Post by jello on May 21, 2018 11:23:32 GMT
Expected the AK XB10 to take a while to arrive but it actually only took about 4 days from HK to UK, so have had about 3 weeks solid use now. Fantastic little thing.
But curiosity got the better of me so I also ordered a Radsone Earstudio ES100 a few days back now that they are available to the EU via Amazon.
Although they essentially serve the same purpose both companies have taken a slightly different approach. AK basically released a product that works almost perfectly out of the box, has next to no tweaking options and has afaik never received a single firmware update. Radsone on the other hand provide regular firmware updates, are open to adding new features suggested by the community and the adapter can be accessed by an Android or IOS app offering a number of extra whistles & bells (e.g. Crossfeed, filters, EQ options etc. etc.).
But in terms of sound and performance both sound great and for the most part work flawlessly. Highly impressed with both. Only minor gripe is that the 10 metre bluetooth range both companies quote is imho a best case scenario, although for my usage this isn't overly problematic.
Might seem ludicrous but for a moment forget that stupidly long and heavy 3m cable, suspend disbelief and imagine the idea of a wireless Fostex TH-X00. C'mon, try a little harder if you need to Sadly Massdrop haven't announced one but a couple of weeks back I plugged the TH-X00 into the XB10 just for fun and was very pleasantly surprised. It sounded really rather good with a full, slightly lush, and very musical presentation and there wasn't the sort of drop off in quality I would have expected. So much so that I happily listened to the pairing for a few hours simply because it was so enjoyable. Of course wired is better and using the TH-X00 with XB10 is wholly impractical but to my mind demonstrates once again to me (as Sony MDR-100ABT did in the past) that bluetooth audio doesn't necessarily mean unacceptable compromises in SQ.
If time allows I might create a separate thread with more detailed overview, impressions and some pics to give an idea of size etc. (they're small and light).
But curiosity got the better of me so I also ordered a Radsone Earstudio ES100 a few days back now that they are available to the EU via Amazon.
Although they essentially serve the same purpose both companies have taken a slightly different approach. AK basically released a product that works almost perfectly out of the box, has next to no tweaking options and has afaik never received a single firmware update. Radsone on the other hand provide regular firmware updates, are open to adding new features suggested by the community and the adapter can be accessed by an Android or IOS app offering a number of extra whistles & bells (e.g. Crossfeed, filters, EQ options etc. etc.).
But in terms of sound and performance both sound great and for the most part work flawlessly. Highly impressed with both. Only minor gripe is that the 10 metre bluetooth range both companies quote is imho a best case scenario, although for my usage this isn't overly problematic.
Might seem ludicrous but for a moment forget that stupidly long and heavy 3m cable, suspend disbelief and imagine the idea of a wireless Fostex TH-X00. C'mon, try a little harder if you need to Sadly Massdrop haven't announced one but a couple of weeks back I plugged the TH-X00 into the XB10 just for fun and was very pleasantly surprised. It sounded really rather good with a full, slightly lush, and very musical presentation and there wasn't the sort of drop off in quality I would have expected. So much so that I happily listened to the pairing for a few hours simply because it was so enjoyable. Of course wired is better and using the TH-X00 with XB10 is wholly impractical but to my mind demonstrates once again to me (as Sony MDR-100ABT did in the past) that bluetooth audio doesn't necessarily mean unacceptable compromises in SQ.
If time allows I might create a separate thread with more detailed overview, impressions and some pics to give an idea of size etc. (they're small and light).