes I understand the S12 are quite bright, and I wasn't expecting the same brightness in the ER2XR, this is even part of why I bought them. However I now have the opposite issue: I find the ER2XR way too dark, even darker than my old Yamaha EPH-100, although looking at their FR it doesn't look like it should be the case... They're honestly the worst-sounding piece of audio gear I've ever owned, which doesn't seem right given all the praise they receive, hence this post. Faulty unit? Weird ear canal shape? I honestly have no idea, but after spending a day trying everything I could think of, I'm very close to returning them...

> hmm, while they are dark, it shouldn't be by that much.

This is what I've been thinking since I've got them... Etymotics are usually described as very natural-sounding, but there's nothing natural with the sound I'm getting, unless you're listening to someone talk with a pillow over their face. I'm barely exaggerating...

I don't get it. I've tried all the included tips, and also gave CP100+ with inserts a try, but as long as they fit and seal, they all sound pretty much the same. Bass and lower midrange are fine, but at some point the upper frequencies just took a vacation and never came back. It sucks the life out of every song I listen to. EQ helps somewhat, but they still sound... "muffled"? Even my old Yamaha EPH-100 which have a big dip in the upper mid-range sound much clearer than that.

I'm honestly starting to think I got a dud...

Yeah it's really weird, I keep going back and forth between different sets, and everytime I put the Etymotics on, it feels like I'm listening through a tube... Not a tube amp mind you, but an actual tube 😅 Like some part of the upper frequencies were chopped off. Listening to some rock songs earlier, there was almost no treble at all... I can't believe I'm writing this given the praise they receive, but for now they're my worst sounding set, noticeably worse than the 7Hz Zeros, at least tuning-wise... Not giving up just yet though.

I haven't tried to EQ them yet, but oratory1990 made EQ profiles for them, and they do seem to boost the treble a good amount (look for "ER-2", he added an extra dash in the name). His EQ profiles were always a good starting point for me!

Edit: just tried his "oratory1990 target" preset and yes, it does help a bit. Still a bit "soft" though, despite +5dB at 8K. Oh well... Nevermind, it was a song issue. It's much better now.

Coming from the S12, the Etymotics surely taught me a lesson on the difference between bright and neutral! Although bass sounds really nice to me with the XR. I'm definitely considering EQ too (I basically only use the T3+ "stock") but only once I'm confident I got the hang of the "Etymotic ear insertion" 😅 Not totally there yet... Thanks again!

Well, at least I'm not crazy... I'll keep experimenting, thanks!

Makes sense, it took me a bit by surprise honestly... I'll keep experimenting with different tips / insertion techniques. Next is probably EQ and different filters... We'll see. Thanks for your insight!

Crin's graph tool, squig.link and others support a few targets by default (right below the chart) like Harman targets, IEF Neutral, Diffuse Field, etc. Select your headphones, your target of choice, press the AutoEQ button, and the tool will generate EQ parameters. Afterwards you can even tweak the generated EQ params and see the resulting frequency response curve (typical use-case is if you want more bass for example). This works really well. But if you want to use your own custom target, it looks like you need to use the actual AutoEq tool written in Python... I've never done this though. Actually the graph tools have an "Upload Target" button in the "Equalizer" tab which looks like it can be used for custom targets.

Edit: apparently you can also select another headphones' frequency response as a target. Nice!

According to a few posts the official specs on Sennheiser's website are wrong (lol) and the actual values would be 97dB/mW and around 102-104dB/V. I don't own the HD600 and have no skin in the game, but looking at the numbers it seems they would be more than loud enough for me with an Apple dongle. I mean, my current setup is loud enough despite Android limiting the volume of the Apple dongle to -20dB (0.1V) so I really don't need 110dB peak... But if you do, that's fine too! 👍

To be honest I don't think these two are the same. AutoEq is written in Python, Crinacle's graph tool is written in JavaScript, and they don't seem to share much code, if at all, or even to be developed by the same people. But yes, Crinacle's graph tool should do the job just fine.