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Is it that you can’t enjoy better sound quality using the iPhone? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by xiaozhian@alien.top to c/headphones@hi-fi.community

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Because it only supports aac and there’s no headphone port, you have to use Bluetooth for music, the sound quality is greatly compromised, it doesn’t matter what headphone you’re using.

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[–] roladyzator@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Is the statement in this post a description of your experience or are you quoting someone?

Bluetooth can sound transparent and while AAC is not as good as LDAC, it's used with a high bitrate in iOS. Sure, there is some high frequency cut-off, but from what was measured in this article, it does go to almost 19 kHz on the iPhone 7.

It's further explained in that article how Android phones often automatically use lower bandwidth in AAC to reduce battery usage. For those devices, even the simpler SBC codec gives better results, since it's running at a higher bitrate.

In any case, the most important aspect of a headphone in terms of how good it sounds to you is the frequency response, the relative balance of how loud each frequency is played by the headphones. Once you have headphones with a frequency response that you like, the AAC compression artifacts, even when audible, shouldn't ruin your fun.

And as others said, you can always use a dongle. Even the cheap ones usually exceed CD quality signal.

[–] xiaozhian@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the reply, I’ve got a hybrid wired/wireless headphone, when using the lightning to 3.5mm jack adapter, it sounds indeed crispy and clear, but the bass isn’t as impressive as the Bluetooth mode, the volume feels low, there’s less bass, is it because the adapter can’t fully power up the headphone? It requires more energy to reproduce.

[–] roladyzator@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Lack of power is often simply a volume limitation, or in rare cases, non-linear distortion (a certain harshness to the sound. You can check how increasing levels of THD sound like in a test site like https://www.audiocheck.net/testtones_thdFull.php)

More likely, when in Bluetooth mode, your headphones apply digital signal processing, most often to improve channel balance (to compensate for one cup having the electronics etc.) but also to tune the sound further.

It's an especially prominent effect in many ANC headphones, where the microphones are used to determine what correction to apply to the sound go get the intended frequency response. If same headphone is connected passively, none of this processing is working and whatever improvements could be made via DSP are gone.

Does you headphone have an app with equalizer? If yes, see if you can boost the treble in the bluetooth mode.