Sony wf-1000xm5 earbuds

[sand87ch]

so folks i wanted to share my experience regarding the sony wf-1000xm5 earbuds.
I have paired it with my iphone 13 mini and have been using it with tidal and apple music mainly.I had earlier used airpods pro 2 and these are what i felt

1. the sony headphones multipoint works seamlessly
2.the anc is not something to write home about and i think it just does an average noise cancellation.the thing is while you are in anc on mode if u scratch a wooden floor with ur toes u will hear a kind of robotic sound in ur ear due to that.
3. In public transport with noise cancellation on i found that during calls the person on the other end could barely understand what i was saying.all the callers complained that not only was the call not clear but also that the sound seemed to lack the human touch.
4.post the latest update i guess even the sound has taken a major hit.even after playing around with the equalizer the sound seems like coming out of a pair of low cost buds.

i have now to check this with an android handset to confirm if the behaviour is the same.i bought this anticipating a movement to samsung s24 later this year but unfortunately it seems if this is the way it works even with android then i will have to go back to airpods pro2 and return these.

Please let me know your comments.

 

[sand87ch]

so i tested the earbuds with a one plus 6t.
first i tested it with music playing from speakers in the background and called my friend to mimic the outside environment on watsapp and mobile.it seems that when i am quite theres no noise.the moment i talk he said it feels like am inside a train.
Also he complained that it seemed like the voice is coming from a distance.Inside the room in a wuiet setting it was working ok.i called multiple
people and all complained the same.i did reset and also tried the settings.nothing seemed to help.What i could gather is that the earbuds struggle in noisy environments to filter out the background noise.

Hence i have today returned the earbuds.its baffling as to why there are not
much reports online.i would have got a replacement but i am skeptical if its the specific piece issue or its across the xm5 earbuds range.
if anyone else has this earbud i would
like to hear their inputs vis-a-vis calls in a noisy environment.

 

[cscottrun4it]

You're right: the ANC is nothing to write home about. I have a pair of Samsung FEs that cost $75, and those kick the XM5's butt when comparing ANC capabilities. But that's not the weird thing about the XM5s. It's the sound quality that was just plain whacked that surprised me after reading all the reviews. Everything I read talked about great detail and warm mids and maybe needing to tweak the output using the onboard EQ. But music sounded awful. There was distortion at about 10 frequencies between 40 hz and 2.5 Khz. I was flabbergasted. So I started digging. I'm using a Samsung S24 Ultra, which is a big part of the problem, I think. After screwing around with the phone for the better part of 3 days, messing with different headphone settings, playing with codecs, trying to deal with distortions using an EQ, I decided I'd just have to send the darn buds back. But then I tripped on the most obscure page on Sony's website. It suggested turning on A2DP offloading. I'd seen the setting to turn off this feature in the developer options on my Samsung, so, what the heck? What If I turned A2DP off? Why, suddenly, the buds were fantastic! I'm not entirely sure what A2DP is, but I think it has something to do with telling the buds to decode the digital audio signal. Turning off A2DP forces the phone to perform the decoding, apparently with a minor degradation in sound resolution. I can't say how minor or major the degradation might be, because the buds sucked before and now they are terrific. So, if you're struggling with the sound quality in your XM5s, (1) make sure you are using the LDAP codec, (2) turn on developer options, and (3) turn off A2DP hardware offloading. Google each step if you're not sure how to do any of these steps, but they sure did make a difference in blue my XM5s perform.