Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 27, 2019 19:26:52 GMT -8
Amazon had an early Black Friday special on Sony Noise Canceling Headphones WH1000XM3 for $278.00. Normal retails is $349.00. This was my Christmas gift to myself this year.
I currently have a pair of wired Sony MDR-7506 headphones. At $119.99 they are a great value and as much as anyone need spend on headphones. (If someone needs a great pair of used headphones — they are in excellent shape — make me an offer.)
Unless you want wireless, of course. And I do…and did. These are reviewed almost everywhere as the best. It took me a while to dial in the settings, but I think I’m satisfied at the moment with the sound. Like I said, the Sony MDR-7506 (a professional “studio” headphone meant to reproduce sound for the ears of an engineer, not necessarily an end listener) are very good headphones. However, they are “brighter” in the midrange and highs by their nature.
And if you get used to what you have then anything else can sound wrong. But then, like I said, I had to dial in the settings (there’s a phone app) for these headphones in order to get the best sound.
First off, do you need noise canceling headphones? Yes, you do. It’s a large bonus if the point is listening to music instead of your neighbor’s lawn mower. That said, it’s false advertising to call these “noise canceling” even though by all reviews that I’ve read, Sony has the best technology on the market. An honest description would be “noise reducing.” And some noises reduce better than others.
For instance, my little space heater blowing air goes absolutely silent with the “noise canceling” feature turned on. The hum of my PC computer also goes completely silent. But if I go outside, I still hear some road noise on the busy street. If I vacuum with these on, the vacuum is certainly quieter, but you still unmistakably hear it.
But this does work to at least eliminate a lot of outside noise. So I give it a thumbs-up for that. It’s just dishonest to call this “noise canceling.” It depends on the noise.
And you need a phone or tablet that can run their app to make best use of these. I don’t think they have an app for computers. You could always use them as-is without adjusting anything. And you can certainly wire them straight into any existing stereo system and use the EQ on that. But the app (details of what the app does are here) is necessary to access most of the features.
And you want to do for sure is to use the app’s EQ. First off, you’ll want to tame the base a bit. Although these don’t have the hilariously exaggerated bass that many manufacturers make for the juvenile market who must have their boom-boom, these are still a tad too much by default.
I’ve actually found a nice EQ setting that works pretty well when streaming wirelessly from my iPhone.
I have a bit of high frequency loss in my own ears so your mileage will likely vary on the high end of that EQ. But I’m not deef to bass and for most stuff, you have to turn down that “Clear Bass” setting that is at the bottom….unless you like that low, pounding, vibrating muffled sound like the someone playing their music way too loud in the next room with the walls acting like a horrendous woofer.
There’s also a “Surround Sound” setting. I didn’t think I would like this at first. But then I tried it on the “Club” setting for a while. It gives it a very natural, full sound to the music. So I’ve stayed with that and when I turn it off now, everything sounds pretty dull in comparison. Frankly, and I know this is all highly subjective, but I’d call that setting a must. It adds a vibrancy to these headphones that they otherwise lack on their own.
You can turn off the noise cancelation completely if you want. I can’t offhand notice much, if any, difference in the quality of the sound with noise cancelation off. But theoretically it will be better with it off And not-s0-theoretically it will be better on a wired connection…and it is a bit, because you bypass completely the lossy compression of Bluetooth. But I don’t think it’s very noticeable.
There are other modes as well for the noise cancellation. There’s a setting that will let in some of the background noise if you want (if you’re driving, for example). I found this setting to be rather crude and useless. But maybe others will find a use for them. For me, it’s either on or off regarding the noise cancellation, and now that I’ve gotten to try it, I almost always have it on.
Touch controls (the entire flat surface of the right earphone acts like a touchscreen) allow you to play, pause, skip tracks (forward or back), and control the volume. I was dubious about this feature. But now that I’ve had a chance to use it, I like it. Yes, sometimes when swiping up I will skip to the next track instead of turn the volume up, but that’s only because I didn’t quite hit a north-sound direction on my swipe. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice practice practice.
Here’s an odd thing I found that you’ll want to know about if you have an iPhone. These sounded significantly better when I was streaming from my iPad Pro as opposed to my iPhone 6s. I figured the circuitry in the newer hardware was responsible for that.
But then I remembered that for purposes of streaming Apple Music from the iPhone when in the car (using cellular data), I had chosen the “lower quality” option. You can’t tell the difference in a car audio system and this setting lets you reduce the amount of data you stream (and thus pay for). But this was also (strangely) effecting the quality streamed to the headphones even when I was connected via Wifi. It should have defaulted to the higher quality because the setting inside the phone is only supposed to effect those times when you are outside of a wifi network and are using cellular data. Well, trust me, when using these headphones you must turn on “high quality” in the settings. It took me some experimenting to figure that out.
Comfort? No headphone is comfortable for any length of time. After an hour or so, your ears will sweat a little and the pressure becomes a little uncomfortable. These headphones are light. The padding is excellent. But it’s just the nature of the beast. These are on par with other quality headphones I’ve owned, past or present, and are nothing special. But they are certainly acceptable.
I currently have a pair of wired Sony MDR-7506 headphones. At $119.99 they are a great value and as much as anyone need spend on headphones. (If someone needs a great pair of used headphones — they are in excellent shape — make me an offer.)
Unless you want wireless, of course. And I do…and did. These are reviewed almost everywhere as the best. It took me a while to dial in the settings, but I think I’m satisfied at the moment with the sound. Like I said, the Sony MDR-7506 (a professional “studio” headphone meant to reproduce sound for the ears of an engineer, not necessarily an end listener) are very good headphones. However, they are “brighter” in the midrange and highs by their nature.
And if you get used to what you have then anything else can sound wrong. But then, like I said, I had to dial in the settings (there’s a phone app) for these headphones in order to get the best sound.
First off, do you need noise canceling headphones? Yes, you do. It’s a large bonus if the point is listening to music instead of your neighbor’s lawn mower. That said, it’s false advertising to call these “noise canceling” even though by all reviews that I’ve read, Sony has the best technology on the market. An honest description would be “noise reducing.” And some noises reduce better than others.
For instance, my little space heater blowing air goes absolutely silent with the “noise canceling” feature turned on. The hum of my PC computer also goes completely silent. But if I go outside, I still hear some road noise on the busy street. If I vacuum with these on, the vacuum is certainly quieter, but you still unmistakably hear it.
But this does work to at least eliminate a lot of outside noise. So I give it a thumbs-up for that. It’s just dishonest to call this “noise canceling.” It depends on the noise.
And you need a phone or tablet that can run their app to make best use of these. I don’t think they have an app for computers. You could always use them as-is without adjusting anything. And you can certainly wire them straight into any existing stereo system and use the EQ on that. But the app (details of what the app does are here) is necessary to access most of the features.
And you want to do for sure is to use the app’s EQ. First off, you’ll want to tame the base a bit. Although these don’t have the hilariously exaggerated bass that many manufacturers make for the juvenile market who must have their boom-boom, these are still a tad too much by default.
I’ve actually found a nice EQ setting that works pretty well when streaming wirelessly from my iPhone.
I have a bit of high frequency loss in my own ears so your mileage will likely vary on the high end of that EQ. But I’m not deef to bass and for most stuff, you have to turn down that “Clear Bass” setting that is at the bottom….unless you like that low, pounding, vibrating muffled sound like the someone playing their music way too loud in the next room with the walls acting like a horrendous woofer.
There’s also a “Surround Sound” setting. I didn’t think I would like this at first. But then I tried it on the “Club” setting for a while. It gives it a very natural, full sound to the music. So I’ve stayed with that and when I turn it off now, everything sounds pretty dull in comparison. Frankly, and I know this is all highly subjective, but I’d call that setting a must. It adds a vibrancy to these headphones that they otherwise lack on their own.
You can turn off the noise cancelation completely if you want. I can’t offhand notice much, if any, difference in the quality of the sound with noise cancelation off. But theoretically it will be better with it off And not-s0-theoretically it will be better on a wired connection…and it is a bit, because you bypass completely the lossy compression of Bluetooth. But I don’t think it’s very noticeable.
There are other modes as well for the noise cancellation. There’s a setting that will let in some of the background noise if you want (if you’re driving, for example). I found this setting to be rather crude and useless. But maybe others will find a use for them. For me, it’s either on or off regarding the noise cancellation, and now that I’ve gotten to try it, I almost always have it on.
Touch controls (the entire flat surface of the right earphone acts like a touchscreen) allow you to play, pause, skip tracks (forward or back), and control the volume. I was dubious about this feature. But now that I’ve had a chance to use it, I like it. Yes, sometimes when swiping up I will skip to the next track instead of turn the volume up, but that’s only because I didn’t quite hit a north-sound direction on my swipe. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice practice practice.
Here’s an odd thing I found that you’ll want to know about if you have an iPhone. These sounded significantly better when I was streaming from my iPad Pro as opposed to my iPhone 6s. I figured the circuitry in the newer hardware was responsible for that.
But then I remembered that for purposes of streaming Apple Music from the iPhone when in the car (using cellular data), I had chosen the “lower quality” option. You can’t tell the difference in a car audio system and this setting lets you reduce the amount of data you stream (and thus pay for). But this was also (strangely) effecting the quality streamed to the headphones even when I was connected via Wifi. It should have defaulted to the higher quality because the setting inside the phone is only supposed to effect those times when you are outside of a wifi network and are using cellular data. Well, trust me, when using these headphones you must turn on “high quality” in the settings. It took me some experimenting to figure that out.
Comfort? No headphone is comfortable for any length of time. After an hour or so, your ears will sweat a little and the pressure becomes a little uncomfortable. These headphones are light. The padding is excellent. But it’s just the nature of the beast. These are on par with other quality headphones I’ve owned, past or present, and are nothing special. But they are certainly acceptable.
