Archives for June 12, 2017

Revealed at CES 2017 the new Sony MDR XB 950 duo is on sale again at authorized Sony dealers. They are both closed-back, and part of the Extra Bass family, with the B1 being bluetooth, while the N1 is both bluetooth and active noise cancelling.

The B1 goes for $148 at various places including Dell Home and various at Amazon in three different color schemes.

The N1 goes for $178 at various authorized dealers including Buydig and various at Amazon in two different colors, including the less common green (more of an industrial/black green, definitely not the AKG Quincy Jones green)

They support LDAC
I should point out that both of these headphones support LDAC, Sony’s technology [see also the Sony Asia page for it] that is being baked into Android 8.0.

For a history of LDAC, starting in August 2015, check this AV Hub article.

With this, Android 8.0 will have support for LDAC, AAC, SBC, apt-X and apt-X HD, with sample ratio options as well. You can manually select them or use the system default.

It is important to point out that both your music source and your headphones have to support the protocol you want to use, otherwise the system will automatically default to a lower common denominator. For example, a Bluetooth 5 music source (eg Galaxy S8) connecting to a Bluetooth 2.X headphone will use Bluetooth 2.X, not Bluetooth 5 since the headphone would not know what to do with it.