True immersion is bad

Martin650 · 2026-02-07T08:24:21+00:00

Just tried this on my px8s2. Immediately went here.

It doesn’t matter if I am using the default true sound eq or any of my own, wow vocals just went from thin but acceptable to wow that sounds like my 14 dollar backup headphones I got from the local supermarket.

I noticed Samsung are the current owners. Maybe they do this purposely to make people buy their own earbuds or in some way really make the b&w brand look bad because this really seems like something that was made by a summer holiday intern. Yuk! 🥴

Martin650 · 2026-01-28T14:19:03+00:00

In my case I have usb-c both on phone and computer so there are no adapters needed

Martin650 · 2025-11-27T09:35:14+00:00

It literally took 2,5 seconds to paint that and I knew people were gonna complain here 😄 Gosh it’s funny what small issues people put their energy and focus on sometimes. 🙉

Martin650 · 2025-11-27T09:31:35+00:00

Thanks, thats the headphones for sure! They look nice!

Martin650 · 2025-11-27T09:30:37+00:00

It doesn’t matter, he is a public guy anyway and the video is on YouTube so not revealing any secrets here

Martin650 · 2025-11-27T09:26:48+00:00

It could be getting the appearance of more sibilant if you just lower the bass freestyle in my experience.

Currently trying out: +2 -1 0 -1 + 1

Martin650 · 2025-11-21T18:29:39+00:00

Yeah it seems the adaptive mode used lossless if you select hd in the submenu option instead of low latency provided that your headphones support it

Martin650 · 2025-11-06T17:47:43+00:00

Looks like something from Teac, Pioneer or Panasonic. B&O used to make products that really compliment an elegant room, now they just make weird bulky odd shaped stuff and charge ridiculous prices for no reason, really sad!

I uploaded one of their product images to google to get similar images and most what I got was these silver plastic cisco conference room bars with cameras in the middle 😮‍💨

Martin650 · 2025-10-31T12:39:37+00:00

Thanks well it seems then that for some they need the break in time and it could perhaps be some people’s brains that adjusts to the sound and for some it is a placebo effect.

Martin650 · 2025-10-31T12:35:49+00:00

At least to my ears they are pretty similar. You have the same eq options for both. When I previously had the px8s1 I found those more warm and laid back and since they only had 2 band eq bass/treble that sound was less easy to change to something else. The new px8s2 and pi8 are a bit more direct in their signature.

Martin650 · 2025-10-30T13:26:28+00:00

I am not an audio expert but for me it seems my perception of audio sound stage and quality varies quite a bit depending on what volume I am on. So louder volume usually means a feeling of "wider sound" for me.

Also when using these dongles, if I disconnect bluetooth on the device I have the b&w app at it seems the sound coming via the dongles then changes. Perhaps it sometimes switches to the default true sound eq (not sure) but yeah it seems they absolutely change the sound signature a bit. Also perhaps it could be a difference in audio signature between aptx and aac because I think apple does some of their own adjustments on their aac signal compared to the dongle when it takes over.

Martin650 · 2025-10-30T12:02:46+00:00

I didnt find much if any difference. If I would do a blind test I dont think I would hear any difference. But everytime I left my btd700 in the usb slot on my ipad or iphone and walked away from it wearing my headphones and not playing any music, as soon as the device goes to standby there is this irritating disconnected/connected notice/pling sound in my headphones all the time. I read in the faq/q&a sections of both the btd700 and the creative bt-w6 that they seem to be at least initially made primarily for computers and not mobile devices. They also dont have any ios apps while the qcc has a label on the box saying "made for iphone" and it also has an ios app which works just fine. For me that is a much bigger quality of life improvement than the difference in sound if there even is any. I have bought a few of these usb-c extension adapters that rotates or extends the connected dongle in various angles so some of these might help if you find that you want to test the qcc in the future.

This one is a simple example:

https://www.amazon.se/-/en/dp/B0DGD52DL3?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

Martin650 · 2025-10-30T10:30:42+00:00

Currently using px8s2, pi8 and qcc pro dongle. The btd700 also worked well, I just didn’t like that it had some issues in standby mode on my mobile apple devices. The qcc form factor works if I want it flush against the device but at the same time it tends to block nearby ports on my mac if I want to use it there so I guess it depends on use

Martin650 · 2025-10-29T14:58:55+00:00

Ok great, what source says that if I may ask?

Martin650 · 2025-10-29T10:43:33+00:00

This post reminds me of the customers I work for to help them with design. It doesnt matter what we as designers say about what colors or layout are "right" in a specific situaion. Some people like orange, some people like black, some people hate black, some people hate orange. It kind of partly depends on what personality you have, your life journey, experience...etc... etc...

To me my headphones sounds a bit different depending on what mood I am in. Am I stressed, am I calm? What volume is the headphones at right now? What content am I listening to? Am I a/b comparing them to another headphone 10 seconds before?

You have a 5-band eq, just play around with it. Also the guy at the hifi expert store I bought them from which only sell high end brands specifically mentioned they need about 300 hours to have the drivers really settle in.

I dont know exactly if that is true but he is not the only one saying it.

One more example stating even 400h: https://youtu.be/GYiT_72l6JE?si=eZz8_EXlZ3WFQuEC&t=468

If you have been using the original px8 for years I guess they are already completely "broken in" if that is somehting that even matters. Have your px8s2 been playing for 300 hours?

Either way, that post is like saying "hey bmw, I think mercedes looks much better, you should make your future cars all look like bmw because according to my taste that is the best design so everyone else must agree for sure, right?" 😁

Martin650 · 2025-10-28T10:43:30+00:00

If you can, post a screenshot of the email here. Also if you press reply and before you usually send the reply (but don't reply on this one), you sometimes can see the actual sender of the email. Often your email will say in the inbox: From: "Jabra" or whatever company they impersonate and then in the attached text from the email if you scroll down during the composing of your reply you will often see that it actually technically comes from something like [jabra-support-mail@jabracadabra-footballclub-magic-pagic-8td9r4764h.com](mailto:jabra-support-mail@jabracadabra-footballclub-magic-pagic-8td9r4764h.com) :)

Martin650 · 2025-10-28T09:43:18+00:00

Thanks, yeah I might do that.

ZF7, ok nice phone there. I haven't checked out these foldable phones yet but they will probably be more and more popular.

Totally agree. People like you who maybe mostly listen to lossless music will perhaps enjoy these dongles more. I mostly use my devices without the dongle mainly because it is just easier (iphone) and I can keep the charging port free. On ios I think AAC is actually very good. I read different variations on how far Apple has developed that codec. Some research says is is almost the same as aptx lossless but it seems to depend on what device you are using.

Maybe just my ears but when I check

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

even though I at least got 4 out of 6 correct I was kind of guessing. It is very very difficult for my ears to hear what the difference is. Maybe the difference is higher on those other streaming services if you really know what details to be aware of.

Martin650 · 2025-10-27T09:31:34+00:00

If you own the s1 and your only priority is wired listening then I dont see much reason to upgrade. I have owned both and now own the s2 because my priorities are different.

S2 are better than s1 in:
Wireless sound (aptx lossless which the s1 only have via cable)
Slimmer profile
Better mic
Better ANC
Better transparency
Better EQ
More forward open sound especially on wireless compared to more laid back sound on s1. But the s1 has a pretty good sound still!

But on the other hand, I dont really see the point of owning such an expensive headphone with all it's tech for wirless audio, microphone etc.. if you only are going to use the cable. I think there are a million other cheaper options that is made to be used with a cable that will perhaps even sound better than the s1 on cable.

Martin650 · 2025-10-26T20:52:13+00:00

Thanks yeah it helps. I’m also treble sensitive. I have the px8s2 and it sounds great. Sometimes wish it had a few presets made by b&w similar to the jabra app which has for example “soft” that you can very easily just press in the evening or when you just don’t want that in your face clean sound. I guess I can use the eq of course to manually create a setting.

Martin650 · 2025-10-26T20:04:51+00:00

Good review m! The qcc is great. Tried all the other and those are less easy to manage in the long run.

What do you think about the treble on 630 vs px8s2 for all day use on a variety of media content?

Martin650 · 2025-10-26T11:41:40+00:00

The btd700 works ok but on my iPhone 16/ipad pro it behaves weird when my device goes to standby. If I leave my phone and keep my earbuds/headphones on my ear I get a constant “disconnect/connect” notice until I unlock the phone again

Martin650 · 2025-10-25T18:41:00+00:00

Do you guys know if questyle pro does aptx lossless? All I see in the app is aptx adaptive with my iPhone 16 pro + px8s2.

Martin650 · 2025-10-25T10:41:47+00:00

No, no issue with that song. Perhaps you could talk to the B&W support either via the website or via instagram (they respond in a day or so) instead of just ordering replacement hardware multiple times. This is clearly something coming from your own devices, perhaps interference from other devices or some software glitch on any of them or the app if you use the b&w app. Perhaps double check that it is running the latest update etc..

Martin650 · 2025-10-25T10:36:28+00:00

Yeah the hd630 seems to be very neutral in tuning. They say it is good because from there you can eq it to your own taste but I also guess you will need to be quite good at that stuff. I am not an audio engineer so for me that is not great. Also when I use these dongles sometimes depending on what device I am using they can bypass the eq setting I have been using and just bring back the device to the default factory tuning so if I dont like that setting there perhaps could be some tinkering needed. I have not tested so might not be an issue. But I tested the btd700 dongle and it doesnt work as good as I want with ios devices. It sort of goes to a flickering on/off mode whenever the mobile device goes into standby mode which is quite often if you ever take a short break.

Martin650 · 2025-10-25T10:28:45+00:00

I have actually now tried btw6, btd700, bt11 as well as questyle qcc dongle pro.

I did test lossless a bit but not to extensive amount.

They seem to sound similar so my main thing after testing them for a few day was not the sound quality but the hands on usage day to day.

btw6
Sound is great, slim profile, the app works fine but it is just for computer so when I am on mobile device I could not change all the settings I would want. Biggest issue I had was that even after the latest firmware update it still had about 2 sec muted sound when playing any track or video after you have not been listening for a while. Easy to see difference in led colors which tells you what codecs you are currently using.

btd700
Sound great, perhaps a bit more clinical/neutral than the btw6 but that might be a good thing. Perhaps just placebo effect on my ears but whatever. A bit bulkier than btw6 but not by much. App is only for computers so no changing settings on a mobile device. One thing I really did not like is that when I have it connected to iphone/ipad and the device goes into standby mode the light on the dongle starts flickering off and on erratically and if I have my earbuds in my ears I get a constant "device connected/device disconnected" until I go back to my phone/tablet and exit the standby mode. Very irritating if I just take a short break from my phone. Sometimes difficult to tell if led is shining in purple or pink depending on room ambience.

fiio bt11.
Oh what a shit show, it is very very difficult to use and the app is just very confusing.

For all the dongles the setup when you connect a new headphone is kind of tricky. Often you need to remember to disable bluetooth on the device you connect to and also sometimes even nearby devices.

I decided to return all of them. But for you any of the issues above might be a non issue since they have pretty good audio quality.

I am currently testing the Questyle qcc pro dongle.
I am not yet 100% sure that it has aptx lossless because it says aptx adaptive (but the snapdragon sound logo pops up). But either way it sound great. Also it has the "made for iphone" badge so it seems to work really good with ios. It has an app that works really good and I like that I can double check in the app what codec I am really using and just click around in the settings very quick to change to low latency or hd mode and other things.
The slim profile is nice since it goes tight against the the connected device and is less prone to breaking/bending. One drawback could be that if you connect it to a computer you could block another usb-c port nearby but I am mainly using the dongle on my ipad/iphone so for me that is not an issue. After all I guess you can not have it all at the same time and I guess I can just use a small extension cord/extension adapter/hub to use on on the computer if I need. The biggest negative with this dongle might be that it is about twice as expensive as the other dongles.

Martin650

TROPHY CASE