88 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 88BUYING GUIDE
onyourmusic.If you’rewalking,the
headphoneswillpipein someambient
soundtoimproveyoursituational
awareness(soyoudon’tgetrunover
bya bus,forexample).It’sa great
systemand the app lets you fine-tune
thesesettingstoyourheart’scontent;
nonetheless,I quicklydiscoveredthatI
preferredmanuallytriggeringmyANC
settingsusingtheCustombutton.
Sonyalsoprovideswaystoquickly
overridenoisecancellation,pauseor
lowerthevolumeofyourmusic,andpipe
in ambientsoundif youneedtostop
andspeaktosomeonewithoutremoving
theheadphones.Thisis alsousefulwhen
you’reatanairportandneedtolisten
fora boardingcall.ThisQuickAttention
modewaspresentin thepreviousmodel
andis activatedwhenyouplaceyour
handovertherightearcup.I didn’tuse
thisfeaturemuch,preferringinsteadto
taketheheadphonesoff.Unfortunately,
QuickAttentionmodecannotbe
defeated,andtherewerea fewtimes
whenI accidentallytriggeredit while
adjustingthe fit.
A new automatic override feature- Speak-to-Chat – can be enabled/
disabled in the app. When enabled, it
recognizes when you begin to speak
and pauses the music while pumping
in ambient sound, so you can hold
a conversation without any other
intervention. In theory, it provides a
better way to chat with someone than
holding your hand over the earcup,
but I found that it was prone to being
triggered by a cough or someone else
speaking while close to me. It will stay in
this mode for 30 seconds by default, but
you can tweak its sensitivity and duration
in the app. I just never found myself in a
situation where I preferred Speak-to-Chat
to just taking the damn headphones off.Audio quality
and AI upscaling
Sony touts three other features that
it says enable the WH-1000XM4 to
deliver a high-end audio performance:
the aforementioned new algorithm
running on Sony’s QN1 processor,
support for Bluetooth 5.0 and Sony’s
own LDAC codec and Sony’s DSEE
Extreme audio technology, which uses
artificialintelligence– Sony’s Edge-
AI– torestorein real time information
that’sbeenlostwhenyou’relisteningto
tracksthat were compressed using lossy
codecs such as MP3.
Likeitsoldersibling,the
WH-1000XM4 supports the SBC and
AAC Bluetooth codecs in addition to
LDAC,butthereis nosupportforany
ofQualcomm’s aptX codecs. I found
LDAC to be superior to the other two,
so I used that primarily for this review.