Last June (2015) I got myself a new pair of headphones. Headphones is something very subjective – the comfort to wear them and especially their sound. So far the best headphones I got were the KOSS Porta Pro and the Bose Triport in-ear (the older model). The Porto Pro is a classic in the geek scene and for people that like electronic music. For 40-50€ your really get a very good pair of on-ear headphones with crisp and clear heights and powerful deep bass. The Bose Triport in-ear headphones are so far the super best I found – ever! I also tried very expensive stuff like the B&O in-ears and a lot other but nothing is anywhere close to the older Bose Triport in-ears. They have a very smooth and even sound distribution throughout the spectrum and, compared to their small size, a very good bass reproduction. But I also have to mention that I also tried the latest Bose in-ear model and was very disappointed, the good lower frequency reproduction is almost gone, a pity. So I have to be very careful with the older pair I still own.
Back to last June. The Parrot Zik has quite an appeal! Its design alone really makes it a highlight. Designed by star designer Philippe Starck combined with elegant materials like soft leather (at least look-alike) and nicely curved metal parts it is already optically a very nice piece to have. But also the advertised internals make it quite unique. It incorporates a 32bit digital signal processor (DSP) with Bluetooth 3.0 wireless support, analog audio in, several microphones and two powerful speakers. Just the price tag is pretty ugly, at that time starting from around 299€.
I already tried several Bluetooth A2DP (stereo) headsets but all of them were really bad. Nevertheless I liked the idea of a cable free high fidelity audio experience so I did not give up hope that some day there might be a good one. After giving it a good thought I decided I wanted to give the Zik 2.0 a chance to proof itself, so I bought one.
First I was very disappointed, really, very. The sound was miserable, the over-designed Android app to control the DSP forced me into signing into a Parrot online account and the control connection was unstable. But worst was the bad sound quality. I was just about to send it back when I finally got the settings right and also turned the volume up on the headphone itself using the touch control field on the right side – ahh! Better.
The Zik 2.0 has a strong emphasis on the middle frequencies which makes it sound by default like some dull primitive pair of headphones. The Android app offers to download so called presets matching the songs being played. All presets I tried so far are miserable, sorry. Either very flat or much use of the DSP concert hall effects and so on. The advertised super tuned presets by the artists themselves are disappointing. The Android app also offers a simple way to influence the sound in some kind of sphere, shifting an orange dot around in a circle between dark and soft, voice and classic and so on. So you can choose yourself how far you want to go in each of the directions and also mix a little between them. But this kind of setting has the disadvantage that it only controls the emphasis of certain spectrums, as it seems.
But there is also the third method, the six point equalizer which is really nicely done. Using this I was able to reduce the middle frequencies pretty drastically and emphasis a little on the very low and very high, to get a crisp overall performance – now with a little less volume but with my preferred sound. I am pretty satisfied with the sound now 😉
I am also a Linux and open source geek so I am also interested in being able to control the whole stuff from my preferred operating system, not having to rely on further support by Parrot for the Android app – which by the way is a real issue with Parrot, they drop support for older products almost immediately when a new one is released, already happening again with the Zik 3. Luckily some brilliant folks already hacked the Bluetooth [4] protocol so there are at least two Linux solutions available, an opensource tray applet to control the most basic functions [2] and a pretty complete Qt based closed source application, the Zik Manager [1]. Hopefully the control protocol gets fully reverse engineered and documented some day. Some cool stuff can be found in Zik2Control [3].
[1] Zik Manager for Linux
http://www.lainwir3d.net/?page_id=13
[2] Zik applet, Python
https://github.com/m0sia/pyParrotZik
[3] Zik2 Control
https://github.com/kradhub/zik2ctl
[4] Zik 2.0, FW2.05, SDP record:
Service Name: Hands Free Unit
Service RecHandle: 0x11112222
Service Class ID List:
“Handsfree” (0x111e)
“Generic Audio” (0x1203)
Protocol Descriptor List:
“L2CAP” (0x0100)
“RFCOMM” (0x0003)
Channel: 5
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x656e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
“Handsfree” (0x111e)
Version: 0x0106Service Name: Phonebook Access PCE
Service RecHandle: 0xb19a5510
Service Class ID List:
“Phonebook Access – PCE” (0x112e)
Profile Descriptor List:
“Phonebook Access” (0x1130)
Version: 0x0100Service Name: Audio Sink
Service Provider: PARROT
Service RecHandle: 0x55555555
Service Class ID List:
“Audio Sink” (0x110b)
Protocol Descriptor List:
“L2CAP” (0x0100)
PSM: 25
“AVDTP” (0x0019)
uint16: 0x0102
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x656e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
“Advanced Audio” (0x110d)
Version: 0x0102Service Name: A/V RC Controler
Service Provider: PARROT
Service RecHandle: 0x55556666
Service Class ID List:
“AV Remote” (0x110e)
“AV Remote Controller” (0x110f)
Protocol Descriptor List:
“L2CAP” (0x0100)
PSM: 23
“AVCTP” (0x0017)
uint16: 0x0102
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x656e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
“AV Remote” (0x110e)
Version: 0x0103Service Name: Parrot RFcomm service
Service RecHandle: 0xcab1e000
Service Class ID List:
UUID 128: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx
Protocol Descriptor List:
“L2CAP” (0x0100)
“RFCOMM” (0x0003)
Channel: 21
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x656e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100