Once you have gone through pain of the DTAS personalisation process, they sound pretty good. I do wonder, though, if the fact that you have gone through a rather tortuous process, with impressive graphics, convinces the brain that there must have been some great transformation. I don’t know.
However, there is a massive downside. I use them with an iPhone 17 Pro Max, with a Questyle QCC Pro dongle, that works perfectly with other earbuds and headphones. But Bluetooth connection when using LDAC from the Questyle is absolutely terrible, with frequent drop-outs that make the TONALITE unusable. Final’s answer to my inquiry about this is that the “flagship” processor can’t handle LDAC and DTAS at the same time, but they should be fine with AAC. I’m sorry but this is a ludicrous answer. The whole idea of using the TONALITE is to get the best audio I can. That means using the best codec, which is currently LDAC. The TONALITE can’t do this and Final doesn’t even seem convinced that a firmware update will solve the problem
So this is a product rushed out before a fundamental issue has been solved. It’s not a firmware tweak that’s needed, but a complete re-think.
