The Soundcore Space A40 Bluetooth earbuds are an excellent buy, but will sound very different depending on what device you pair them with.
Dwight Silverman photoLately I’ve been a sucker for low-cost earbuds. Sure, I own a pair of Apple AirPods Pro 2 for use mostly with my iPhone, but I have other needs for in-ear listening, so I’m on a constant hunt for the best bang for my audio-quality buck.
So when a Black Friday deal dropped on Anker Soundcore’s Space A40 Bluetooth earbuds, making them just $55 (they typically sell for $80, and list for $99), I snatched them up. There are a few reasons beyond the great sale price that got me jazzed about buying a pair:
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- The New York Times’ Wirecutter recommendation site named the Space A40 the “best true wireless earbuds,” and I trust audio obsessive Lauren Dragen’s opinion on these things.
- As I mentioned in my review last month of the Google Pixel 8 Pro (see houstonchronicle.com/pixel8pro), I’m considering switching to the newest Pixel smartphone when it’s announced in 2024. I’m scouting earbuds to use with it should I indeed make the leap, and the Space A40s are a contender.
When the Space A40s arrived, I put them through the usual review paces, which includes testing them both with my iPhone, a Google Pixel 6 Pro and my Apple TV 4K. I also still have the Pixel 8 Pro that I’d written about. I decided I’d pair the Soundcore buds to everything that outputs sound.
What I discovered was that the sound from the earbuds was different depending on what they were connected to — sometimes very different. This sent me down a rabbit hole about how Bluetooth audio works.
As with many newer, low-priced earbuds, features once confined to higher-end and audiophile products have moved down the chain. For example, you can customize the A40’s sound with a hearing test built into the Soundcore app. It generates an audiogram that informs the equalizer, so the sound you get works best for your hearing profile. You can then improve the audio with more equalizer tweaks.
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It also has adaptive Active Noise Cancellation, which changes based on the level of ambient sound around you. Most Bluetooth earbuds have ANC, but the adaptive feature is recent for less-expensive models. Unfortunately, I found ANC to be surprisingly weak, whether set to full-strength or in adaptive mode. Soundcore claims the Space A40s can block up to 98% of ambient noise, but I’d put the number closer to half that.
The earbuds are much smaller and lighter than the Liberty Pro 3. They were heavy and optional wings for holding them in place hurt my ears after a while. The Space A40s, which have five different ear tips to ensure the right fit, are much more pleasant to wear.
The Space A40s have excellent battery life, lasting at least 10 hours, with another 50 hours thanks to its small, black charging case, which itself charges wirelessly.
Now let’s deal with the complicated part: Sound quality.
When I review earbuds, I compare them to ones I use the most, my AirPods Pro 2 (see houstonchronicle.com/airpodspro2). They have excellent audio quality, very good noise cancellation and fit comfortably. I use them exclusively with other Apple products.
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When I connected the Space A40s to my iPhone 15 Pro Max and customized the earbuds’ Hear ID feature to match my ears’ capabilities, the buds sounded very good. They had a wide soundstage, which refers to how spread out the music seems. But the Space A40s were nowhere near as expansive as the AirPods Pro 2 on my iPhone.
That’s partly because much of the music I listen to has been engineered to use Apple’s Spatial Audio, its take on Dolby Atmos’ surround-sound system. Even with music that doesn’t use Spatial Audio, songs on Apple Music sound fantastic with the AirPods Pro 2.
And those non-Spatial Audio tunes sound pretty good on the Space A40s, but tweak as I might, I couldn’t achieve the same audio quality as Apple’s earbuds. So, I decided to see what it was like on the Android version of Apple Music on the Pixel 8 Pro.
There, because it’s an Android device, I could turn on a feature called LDAC. This is a compression technology, or codec, that improves audio over Bluetooth. iPhones don’t support it, but many Android phones do. It widened the soundstage and better separated bass, mids and treble.
There’s also an audio setting on the A40s called Game Mode, which kicks the volume and sound intensity up a notch. With this, I could get very close to the iPhone/AirPod quality. In fact, on some songs, such as the Rolling Stones’ new single “Angry” and Biz Colletti’s smoky cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,”, I preferred the sound quality on the Pixel over the iPhone.
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I figured I’d hear decent audio from my Apple TV 4K. But there, despite playing with the equalizer and Game Mode setting, the audio from TV shows and movies sounded flat, with a smaller soundstage, compared to the AirPods Pro 2.
To explore the discrepancies, I talked to Brent Butterworth, a veteran audio gear reviewer, former Dolby employee and one of the Wirecutter’s audio experts. Butterworth said Apple’s phone, computer and streaming hardware are always likely to sound better with its own earbuds because they are designed to work together.
As for Android, he said that platform’s support for the LDAC compression algorithm helps the Pixel 8 Pro sound great over that handset. Also a factor with all devices: the version of Bluetooth. The iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Google Pixel 8 Pro both use Bluetooth 5.3, but the 2021 Apple TV 4K I own has version 5.0.
That may also explain why Game Mode, which boosts the volume and also simulates surround sound, made less difference when used with the Apple TV 4K.
And surprisingly, volume can make a big difference in how you much you like what you’re hearing, Butterworth added.
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“If you have two audio systems that are identical, and one of them is a decibel louder, you will prefer the decibel-louder one,” he said.
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December 25, 2023 at 07:05PM
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Why do Bluetooth earbuds sound so different on different devices? - Houston Chronicle
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