Philips SBC-HP460 impressions

[sgrossklass]

Finally had my dad order the HP460s @Amazon (for €29,99) on Wednesday, and they literally arrived the next day - impressive.

These cans come well-packaged (largely similar to the SHP805, presumably coming from the same factory in China), and the packaging is not a pain in the rear to open as the K26P's was. Build quality is a mixed bag - Philips seems to have it with tolerances, but general construction and paint jobs look fine. (Except that light silver just looks cheap these days.) The earcups have a kind of rubber coating, presumably to improve isolation and keep off wind noise. The clear plastic end caps are scratch magnets, in fact there was a slightly scratched area on one straight out of the box. Earpads are covered with crumply pleather. If you look inside the earcups, you can actually see the 40 mm drivers behind the foam. Cables come in through the rear hinges at the earcups. The volume control is quite a small and unobtrusive thing, not much of an issue even though I won't be needing it on the G3. (It can be quite useful at home though.)

Incidentally, I haven't noticed much creaking noises to speak of on my sample - the K26P is creaks galore in comparison. One of the earcups won't rotate as easily, but that results in clicking noises upon unfolding at most. While tolerances on the folding mechanism appear slightly high, folding things up generally works well. There is a headband size adjustment, but due to the higher weight and snug fit required to get good isolation, hair flattening is more of an issue than with the K26P. (Hair pulling is less so in return.) Unfortunately the earcups only rotate in one direction, someone with sticking-out ears might not like this much - but more on comfort later.

I used high-volume break-in to accelerate this part a bit, so the cans should be equivalent to ones with a few dozen hours of playing at regular volume on them. I did not notice any excessive distortion even when cranking up the BT928. I'd consider sound to be fairly balanced overall (bass and highs maybe beefed up slightly), with only a somewhat cool-sounding and very slightly honky midrange. (In noisy surroundings, you're likely to miss your bass, but even a K26P will eventually strugggle there.) Possibly tuned for Asian ears, dunno. Soundstaging seems to be quite decent for compact closed headphones - I'm not too good in evaluating this these days.

Comfort, as I guess with many of these compact supraaural cans, isn't too great yet. I'll give the pads some time to wear in, but this kind of earcup size (circular, OD ~6.5 cm, ID ~4 cm) may not be ideal if your ears are on the larger side and you're wearing glasses, both of which applies to me. It's /workable/, mind you, but not the very definition of comfort. No improvement over K26P IMO. Your ears may vary.
There is a decent, but not stunning amount of isolation. It improves upon pressing on the earcups, which makes me think folks with smaller ears might get pretty good results here. As is, I'm not sure whether this is an improvement over the K26P; distribution across the spectrum appears to be different though (seems like a bit more at lower and less at higher freqs). The HP460 certainly isn't as susceptible to wind noise (if you look at the isolation graph for the K26P, you can see that there is kind of an earcup resonance, the AKG is just too light [but other than that, isolation certainly is not worse than the DT231's but in fact better, and you can see from the freq response that they didn't get a good seal with the K26P on the test setup]), which is a plus.

I'll decide whether the HP460s will become my new portable cans next week. Otherwise I guess I'll be looking at the EP-630 (or possibly SHE9500, or LMX-E630).

[bubsdaddy]

How are the HP460's for sound leakage?

[sgrossklass]

Originally Posted by bubsdaddy

How are the HP460's for sound leakage?

Absolutely uncritical, as would be anything with half-decent isolation. You'd have to crank up the volume pretty high for much to be heard on the outside.

[bonethugz]

is it better than the k26 you got? how's the bass?

[nsjong]

I guess the comfort is a problem to some people. So comfortable for me.

Tell us how it sounds compared to the K26's. 2 people already said that it beats it down without any problems.

[sgrossklass]

HP460 vs. K26P:

I have to dial in a volume of about 6 more (e.g. 17 vs. 11) on the G3 to get the HP460s equally loud... no surprise there, the K26P (from current batches) is one of the most sensitive headphones ever. In terms of spectral balance in quiet surroundings, it's no contest between the two - the K26P has very strong low mids and bass and the upper mids and highs definitely take a backseat. (If you take the Headroom response measurement and increase bass levels to what they should be - they didn't get a good seal there - then you'll get similar results. Bass level should in fact be around the 0 dB mark.) The HP460 has fairly normal balance, though bass does increase when I press the earcups to my head to get a better seal. How they fare in a noisy environment, this I'd still have to check out. Guess I'll drag along both next week.

The DC resistance at the plug (sans extension) is about 35 and 36 ohms, respectively, quite close to the nominal 32 ohms. Turning down the volume control quickly brings this up to more than 100 ohms, and in fact the typical effects of high output impedance can be observed as you turn down the cable volume control and compensate with the amp's, i.e. the highs are becoming less forward.

BTW, I can get Cresyn LMX-E630 in-ears for under €20 shipped, how good are these? The SHE9500s have been described as "mids are already recessed, and highs are just not there" - I can have that with the K26P, though presumably at less isolation.

[actorlife]

I agree these headphones rock. I think I bought these in 2006 and started using them just yesterday with my iaudio X5 and minidisc player and they sound FANTASTIC. Anyone else using these nowadays?

[F3nNec]

yeah i got them 4 free, im usin them on iPod Touch, they sound amazin! xD only - iz comfort if u r wearin glasses, if not, they r just OM NOM NOM xDDD

[actorlife]

I still continue to be fascinated with these headphones. Pure bliss! I can't believe these were released in 2004. They still look pretty modern. Nsong(Where are you bud?) recommended these and I'm glad he did. Are the newest Philips this good still? If so which model come close to the sound sig on the 460's?