the android device I might buy with the audio format I usually listen to.
Some of my flacs are way over 3 mbps (up to 6 mbps). The bluetooth on my desktop supports speeds up to 1 mbps. If the pixel is going to support similar rates, I don’t see how this is going work.
ETA: Im still going to nuke the device and install graphene or lineage on it. Do both foss support higher rates?
If lossless and sound quality matter enough, use a portable dac with wired headphones. Otherwise, accept the compromises of using Bluetooth.
I have a bit of an amateur headphone collection and my favorite way to listen to music is my trusty old Sennheiser hd650 (thanks to dankpods I now exclusively pronounce it huu duuh 650) headphones and either a desktop tube amp if I’m listening from my laptop or the equally trusty portable fiio a5 headphone amp for listening from my phone. It takes a usb-c to female 3.5mm adapter from my phone then a short 3.5mm male-male into the amp and standard 3.5mm output on the amp for plugging in the headphone. It is certainly not ergonomic or comfortable to carry around and hold the amp with my phone but if I’m playing like tidal master quality audio or even apple music’s high definition lossless the difference between this wired setup and even pricier bluetooth headphones is clear as far as fidelity. I stupidly got the apple airpods max a while back and I mean they’re fine they’re good but you can obviously tell where apple engineered around bluetooth limitations. Spatial audio (apple’s proprietary stereo surround tech) is nice to mimic a reasonable soundstage in them but my sennies with the big loud power hungry driver and open back design makes it sound natural and pair it with a high bitrate lossless song it always sounds better on them. I also have a pair of bluetooth capable ath-150s but always use them wired. Allegedly the airpods max supports full quality if you wire them to an iPhone using a particular cable that apple sells but like… lmao common
HD650 rocks. Getting close to having to replace the pads again but the hardware is rock solid and sounds great.
Oh yeah I had the same issue with those pads especially since I sweat a lot I ended up ordering some Chinesium brand off Amazon and the first pair had one that just refused to fit it was slightly incorrectly sized so Amazon sent a replacement they fit fine but yes unfortunately those pads get worn real quick and the official Sennheiser replacement ones are expensive even today
On an unrelated note if you happen to have any headphones you would suggest to add to my collection that are good in the same way those are let me know
This is your only realistic option, IMHO.