ATHANC7 review.

Should be coming in this week. I order them over the weekend.

Yes, I thought his use of the phrase "purist audiophile" in relation to the ATH interesting as opposed to the less detailed and revealing Bose Q3. He seems to prefer the lush and what he called more balanced Bose sound for some recordings.

Got 'em

Listening out of the box...nice sounding. Have to listen to several tracks to get a profile on them. They go around my big ears with enough room inside the ear cups. This was something that I was concern with. Pictures will be come.

Keepers they are for what I want them for....they lower background noise very well all across the sound spectrum. Where I can here various house sounds without them I don't with them while no music is being played. With music it is like a dark palette of paint it's sound on.

They do not slay the W5000 by any means....W5000 are all around more balanced, tighter sound.

They are not the ATH-EW9s... they have a different sound...Where the EW9s are balanced to the upper mids and highs these are balanced to the lower mids primarily and upper bass. Deep bass gets confused compared with the W5000s.

Just this last week listened to the Bose Q2s and those had a definite balance with a very pronounced high frequency drop off with a veiled sound. These have a drop off but at a higher frequency level. I may have to get the Q2s back tomorrow again from my friend at work and compare them. It would be better to wait. I think these will take a few hours for burn in to get to its final sound profile.

Efficiency is high with NC on compared with the W5000s.

They are sounding much better with my normal desk rig compared with my portable (Nano + T1). The above comments were with the portable rig. Two different phones when being used with this equipment and the other.

These can be burn-in without having the NC function running its battery down.

I'd be very interested to hear this comparison, especially since my Q2s are still on the UPS truck and under the 30 day return policy.

For half the price of the Bose the ANC7s are winners in this comparison. But the Bose are nice in themselves, especially if your Boss has the Bose.

In the quoted post above the "unpronounced" should be "pronounced."

The review in the first post has marked them fairly well.

Sennhieser is coming out with two new higher end NC headphones any day now. As noted here:

http://www.headphonenews.com/2007/01/

Unfortunately the review was comparing the ANC7 with the Q3, which, to my ears, sound noticeably worse than the Q2.

The Q3 has significantly more rolloff in the upper frequency and the noise-cancelling circuit is turned up too high (probably to compensate for the smaller size), causing pressure on my eardrums. Also, the isolation on the Q3 pretty much suck; the Q2 and even the triport does a much better job. Even comfort-wise, I'd prefer the OE over the Q3, which sits on my earlobes and makes them feel "hot."

I'd like to hear comparisons based on personal music preferences and general enjoyability -- since I bought the Q2s based mostly on their overall colored presentation (full, darkish) -- rather than from an objective view of sound accuracy/detail or "fidelity," so to speak. Afterall, we all know bose will never win in this department.

I think the Q2 that I heard last week would be called full, darkish. I will get his again tomorrow for a little while and do a direct comparison with my ANC7 using my portable rig. I think the ANC7 has some balance in that direction but whether it is far enough for you is still questionable. The ANC7 is certainty more dark (veiled) than my EW9s.

so when are you gonna take 'em on the bus?

actually, how does that work? I heard those active noise cancelling chips basically fire like an inverse wave of sound? would that pressure on your ear drums actually be very high SPL that you can't hear? Is it maybe bad for your hearing in the long run, like any other high SPL?

It is noise cancellation not noise generation. It uses inverse waves.