Let me put it this way:It's a been a while. Off the top of head, there was a volume difference since I was a using FiiO K9 Pro (ESS) and a FiiO BTR5, which have a more power drive the headphones. Sound wise, they all had the "Focal" sound, obviously. At the time, I didn't spend hours comparing them. It was more cursory than critical comparison.
Unfortunately, I'm in the middle of moving and trying to get organized. Half my stuff is packed in boxes. I'll try to remember when I finally get everything organized and setup. It maybe a few weeks.
My phone is Honor Magic 5 Lite, and it supports Bluetooth 5.1 with BLE, SBC, AAC, LDAC.
Focal Bathys support SBC, AAC, aptX Adaptive, aptX.
So in my situation, using Bluetooth, I will get AAC at best.
However, if I would use a DAC/AMP like BTR15, which supports LDAC, aptX Adaptive, aptX LL, aptX HD, aptX, AAC, SBC,
I could get from my phone LDAC, which gets converted into analog 3.5 and is sent to Focal Bathys.
So, in my logic, even if Bathys transforms the analog signal into aptX and then back to 3.5 then it would still be better than using BT directly. If it transforms from analog to ACC, then yes, it would be useless to use a DAC/AMP. If Bathys would not transform from analog to digital and back, then it would be the best scenario to be able to give analog that was created from LDAC. Would actually be the best scenario for BT.
For me is not a question if to buy the Bathys, cause I most likely will, the question is if I can get any benefit from trying to get LDAC to analog conversion using BTR15, or is useless.
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