Sony WF-1000XM4 Noise Cancelling Earbuds Review

[sanford12]

These were on sale for 100 off 3 days ago so picked them up. This is a first impression review. I'll start with they sound good, switch easily to other devices and while being big they are comfortable if you find the right tips. The foam tips that it came with didn't do it for me and was lucky to find silicone tips that work great first go. Didn't notice any difference in sound between foam and the silicone like some have stated. The case will charge the buds and it also will charge wirelessly using the case which is convenient.

Overall sound was very good. There are a few things that stand out that could be better. They work better with new digital recordings with some sounding outstanding, just like normal. Now older analog recordings that have hum in the background, you'll hear it. Not bad when the music is playing but during quiet passages it's there. Then and it's usually with voice in certain recordings will have a chuffing sound with certain words. It didn't matter what ear tip was used and I believe that the air moved by the driver is overwhelming the venting. It's just some recordings like an Etta James 50's recording. I'll have to experiment with the equalizers. Have 2 to choose from. One in the Sony app and the other in the phones music app I'm using my old LG V40 that can use large volume micro SD cards. Using a 256 GB that's less than half full of Flac files and that's already a bunch of music already.

 

[sanford12]

As nice as these buds sounded with ACC I wanted to use the LDAC codec and wasn't having any luck getting it to fire up. Then I got my 1Mii B06HD+ and it was also using just ACC. After about an hour of fooling with it I clicked on the phone icon showing the 1Mii was connected and up popped a choice. Most stable which was checked and best sound as the other choice. Checked best sound and bada boom badda bing the 1Mii showed it was using LDAC. So enabling LDAC on the streamer let the phone use the LDAC setting.

Went back to the ear buds thinking my problem was solved and of course it was still using ACC on the buds. Finally found a video that showed you had to go into settings and change the blue tooth sound from most stable or best quality. Again that was the key to getting the LDAC codec to work. It was the same answer applied differently. One device(ear buds) had to have the best sound option on the phone checked the 1Mii needed that option checked on the device itself. It's all good now and working well.

Ldac was a noticeable improvement in both cases.