review The Best AKG N60NC Bluetooth Noise Canceling headphones

Having not too long ago reviewed the $1499 AKG N90Q and finding it an astonishingly cool and effective noise canceler, I thought it would be interesting to look at what AKG was doing way down the food chain at a more affordable price. Thing is $300 is still $300, and in my book a pretty serious purchase. A $300 headphone needs to be good and competitive. Let's see if AKG managed to pull it off.

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AKG N60NC ($299)
The AKG N60NC is an on-ear, Bluetooth wireless, noise canceling headphone. Styling is elegantly simple: upside-down puft gray lollypops on each ear. Materials and build quality look just about right at this price. It's a nicely built headphone.

The pleather over foam headband is fully covered and has a good feel, but tends to touch in one spot at the top of the head. Fortunately, the headphone is light and has good caliper pressure on the ears, which tends to stabilize these headphones and remain comfortable. Ear pads covers are good quality pleather over 1/2" memory foam; pads are 2 3/4" in diameter with a one inch center hole. I found the N60NC comfort above average for an on-ear. The earpads are particularly nice.

Headband adjustment end-caps pull out to reveal metal detented sliders. On-line customer reviews indicate this is a significant improvement from the plastic sliders of earlier models. Sliders are marked and adjustments a tad stiff but nicely secure.

Ear capsule yokes swing fore and aft on on a headband end-cap swivel; the single sided yoke attaches and swivels at the rear of the ear capsule. Ear capsules can rotate flat and swing inward to nestle in the arch of the headband for compact storage and transport. This hinge mechanism can be made to make a few klunk noises when manipulated, but I wouldn't call it rattly at all. Seemed up to snuff to me.

A tidy neoprene soft case is included. I like this case quite a bit for it's compact utility and the cushioning of the neoprene. Also included is: a USB charging cable; a 4 foot flexible, cloth covered cable with one-button remote; and airline adapter.

Inserting the 2.5mm TRRS plug of the wired cable into the bottom to the left ear capsule will automatically turn the Bluetooth portion of the electronics off, but noise canceling can still be turned on and off the the power switch.

Electronics
The N60NC has three modes of operation: Passive on the wire, NC active on the wire; and Bluetooth wireless with NC on. Noise canceling cannot be deactivated in Bluetooth mode.

The headphone uses Bluetooth 4.0 and supports: A2DP V1.2, AVRCP V1.4, HFP V1.6, HSP V1.2. Battery will last about 15 hours wirelessly, and about 30 hours when wired with NC active. It takes about 2 hours to charge from a mostly depleted battery.

I did have a few problems pairing up the N60NC. On both my iPhone and iPad I would sometimes have to "forget this device" and restart Bluetooth on both the headphone and player in order to get the devices to pair. Not sure what was going on there. I had no problems with my Android phone.

Noise canceling is effective, but doesn't seem to isolate as much as the better noise cancelers like the Bose QC35.

Alrightythen, let's have a listen.

review: a jack of all trades The best Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC | Mobile Accessories

The headphone market is thriving and the noise cancelling niche is ever growing, with competition stiffening every new day. Sennheiser introduced their HD 4.50 BTNC Bluetooth noise cancelling headphones back in September 2016, during IFA. They aim at the entry-level noise cancelling market, but let that fool you not: the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC are in no way an entry-level pair of headphones.

They are in fact a competent and compelling product that has lots of features to offer, together with a few quirks and caveats.

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TL;DR: recap

Pros	Cons
Good comfort Minimal design Mostly neutral sound One of the most affordable NC headphones NoiseGard can be disabled	NoiseGard negatively influences sound Little passive isolation A bit more padding in the headband would be welcome 2.5-mm, proprietary cable

Packaging & Accessories

 

 

The Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC comes with a rich set of accessories: the box includes the headphones, a 1.2-m long 2.5 mm to 3.5 mm jack cable, a USB to micro-USB cable and a soft fabric case. There are also a manual and a warranty leaflet.

Design & Comfort

Design is utilitarian, so you won’t find fancy leather inserts or peculiar design choices here. It’s a “barebone” (although not too much) approach which I find appealing; it’s very simple and this means it will suit most people’s tastes. The HD 4.50 BTNC is completely black, with silver details and the Sennheiser logo in white on the headband. The overall lines are very similar to those used on the other Sennheiser HD headphones – i.e. the Sennheiser HD 2 – although they’re slightly more refined.

Both the headband and the earpads are covered in synthetic leather, with the headband padding which is almost seamless with the plastic top. Plastic is the main ingredient here, with the frame and the earcups made from this material. Everything is black or silver, with a matte finish.

Sennheiser didn’t spare the lining in the earpads: they’re thick and soft, which makes for a very comfortable fit. The hole is wide enough to let my (sufficiently large) ears fit and therefore grant lasting comfort. The headband padding could actually be increased to improve comfort in the long run.

They’re foldable, although they are still fairly large even when folded. They can fit effortlessly in most bags or backpacks, although I found it more convenient to just wear them around my neck when I didn’t use them.

All the buttons, controls and ports are hosted on the right earcup.

There are a power button, a status LED, a slider button, a micro-USB port and a 2.5-mm jack connector. The cable has a lock mechanism: once plugged in, it can be twisted and locked in position. This way it is comparable to a wired headphones’ cord – it just won’t pop off. This approach has pros and cons, since there is a chance it will damage the headphones if too much force is applied, contrary to a simple jack. You won’t also be able to use other cables if you lose the one provided.

The slider button allows to skip tracks, when moved up or down, and to play or pause music when pressed. It takes a fair bit of time to get used to it and I often skipped tracks when trying to pause music. It is also easy to mistake it for the power button, but pressing the latter won’t trigger any action (unless you keep it pressed, that is).

Comfort is just average, mainly due to two factors: the padding in the headband and its size. The padding is soft, but it’s thin. 

Another factor is the headband being narrow, as it means a lot of pressure is concentrated on a small area and this makes comfort in the long term (>2h) decrease.

Although the Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC offer noise cancelling, they’re definitely not noise-proof. 

The earcups offer minimal passive isolation, so almost all noise will creep in – be it a person walking or a car passing by. I have to note this is my personal experience, which could be influenced by my very own head’s and ears’ shape. In most occasions you will want to have noise cancelling enabled, but this has a few unexpected and unwanted consequences as we’ll see later.

Extra Features & Battery Life

The name Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC has an explanation: BT stands for “Bluetooth” and NC stands for “noise cancelling”. The proprietary technology behind this last element is called NoiseGard and it is Sennheiser’s implementation of noise cancelling. As almost every NC tech currently out there, it only removes the low-frequency noise, such as the noise coming from a jet’s engines or the rattling of a train. Human voices and other relatively high-pitched sounds are excluded and you’ll hear them.

NoiseGard is very effective and it does a great job at blocking noise. I could barely hear anything with it enabled, even in the subway. It can be disabled, and this is a huge pro. You only need to press both volume up and volume down buttons at the same time to disable it and this comes in quite handy if you want to enjoy your music without noise cancelling.

When a call is ongoing, the microphones capture the surrounding sounds and reproduce them so that the user isn’t completely isolated. Problem is the other person is going to hear all sounds, too, and this may be in fact a bit distracting. The microphone is luckily able to pick up the voice very effectively, so I was always heard clearly by the person I was calling.

The Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC make use of the aptX codec on top of the Bluetooth 4.0 standard, which should grant better sound quality when they’re paired with Android phones, Windows PCs and (maybe) Macs. iPhones do not support the codec. They also support NFC for quick pairing.

When it comes to battery life, Sennheiser claims it is 19 hours with NoiseGard active and 25 hours with the feature disabled. This figures are mostly true to real life, although they’ll vary with different usage scenarios (i.e. I always listen to music at low volumes).

Sound & Specs

I ran a 100 hours break in on the headphones, which were new when I received them. I used both my smartphone (Lenovo Vibe Shot) with Bluetooth and my desktop (with Topping D30 > Topping A30 stack) with the cable. Source files were mainly FLACs (mostly 16 bit, 44.1 kHz) and a few MP3s (320 kbps) here and there.

Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC

NoiseGard has a huge impact on the sound of the Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC and it’s not a positive one either. While the technology works by producing negative sound waves to counter the sound coming from outside, and it only influences low frequencies, it should not affect how the sound is reproduced too much. Practice is quite different from theory, though, and the lows and mid-lows are almost completely cut off when NoiseGard is on. Songs sound shallow and thin more often than not, unless they come with a remarkable amount of bass.

Disabling NoiseGard makes fuller sound come back, almost to the extent that they seem different headphones. Given the enormous influence the noise cancelling technology has over sound, I decided to write the review basing it on the sound without NoiseGard.

Given these are over-ear, closed-back headphones, soundstage is not the widest. It is, in fact, very wide for a Bluetooth headphone, and this is great. It is also fairly easy to tell instruments apart, even in relatively dense tracks (Blue Train by John Coltrane comes to my mind).

Lows do not dive too deep, but they’re very entertaining and add body to the music in the right way. Although you won’t feel the lowest frequencies in Daft Punk’s End of Line from the TRON: Legacy soundtrack, bass has decent extension and the right amount of control for it to be fun and engaging. Transients are very good for a headphone in this price territory and beyond what I expected from it. Bass doesn’t leak in midrange territory and it stays tamed, sometimes leaving you with a desire for a bit more. It fulfils its role of adding body and keeping the rhythm, but it’s far from being the protagonist (as seen on the Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2, as an example). If you take just a bit of it away it becomes anaemic, and that’s exactly what happens when you turn noise cancelling on.

Midrange is the heart and soul of the Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC’s sound. It’s front and centre, with a vivid signature that makes guitars, pianos, sax and voices stand out. There’s good liveliness and airiness, which make the midrange engaging and natural. Mids appear mostly flat, just a bit warm; the detail and clarity are nothing to write home about, but they’re great nonetheless for the price. The carefully mixed blend of bass, midrange and treble, where mids get the lion’s share, makes it very pleasant to listen to classical music on the HD 4.50BTNC.

I expected treble to be more extended, but it actually is fairly limited. It makes up for that with a good level of detail and a sense of freshness. It’s not sparkling and exuberant, neither it is analytic and airy; it does its job, however, in bringing a bit of brightness to the sound and in portraying high-pitched instruments (i.e. cymbals). They have their room to breathe and they’re not just in the background.

When it comes to genres that pair well with the Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC, I would say that these could play most genres, but they also carry a caveat: they won’t sound perfect with any genre. Their performance is impressive with jazz and neofolk, but there are better headphones out there for a similar price. If you aren’t looking for boomy, explosive bass these headphones are worth listening to.

The Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC don’t hold up against the Sony MDR-1000X, which share most of the features but sound arguably better and offer better passive isolation and better noise cancelling. I guess the fact they’re double the price has something to do with that. When it comes to the aforementioned Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2, though, we see two very different approaches to music reproduction: one is trying to be faithful to the original and yields results an audiophile would appreciate; the other is instead trying to focus on the fun and enjoyment side of music and offers a boomy sound which can most likely satisfy the young and the non-audiophile. It all boils down to what you are looking for, as those products are in different categories.

Final Thoughts

I would say the Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC is best described by an English expression: jack of all trades, master of none. These headphones get good scores in every field, but they don’t excel in any of them. Be it in noise cancelling, comfort, build, or sound, the HD 4.50BTNC are not able to deliver excellence in any of those.

This is not a bad thing at all, though. It means that the HD 4.50BTNC does well in every field and thus is a complete, competent headphone that can suit most people’s needs and tastes. It sounds good and provides good noise cancelling, even though it has a few flaws, and this makes them easy to recommend. There are better alternatives out there (i.e. MDR-1000X), but they also cost much more. Being a jack of all trades sometimes pays off.

Frequency response	18 – 22,000 Hz
Impedance	18 Ω
Sensitivity	113 dB

REVIEW The Best audio-technica ATH-M50xBT wireless headphones | Mobile Accessories

Product Name: audio-technica ATH-M50xBT
Product Type: headphones
Reviewed By: Rameez Ahmed
Magazine: Best Buys Audio & AV
Distributor: TAG Australia

 Hi-fi enthusiasts often debate the very definition of hi-fi. In olden days when classical music and jazz were the mainstays of music, hi-fi systems were seen as the path to reproducing the live experience, to create a concert hall or a jazz club right there in your drawing room. But as music became created more in the studio, once The Beatles began creating music that was never intended to be performed live — well, what was hi-fi supposed to do with that?

The answer, to our minds at any rate, is that hi-fi should deliver as close to what the band and engineers heard in the studio. That’s what they made, that’s what they want you to hear.
How do bands hear their music when they’re recording it? They don’t have speakers in their vocal booths or hiked above the drum-kit. No, they wear headphones. Closed headphones, to avoid spill. Solid well-built headphones, to survive the knocks of studio life. And usually headphones with a pretty flat response, particularly during the mixing process, when any bumps and dips in response would create a final result which would have inverse dips and bumps when played on anything else.

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So should you perhaps consider listening to music on a studio-style headphone?

Equipment
Audio-Technica is one company which has taken its strengths in the studio market and turned them to advantage in the consumer market. Indeed the ATH-M50x is a model which has made the jump all on its own. Introduced as a variant of the ATH-M50S after the company’s 50th anniversary in 2012, they were (and still are) listed as ‘Professional Monitor Headphones’ even when the company started releasing white, then red, then black and blue models which were surely aimed more at the street than the studio (click here for our review of those) . With those versions you still got the studio-style curly coiled cable, but also a long 3-metre minijack-terminated cable, and a shorter 1.2m minijack cable clearly intended for portable use, though a lack of inline smart controls maintained the studio illusion.
Now the consumer angle has been made entirely self-evident, by these latest ATH-M50xBT versions, which gain wireless Bluetooth operation. While there ain’t no Bluetooth in studios, out in consumer-land it’s now an essential — last year was the first ever when wireless headphones outsold cabled ones.
Quality is the question. Bluetooth remains a poor substitute for cable, even when, as here, there are higher level codecs included than the base-level SBC. The ATH-M50xBT can use the AAC codec, which lifts Apple phones to a higher level (though still not to CD quality), and also the Qualcomm’s aptX codec, which allows Android phones that support it to get even closer to CD standards with its mildly lossy compression.
There’s also the question of whether the headphone creators should adjust the voicing to compensate for the vagaries of Bluetooth sound and the internal amplification now required to deliver it — they do this at their peril, however, as there is then the risk of thereby mucking up the sound via cable. These are the things we listen for when testing wireless headphones.

The ATH-M50xBT certainly reassure in their presentation. They remain closed headphones, of course, and retain the large 45mm drivers backed by copper-clad aluminium voice coils, though the magnets are now labelled as ‘rare earth’ rather than neodymium. Gone are the longer curly and straight cables, with just the 1.2-metre minijack cable in the box, which gains inline controls. And you get the USB charging cable for the internal battery, which is quoted as delivering a healthy 40 hours of use after seven hours of charging.

The headband and ear-cushions are just as comfortable as their wired pedecessors, designed as they are for long listening sessions and durability. But new are all the controls required for Bluetooth operation — a power slider, and volume and play/pause buttons positioned around the right headshell (see below). The volume buttons double as last/next track controls if you hold them for a rather long two seconds, the play/pause button doubles as a call answering button.

There’s one last control — the central audio-technica logo on the outside of the headshell can be pressed and held for two seconds to activate your phone’s voice assistant, for which there is now a single microphone, also used for voice calls.

Performance
It all works, and is intuitive to use. We worry about power sliders as they’re easy to leave on by mistake, but the M50xBT fairly smartly shuts itself down in the absence of a connection… though not if you leave your phone nearby, as they’ll remain connected.

We had a moment of button confusion — the central play/pause/control button is marked with a thick raised dash, while the volume down button is marked by... a thin recessed dash. The difference looks clear enough when printed in the manual, but once moulded into black plastic, well, not so much. Also the Bluetooth pairing command is near unguessable — hold down both plus and minus volume buttons together for eight seconds. C’mon! And especially hard if you pick the wrong minus.
But first time you use them, they go into pairing mode automatically.

Such small ergonomic quibbles are removed by familiarity, and also because the ATH-M50xBT sounds simply marvellous. It’s a big and full and musical sound. They made Drive My Car (stereo remaster) sound rock solid and meaty. They dug out the depth and held out the hang of the big bass drum under the introduction of Hurricane from ‘Hamilton’, while the vocal sat crisp but not sibilant over the top. There’s the same combination of thrumming depth and edgy (here slightly sibilant) vocal on Birdy’s live Terrible Love, at the start of which the detail was sufficient for us to pick out words from a rather chattery pre-encore Opera House audience. Dion’s vocal on I Read It (in the Rolling Stone) tilted into peakiness — but that’s nearly the truth of it; it is a thin vocal recording, so we didn’t blame the A-Ts too much. A sweep had them sounding unbelievably smooth through the lower frequencies, from way down up to 200Hz, then a dip with the mids seeming backed off a little. Up top there’s no wide openness of blue-sky treble; of course that’s largely because these are closed headphones, and also that we were listening via Bluetooth. The result is fine indeed for a Bluetooth sound, and the most successful transition from an existing design to Bluetooth operation that we’ve heard.

They proved comfortable long term, except on a couple of 30-degree beach walks, where their big blackness raised a sweat. There’s bags of wireless level for general use, at home or for anywhere quiet. On bumpy bus rides we had enough level to drive modern recordings over the morning commute easily, but could have used a few more notches for older, quieter or less dense recordings.
As usual, switching to the cable can provide additional level. It also gave slightly improved solidity through better treatment of high frequencies. That peaky Dion vocal was bright but not offensive now, though lower male vocals — Leonard Cohen ‘Live in London’, Paul McCartney on My Valentine — went a little honky from too much low-mid next to a recessed mid-mid. It was a pattern: female vocals slightly thinned, low male vocals slightly honked. The deepest stuff remained very strong, supporting the sheer strength of sound delivered here, while the imaging and the musicality remained immensely enjoyable.

Conclusion
This is an entirely successful conversion of audio-technica’s strong monitoring headphone into a strong consumer Bluetooth headphone. It looks cool, it looks strong; its wireless sound is magnificent, and the price is very attractive.

 audio-technica ATH-M50xBT wireless headphones

+ Entirely successful transition to Bluetooth
+ Full meaty wireless sound
+ Cable with inline controls
- Two minus buttons

Type: Closed over-ear dynamic headphones with Bluetooth including AAC & aptX
Drivers: 45mm with CCAW voice coil
Sensitivity: 99dB (cabled)
Impedance: 36 ohms (cabled)
Quoted frequency response: 15–28,000Hz (cabled)
Quoted battery life: 40 hours
Weight: 310g

Review The Best Beyerdynamic Amiron wireless Headphones | Mobile Accessories

Introduction: Beyerdynamic, a name in all fields of audio that truly needs no introduction. In fact, since it has been established in 1924, the oldest currently still operating audio company, they have had their go at products ranging from microphones, home audio, wireless systems, and of course personal audio. My father even used a Beyerdynamic mic when he performed with his band in the 70's. Beyerdynamic in the headphone world has had their share of ubiquitous names, with popular models like the 770 and 990 families that until now provide great sound and great value to many music enthusiasts around the world, but what we have here today is the Amiron wireless, one of their entries into the current movement into the wireless audio spectrum. And speaking about wireless audio, it's a very interesting market where for the longest time wireless audio has been associated with poor sound quality, but with the advent of more and more high-quality codecs such as Aptx HD and LDAC promising, and for the most part, providing high-quality wireless audio solutions with a, for me at least, obviously discernable improvement over the likes of SBC. So what does the Amiron offer? Well for a start there's the circumaural/over-ear form factor, an important distinction in a market generally proliferated with supraaural/on-ear varieties. Additionally, these feature the Tesla Technology that is implemented in their other popular models like the Xelento, Amiron Home, T1, 1770, and 1990. On top of that, the Amiron Wireless offers Aptx and Aptx HD codec support and the Beyerdynamic MIY app that with the help of Mimi a German hearing technology company will measure your hearing and then adapt the sound output of the Amiron to achieve the "optimum" frequency response in wireless applications. At an eye-opening $699 what does the Amiron bring to the table? Read on to find out.

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Specifications:

Transducer type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dynamic, Tesla

Operating prinicple . . . . . . . . . . . . . closed

Frequency response . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 – 40,000 Hz (wired

operation)

Nominal impedance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Ω

Nominal SPL with jack plug cable . . 100 dB SPL (1 mW / 500 Hz)

Nominal power handling capacity . . 200 mW

T.H.D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . < 0.05% @ 500 Hz

Sound coupling to the ear . . . . . . . . circumaural

Cable length and connector. . . . . . . 1.2 m, detachable,

4-pole mini stereo jack

(3.5 mm)

Bluetooth version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2

Frequency range. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4000 – 2.4835 GHz

Power class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.0

Supported profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HSP, HFP, A2DP, AVRCP, GAVDP

Supported codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aptX™, aptX™ LL, aptX™ HD,

AAC, SBC

Operating range. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . up to 10 m

Battery runtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > 30 hrs.

Charging time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 hrs.

Battery capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1050 mAh

Charging port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . USB-C

Operating temperature. . . . . . . . . . . 0 – 40 °C

Weight without cable. . . . . . . . . . . . 380 g

Packaging and Accessories: The Amiron comes in a rather large box, that is, however, to be expected given the size of these headphones. On the box is the basic specs of the headphones as well as some images of the product, opening the box reveals the large molded clamshell case of the Amiron. Inside you find the Amiron, a USB A to USB Type-C charger cable, and a 3.5mm cable with inline controls. The molded clamshell case is very nice with a soft touch finish and the Beyerdynamic logo tag on the front and a black zipper and is very sturdy and should protect the Amiron from bumps and light falls. The inside has a small net mesh pocket to place little objects, though it is a bit too small for either cable to be placed in there. The cable quality for both the USB and the 3.5mm cable is about the same, as they both have the same type of coating a smooth, slightly rubbery but not tacky coating that does, however, prevent either cable from tangling. Overall the Amiron has a utilitarian package that provides everything you need in the package without anything superfluous. Some might argue that the accouterments are lacking given the premium price, but as long as the rest of the product delivers, I personally see no issue with it.

Build Quality and Design: The build quality is superb. Starting with the headband there is a metal frame, that is more than adequately padded and lined with breathable mesh fabric on the underside while the top is layered with an Alcantara finish with the Beyerdynamic logo stamped on top. The Alcantara is done in a dark gray. The headband transition into the plastic piece where the yoke of the headphones adjust from, its a satin piece of plastic with another printing of the Beyerdynamic logo on the outside, and Left/Right markings as well as other model information printed inside, with the model number is engraved in gold paint to add an extra touch of class while cabling travels from the earcup to this piece to travel under the headband. The yoke itself is a single piece of brushed metal that connects to a rotating plastic joint on both earcups that allow a couple of degrees of tilt up and down and allows 11 steps of adjustment for overall size. The earcups themselves are done in mostly in an almost gunmetal gray, with silver metal adorning a ring around the main face of each earcup. The earpads are of the velour type, and the drivers have a fabric cover similar to that of the headband. Overall a premium but understated design with hints of industrial influences here and there, that primarily focuses on function, being a wireless and of course possibly a more mobile headphone, it eschews heavy materials like metal earcups to reduce the weight if one were to wear it on the go, or for long periods of time. To round things out the right earcup houses a USB-C charging port, a 3.5mm jack, and the entire face of the cup is a touch panel for use when in Bluetooth mode as well as a power/connect button that also has an LED that will indicate power status, as well as pairing status of the headphones. With no gaps, creaky parts, or anything that seems loose or ill-fitting, there really isn't anything you can point out from these except that they are exceptional.

Fit and Isolation: The Amiron has a moderate to light clamping force that does not wear on you even over longer periods of wear. This combined with the adequate padding on the earcups and headband provides a good comfort experience that couples with adequate breathability. However due to the lighter clamping force even though it is closed the isolation isn't as good as other closed back models, so this may be a trade-off and may be a pro or a con depending on your individual use case.

Connectivity and Interface: The Amiron supports SBC, AAC, Aptx, Aptx HD, and Aptx LL, which basically covers most the popular audio codecs with the only real notable exception being Sony LDAC, this means that for basically any device out there the Amiron will work, and for most modern devices the Amiron will work very well since Aptx HD support is becoming more commonplace, and with the LL Low Latency Standard included using the Amirons for streaming is a treat since it while ensuring that lip movements are synced with the audio. With 8 total devices it can pair within memory the connection interface and procedure is very simple and intuitive with a single button controlling both power and pairing with lights to indicate if it is in pairing mode, with matching audio prompts on pairing, battery percentage, and codec used alternatively if your devices support NFC the Amiron can also connect via that method, and you don't even need to set it to pairing mode to do so. The Amiron also features a right earcup touchpad that allows you to control playback as well as other functions, double taps to play or pause, swipes forward and backward to skip or go back on tracks, a swipe and hold to fast forward or rewind the current track, swipe up and down for volume control, and even one second long taps to answer or end calls, two seconds to reject one, and a one second hold to bring up the supported virtual assistant like Google, or Siri if supported by your device. I found the experience with the touchpad very pleasant, not buggy or finicky like I had feared. You can also adjust the touch sensitivity in the MIY app which I discuss below.

MIY App: The MIY app is the companion app that comes with Beyerdynamic Bluetooth devices that have a few capabilities, first and foremost the sound optimization feature that will take your age, and a listening test and will tailor the sound. The other features are software updates and listening monitoring that is there to make sure you don't over-fatigue your ears. The app has a clean look that makes it very pleasant coupled with a generally uncluttered interface that makes navigating the different options a breeze, though the pairing of the headphones in the app can sometimes be finicky, and non-intuitive which I'm sure can simply be addressed in software updates. Overall I do like the MIY app because it is a companion app that isn't all fluff and gimmicks and makes managing Bluetooth devices even easier.

Sound: I listened to the Amiron both wireless and wired over a myriad of devices almost exclusively using Aptx or Aptx HD for Bluetooth ranging from laptops to phones like my LG G6, or OnePlus 5T, and iPhone 7s+, to DAPs like the Hiby R6. Wired they were plugged into the R6, G6, ifi xDSD, or the xDSD amped with the Massdrop CTH the Amiron is very easy to drive and remained consistent throughout the different devices I plugged it into. I originally planned to split my sound impressions between wired and Bluetooth, but remarkably the sound whether wired or wireless remained almost completely consistent, the MIY app sound optimizations notwithstanding which for the most part make the mids a little fuller and forward at 100%, but I will get to that in a second, the sound signature of the Amiron is balanced and natural exhibiting accurate bass, full mids, and natural treble. Back to the MIY app, it conducts a listening test with test tones that takes about 6 minutes and optimizes the sound, when in the app you get an option to adjust the optimizations from 20% to 100% though I wish a 0% slider was available for convenience. Detailed sound impressions below.

Bass: The bass on the Amiron is full, and well extended with a quick attack and a moderate decay that keeps it precise and natural, hitting all the notes well and providing a good sense of rumble and impact, while still having articulation for faster double bass tracks. In Love by Lana Del Rey the prominent bass drum hits are felt but don't linger too long or drag, and the bass line of David Cook's rendition of Day Tripper has a fullness and texture, without ever feeling bloated in relation to the other signatures. All of this is a stark contrast to many commercially available Bluetooth headphones with dark signatures or even bloated bass that really go and mask the overall sound. The Amiron doesn't have any of those qualities and instead just providing enough bass to keep the sound from being boring but at the same time providing such great quality in terms of texture and refinement.

Mids: The midrange, on the other hand, is overall transparent if maybe a touch behind the bass without being crowded out. It reproduces vocals and instruments with very good timbre as well as backing it up with good technical ability. In City of Stars, a simple arrangement with nothing for the mids to hide behind the vocals are clear and detailed with good definition and crispness to the reproduction, the piano accompaniment is similarly well done, providing a pleasant fullness to each individual notes as they cut through the chords of the song. Moving on to something more aggressive What A Catch, Donnie by Fall Out Boy, the Amiron continues to deliver in both the solemn and basic intro to the more complex pieces in the chorus, and bridge, song elements don't get lost in the shuffle and manage to be rendered with articulation even on secondary song elements. The transition between bass and midrange as well as that to the treble are smooth and no awkward and disjointed dips or peaks in those areas could be detected.

Treble: The treble presents itself as clean, crisp, and with good extension. I found no manifestations of sibilance or uncomfortable peaks in the usual areas I expect them to be, and overall round out the signature with great clarity that brings an overall tonal balance to the headphones. In Hibike by Yokoyama Masaru the piano and string parts in this instrumental exhibit the sparkle of the top end on the headphones with each note resonating and lingering just a bit before they fade away. There is good overall air and that lends positively to the spacing of the music presented and just lifts everything to let the individual components breathe.

Presentation: This is another area where the Amiron shines, all around the technical aspects are excellent. The layering of notes even in complex arrangements is superb with the strings, winds, and percussion harmoniously combining. The spatial presentation is accurate and 3D staging is very good being able to present a somewhat holographic image of the music, however, it doesn't feel artificial or hollow like some may do, it's just right with auxiliary notes like tambourine shakes just at the far edges of the spatial field. Consequently, the soundstage presents good width as well a depth that is both partly in concert as to the previously mentioned staging, and when listening to especially spatially tracked recording it can really express the capability.

Conclusion: The Amiron is an impressive accomplishment by Beyerdynamic putting together a headphone that excels both wired or wireless and with a sound signature that is natural but has enough life to be engaging, without trying to mask any deficiencies with muddled software, at least that's what the wired performance delivered. So the sound is nigh unassailable in the realm of Bluetooth options, and at the least can stand on its own two feet vs traditional wired options. But in addition to that, it also brings together a bevy of convenience features and an overall sense of quality fit and finish that leaves little to be desired. Looking at what is left to be desired, the lack of the ANC is a shame at this price point especially with ANC being the new "it" feature to look for in Bluetooth headphones, it would have been something that would have undoubtedly raised the value proposition of the Amiron, and really is something that can't be ignored especially when they do already implement some "secret sauce" with the MIY app. But aside from that there really isn't much to pick at the Amiron on, the sound is sublime, the build is superb, battery life that usually met at least 30 hours, and the design is attractive but not gaudy, it is understated in how it exudes its premium nature, and personally that aesthetic is something I prefer, but I know is different for everyone. Overall the Amiron provides a great package for those looking for as little compromises in sound as possible at this point in time, something with a very traditional sound profile that focuses on quality first, and if you're in the market for simply the best sounding over ear Bluetooth headphones on the market, then I feel like the Amiron should be very much on the top of your shortlist.

Review The Best Bose QuietComfort 35 II noise cancelling headphones

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Bose has updated its QuietComfort 35 headphones. Now they’re the QuietComfort 35 II noise cancelling headphones. As with the model they replace (which we reviewed here), they are Bluetooth models, but with some significant upgrades. I’ve had the new model clamped over my head for many, many hours over the past week. What did I find?

Description

What I found startled me. I will get to what it was that startled me soon, but first some facts and figures.
Well, actually, there aren’t too many. Bose is one of those companies that doesn’t like to talk about specifications. Power output? Like Rolls Royce, it’s sufficient. Speaker drivers? Heh, it’s Bose, so the details don’t matter. Check out the website and you’ll find their size – which is kind of the same as most headphones – their weight, which is 310 grams – and the lengths of the audio and USB cables supplied with them. Frequency response? Sufficient, I guess.
More importantly, codec? Since nothing is mentioned, we’ll have to assume the basic SBC codec and not aptX or aptX HD or AAC. Bose is not listed on the aptX website amongst the brands using its technology.

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So, for really serious listening, you’ll be wanting to plug in. But, to be fair, the limitations on quality due to the SBC codec are usually not too dire.
It was a little quick in dismissing the dimensions. How big a set of headphones are when planted on your head generally doesn’t matter much. But these headphones fold up nicely to go into their semi-hard carry case. Because the earcups swivel before you fold them up, the case ends up only 50mm thick and so fits into brief cases and such reasonably well. Better than most headphones.


They are over-ear models with closed backs, so you get some isolation from external noise. The active noise reduction works in the usual way: environmental sound is captured, adjusted, inverted and fed back into the signal to cancel the original noise. Bose says that there are microphones both outside and inside the earcups.
On the right ear cup is a physical power switch. It slides on and off, and pushed a step further it engages pairing mode. Behind the right ear cup is the volume up and down rocker with an indented play/pause control in the middle. I found it easy to start using this reliably.
That play/pause also works for fast forward and rewind, track skipping and so on by the usual double and triple presses and holds. It also works to answer calls, hang up and so on.
On the left earcup is a single button. Using the Bose Connect app (iOS or Android) it can be assigned to controlling the level of noise cancellation, or invoking Google Assistant (not Siri).
The headphones work without power, but of course require a wired connection in that case.
Bose says that the battery is good for twenty hours of operation, and that a fifteen minute top up of power via the Micro-B USB socket will deliver another 2.5 hours of performance.

Setting up

One way to start listening is to just plug it in. The audio cable is 1.2 metres in length (the specifications helpfully inform us). At the headphone end is a 2.5mm plug. At the other is a standard three-conductor 3.5mm plug. The cable is quite thin and is clearly not designed for hands free operation, nor for any kind of volume control.
Incidentally, unlike past Bose practice, there is no two pin airplane adaptor included.

Caption:You can name them something convenient (left), and the Bose Connect app also gives instructions


But normally you’ll connect with Bluetooth. You can pair the usual manual way. You can pair via NFC – tapping an NFC capable phone on the front of the right ear cup and then confirming it on the phone. That worked with both a Samsung Galaxy S7 and a Huawei Mate 9. But you’ll probably want to pair using the “Bose Connect” app which allows you to make settings, handles firmware updates and can change the function of the left cup switch between Google Assistant and Noise Cancellation control.
All these ways worked quite well. I did manage to get the headphones confused at one point – although arguably it was me who was confused, since I wasn’t certain quite which devices I had at some point paired – and I could no longer get NFC to work. But there’s a simple method to purge all connections (you’ll need to download the proper manual from the Bose website) and all was fine thereafter.
Up to eight sources can be paired with the headphones at any one time; up to two can be “connected” at the same time; only one (of course) can actually be playing through the headphones at a time. You can manage the connections individually through the app rather than having to purge them all.

Listening

I first listened to Bose noise cancelling headphones fifteen years ago. They were the very first consumer model produced by Bose: the QuietComfort QC-1 headphones. Since then I’ve used the QuietComfort 2 models (2003), and the QuietComfort 3 (3007), along with models from a number of other brands, big and small.
And I’ve decided that the Bose QuietComfort 35 II noise cancelling headphones are by far the best I’ve ever used. They are amongst the best for sound quality, and enormously better with noise cancellation. Amazingly so.
Last week I was agitated. I knew the headphones were coming for review. And I was flying on Wednesday and Thursday, so it would have been the ideal test. Sadly, they didn’t arrive in time. So I did the next best real world test. I mowed the lawn.
The noise cancellation delivered by these headphones was wide ranging in frequency and very, very deep. While mowing I could listen to music at a very low level, and hear it all with complete clarity. The sound of the lawnmower disappeared to the gentlest of hums.
It’s hard to convey how extremely well they quietened everything.
Sharp impulses? I can barely hear my own typing, even though I’m pounding away in my customary unrestrained manner on a mechanical keyboard. Even rapping the metal handle of a heavy fork on the glass top of my desk barely breaks through unless I get quite violent.
All that was with the noise reduction at the higher level. At the low level the noise was increased to a gentle background level, with music and voice from the material I was listening to still easily audible over the noise.

Cation:Of course, headphones have firmware updates these days. This one’s is delivered by the app


No plane, but I could fake it. I’ve got a video recording I took in a plane in my accustomed rear seat. I played it on my desktop computer and wound up the volume to 95dB average (C-weighted). I have a very good sound system on my desktop, with solid bass down to 30 hertz so the result was pretty realistic. The results were the same as with the lawnmower. The all-encompassing noise faded to a hearable but eminently ignorable level. With a creepy side-effect. I could hear other things from my flight. I could now hear the food trolley. Something being dropped. And the soft tinkle of voices. Not clearly enough to make out what was being said, but they were clearly voices. All that was completely inaudible without noise reduction.
There was a very slight sense of ear pressure with the noise cancellation on high. That’s a feeling I often experience with noise reducing headphones. If feels like the pressure on your eardrums is slightly higher than the pressure inside. It is mild and disappears the moment you start listening to music, and is completely unnoticeable when there’s significant external noise.
At the highest level the noise reduction also generated a little bit of barely audible hiss. Again, noise on the outside or music on the inside effectively eliminated this.
The headphones give plentiful, sometimes excessive, voice feedback. When you change the level of noise cancellation a female voice tells you the level. If you press a button that causes a connection, or slide the power switch briefly over the Bluetooth position, the voice tells you the name of the connected device. The pronunciation of “Huawei” was hilarious. It also keeps you informed of battery level, which was particularly welcome.
The sound quality was good to very good. Some Bose headphones have been a bit too full in the bass in the past. These were nicely balanced. Listening critically with a cable connection to the highest quality music, they didn’t have quite the sense of openness and “being there” as my preferred $700 wired headphones deliver. But falling short of them is no shame.

In fact, they sounded fine: musical, certainly adequately detailed, and voice was very clear. Treble was extended, the depth of bass was impressively vast. But, you know, even though Bose points out that without power you’re not getting the benefit of the EQ, I thought there was noticeably higher transparency and openness to the sound when played via a wired connection with the headphones switched off.
With their own Bluetooth connection there was plenty of gain available from the headphones so there was never any problem with insufficient volume levels.

Wires

If the battery runs down – or even if it doesn’t – you can still use the headphones via the wired connection. If you’re doing that some of the functionality goes away, even when there’s power in the headphones. If you have the headphone switched off, then of course there’s no noise cancellation (nor any of the standard EQ). If you have them on, and there is power, then the noise cancellation is locked onto the maximum position. It can’t be turned to the lower level.
Nor indeed does the volume control work when wired, even though the internal amplifiers must be running in order to run the noise cancellation.
I guess Bose is effectively saying that you’re only going wired if you’ve run out of power, or you’re on a plane and will thus need full noise cancellation.
I have no quibbles with the battery life claims. One negative aspect of the design is that the noise cancellation circuitry won’t work while the headphones are being charged. When on a very long flight, you might want to take the opportunity to plug them in for a top up whenever you’re taking a rest room break.
The Google Assistant function worked very nicely. But in the end I like to be able to readily control the noise cancellation level so I returned the control button to that function.
Finally, I fluked an experience of the dual connection capability. I was listening to something being delivered by my iPod Nano when my Samsung phone rang. The headphones paused the Nano, and I was able to take the call using the headphones as though the phone was the primary connection. When it finished, I pressed the play/pause button and the Nano content resumed from where it had left off.
That’s good design.

Conclusion

The Bose QuietComfort II headphones are very effective Bluetooth headphones with the best ever noise cancellation. The best ever. I love them.

Review: The Best Jabra's Elite 85h noise-cancelling headphones | Mobile Accessories

Noise-cancelling headphones are popular among business travelers, those in loud, open office spaces, and frequent commuters for a reason: they make life just a little bit less stressful. But good ones remain a product largely aimed at those with a good amount to spend - Bose and Sony's popular models retail for $300 and $350, respectively. The new Jabra 85h are priced to match Bose's jetsetter staple (seriously, the number of QC35s you'll see in business class cabins on airplanes is crazy), but have already dropped to $250 in promo sales.

While matching or even undercutting Bose for price, Jabra's headphones offer noticeably superior noise cancellation in most situations, better audio, and much better battery life. While the Bose name enjoys far more cachet among frequent flyers, Jabra's given them every reason to do a double-take with these headphones.

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The Good

Audio	A reasonably bass-forward profile with balanced mids and highs make the 85h noticeably different than Bose's headphones, and I think they're just more pleasant to listen to.
Battery	Jabra rates the 85h for 36 hours of music playback with ANC turned on, and I've had no reason to doubt it. This absolutely destroys Bose's QC35 II figure, and is a good 20% better than Sony's XM3.
Features	Twist the ear cups to power them on or off, USB-C for charging, multi-device pairing, Jabra's hear-through technology, play/pause on-ear detection, intuitive volume and easy playback controls.
ANC	The ANC on the 85h is excellent in most situations and, I found, was less prone to having problems with aberrant vibrations in settings like airplanes.
Price	At $300, the 85h are a clearly a superior value to Bose and Sony's products. At $250 on sale, they're a no-brainer.

The Not So Good

Weight	The 85h have a larger battery and substantially sturdier headband than most wireless headphones, so they're pretty bulky (though I never found them uncomfortable).
Price, again	$300 is a lot of dough for most people to drop on headphones, and cheaper ANC over-ears do exist.
Limited Assistant	While the 85h support "one-button access" to Assistant, it's not true Assistant built-in, just tap to activate - meaning no deep integrations with notifications and poorer response latency.
No aptX / LDAC	While not a high priority on ANC headphones - which distort sound significantly anyway - some people really need to know their headphones do a Special Audio Quality Thing.

 

Design, hardware, what's in the box

 

 The Elite 85h use a low-tension band system to stay attached to your head without putting too much pressure on your ears. When I first tried them on at CES this year, the engineers told me they'd specifically designed the 85h to be comfortable for individuals who are, let's say, cranially gifted. As in, people with big heads (being from the Scandinavian region, Jabra considers this a real design priority). As such an individual, I felt the 85h were very comfortable and did not squeeze my noggin. The ear cups are large and spacious, too, minimizing pressure.

Controls on the 85h are dead simple once you've figured them out - the right ear cup has volume up at the top, play/pause in the middle, and volume down at the bottom. The Assistant button is out the outside of the ear cup and is easy to hit with your right thumb. On the left ear cup, you've got a single button for activating or deactivating noise cancellation, and a middle setting that turns on the "hear through" mode, which will play ambient noise into the headphones. It works surprisingly well thanks to Jabra's multi-microphone array, though don't count on it for more than basic left and right directionality (because, well, that's how stereo audio works).

Power off (left), power on (right)

Turning the 85h off and on is merely a matter of twisting the right ear cup into the deployed or storage position, making it unlikely they'll accidentally get turned on in a bag. There are 3.5mm and USB-C connectors on the left ear cup as well, the latter is for charging, the former if you want wired audio to increase the already ridiculous battery life of the headphones.
The 85h come with a carrying case, 3.5mm cable, USB-C charging cable, and an two-prong airline adapter in the box. They're warrantied for two years against water or dust damage.

Sound quality, features, battery life

The sound quality on the 85h exceeded my expectations, with full, balanced bass and reasonably strong mids, and highs that are clear but not shrill. Compared to the Bose QC35, bass feels less muddied and highs less screechy, though some may prefer the more "boosted" audio profile Bose is known for. I found the 85h comfortable to listen to for extended periods on a long flight, and didn't notice any fatigue.

 The quality of active noise cancellation is excellent. Unlike my QC35s, the 85h seemed less susceptible to aberrant seat vibrations causing an annoying and excessive alteration of the noise cancellation signal, which I came to really dread when trying to sleep with the Bose. Overall, the cancellation seemed to adapt well to most situations and conditions, though obviously isn't capable of magic: loud car engines and voices weren't really muted at all, but that's just the nature of ANC - no headphone drowns out those noises very successfully. I did notice that the lower threshold for the noise cancellation was an issue, which could cause random, quiet hisses to come through as the headphones attempted to adapt. It wasn't a super big problem, but if you use ANC headphones all day in a quiet environment or home office, it could get annoying.

There's a companion Jabra app that offers profiles for different noise conditions, but I found the detection of "scenes" was unreliable at best and tended to be slow to respond or flip-flop between audio profiles, essentially making the feature useless. I also don't like that the app is a constantly running service on my phone, so I uninstalled it pretty quickly.
Battery life, as I said in the summary points at the beginning of the review, is rated by Jabra at 36 hours with ANC enabled while playing back audio at a reasonable volume - I felt no reason to doubt that figure, and I rarely had to even charge them during my testing.

Should you buy?

Yes. Unless simultaneous two-device pairing is absolutely essential in your ANC headphones (Update: The 85h do support multi-endpoint pairing, for whatever reason I couldn't get it to work the first time I tried), I believe the Jabra 85h are the high-end ANC cans to get for all but some serious corner cases. The Elite 85h are extremely comfortable, charge via USB-C, have incredible battery life, and are designed thoughtfully with easy access to playback controls and Jabra's well-executed hear-through tech for that occasionally-needed situational awareness. Jabra has built what are easily the best value and overall experience in ANC headphones right now.
The lack of a built-in Assistant or features like aptX and LDAC high-fidelity codecs shouldn't concern most people. Access to Google Assistant (or Alexa, should you be so inclined) is still one-button simple, you just won't get audible notifications for things like texts and reminders. As to audio quality, the 85h are going to sound great to most people even streaming 128Kbps MP3s - these high-res codecs just don't matter much on headphones where the primary feature you're paying for is the ANC, which perceptibly distorts sound anyway.
Barring real hang-ups about the above, I think the best choice in ANC headphones right now are the Jabra Elite 85h, and I'm giving them our Android Police Most Wanted pick.