So I had the idea to do an overview of the best sounding true wireless earphones I've used so far, but it started gravitating toward a review of one of them instead (with some comparisons to the others).
Because of the recent CanJams (and CanJam Dallas upcoming), it's been a thing in progress for a while. If you've watched any of the recent CanJam Preview Videos, I've given some hints that the Svanar Wireless moved to the top of my list of TWS earphones for dedicated music listening. Anyway, yesterday I decided to measure them for the first time, choosing to start with HEAD acoustics' MDAQS (Multi-Dimensional Audio Quality Score), which involves advanced metrics modeling human perception. To learn more about it, watch my interview with Dr. Hans W. Gierlich of HEAD acoustics here:
Anyway, this is how the HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless scored on MDAQS:
I had to measure them using AAC from the HEAD acoustics
labCORE (even though this
labCORE also supports LDAC), because the LDAC connection to the Svanar Wireless gets really dicey when I close the doors on the acoustic/vibration isolation chamber. (I prefer the Svanar Wireless' sound via LDAC when I can use it.)
Long story short, that's the best score we've seen from any true wireless IEM we've evaluated with MDAQS, and one of the best MDAQS scores we've seen so far from any headphone, period. I'm not at all surprised.
Jacob Soendergaard from HEAD acoustics is visiting Head-Fi HQ again next week, and we may record an interview/discussion with him about MDAQS. Again, I’ll be talking more about MDAQS -- what it is, what it isn't, what it means, what it doesn't mean -- with a lot more to come, especially going into 2024.