Goldring NS1000 Noise Reduction Headphones.

I doubt it will be me. Those things are quite expensive at £150,-

Just received a pair and first impressions are - OK. Not an open sound. Mid range seems recessed with fairly heavy bass response. Build quality is below par imo for the price. Small earcups - don't exactly fit over your ears. The flappy part of your ears has to be tucked into the cups. The seal is fine though and a lot of external noise is cut out.

One thing I find a bit disconcerting is the effect of the noise cancelling. It totally changes the tone of the headphones and they become a bit 'middly' sounding. I haven't been in a consistantly noisy environment yet to see whether it works but they sound like another pair of headphones when the NC is turned on.

Still, if they cut down external noise, I suppose they will allow lower volume listening.

However, I wonder whether I should have gone the extra money for the Sennheiser noise cancelling headphone instead. The Goldrings don't feel like a £130 headphone to me.

Ian

If the drivers in these are anything like the DR150s, give them a chance to settle. Out of the box, the DR150s are a bit muddy in the bass and sibilant but after a short time - 25 hours or so - they settle in and provide quite the fun and impressive (for the price) sound sig.

Thanks Warrior. I hope that they do change. I'll leave them on for the weekend.

You are absolutely correct in the sound description - toppy with a mud ridden bass. Recessed mids. (Boxy with the noise reduction switch on)

Low transient response seems quick though. (ie bass attack)

I only got them because I'm going to be doing quite a lot of flying but wonder whether I should have bough the Senns really. I suppose I'm spoilt for headphones and these don't come close to my others at the moment.

Ian

Have you considered IEMs? The Atrio M5s with Shure Olives offer quite a bit of isolation. I used it for my last plane trip and they worked admirably. I'm not a fan of electronic noise cancellation so I always opt for mechanical.

Yes Warrior, I have the Shure E2C and E4C. I'm not happy wearing them for a long period. They start to hurt the inside of my ears. It takes about 8 - 9 hours to get to America and I couldn't bear them for much more than an hour.

I've had a look at the spec on the box for the Goldring -The sound DOES change enormously when you switch the noise reduction in and there is a simple reason - the impedance changes from 100 ohms when off to 330 ohms when switched in.The difficulty that I have with the sound switched on may be to do with the portable amp I'm using at the moment. I'll try another amp. (Currently using a Xenos but I'll try a Move and GoVibe when I get home)

I need to use them with portable amps because I travel an awful lot.

At 100 ohms - I get a lot of deep bass sound and at 300 ohms, the very deep bass (thumps) ease up a lot and actually, it's probably easier on your ears on rock music. So maybe the headphone is a little better with the NR switched on.

I'll wait til I burn them in. Got mixed feelings about them.

Ian

Too bad about IEMs.

The Move should be able to handle the increased impedance fine. They drive my 250 ohm DT990s nicely and that is at the low gain setting.

Good luck and keep us up to date!

Been running them for the weekend, but not a great change. I'll try another week and then I think they're going!!

There is another issue with them where the noise reduction introduces quite a significant amount of hiss. The headphones sound better with it switched in as far as tone goes but the hiss can be annoying so I think that the Goldring may be leaving the iancraig10 house soon. Not impressed.

Ian

Bit of an old thread revival. Just grabbed a 2nd hand (supposedly used once) pair of these for just under £75 from ebay.

Only have DR50s, DR100s, Sony Walkman phone earbuds and the fairly recent memory of a borrowed set of unamped HD600s to compare to but will post some impressions once they've arrived.

After listeing to these things for about a week, I think I've had enough time to form an opinion and well - I'm bemused by these things. They're really source sensitive at 100ohms. Through my Asus Xonar D2 soundcard they're pretty much as iancraig10 described. The bass is overly strong and boomy, with the mid and treble sounding recessed. It just sounds wrong like this, as if I'm wearing the headphones over a wooly hat.

I tried them with a Hitachi DA.P440 personal CD player and it's completely different to the Xonar. There's nothing like as much of a change. There is a difference but it's almost imperceptible. They do still sound better with noise reduction on but with it off the boominess isn't there but the overall sound still sounds a little 'shrouded'. At 330 ohms they could be mistaken for my DR100s (sound is less open and only slightly more detailed).

Back to the Xonar at 330 ohms. They sound like a completely different set of headphones from 100 ohms. The sound is natural in tone and detailed. The detail increase is immediately obvious when coming from the DR100s. Everything is immedtiately more enjoyable. Listening to classical music, I can hear the solo flautist take her breaths, the keys being pressed and the pages being turned much more clearly. Rock is more natural sounding, clearer, with excellent separation between the instruments. Drums are so much punchier you can pretty much feel it. One of my standard headphone listening tests is Van Halen's 'Hot For Teacher' drum intro and I found myself thrashing about like an idiot with the NS-1000s rather than moving on to the next thing like I normally would. Electric guitars have a real sense of attack. I've not heard any Grados but I would imagine that's what they sound like.

I'm assuming the LM4562 OpAmps in my Xonar are much better at driving high impedance headphones than whatever is in my fairly cheap CD player. With noise reduction on with the Xonar these things sound lovely. With it off they're a mess. Both modes sound pretty good though the CD player, with the noise reduction mode sounding marginally better. Bought myself a bunch of rechargable AAAs yesterday as I think I'm going to get through a lot of them. Without noise reduction, I think I may have found a set of headphones that sound better unamped!

I tried the Dolby Headphone mode on the Xonar as well as the Hi-Fi mode. It throws a pretty good 'fake' soundstage, making up for the closed design. This is the second set of headphones I've tried where I felt that the Xonar's Dolby Headphone didn't sound 'artificial'. The other was the HD600.

A word on that hiss with noise reduction. It's definitely there, unfortunately, and it's pretty noticeable on quiet tracks. It's a bit like very quiet pink noise. By chance I put my hands on the sides of the headphones and it shut up - so I'm pretty sure it comes from playing out of phase sound to you picking up. I wonder if it would stop in a truly silent environment? The noise reduction seems to work well. It shuts up the fan noise from my computer, which is a big bonus.

Anyway - I intend to try a bit of gaming and movie watching, as well as listen to some more music. Fort the price I paid I'm very happy. If I'd paid full RRP, I think I'd find the hiss a bit more of an issue.

Anyway - Here's a rundown of the music I've been using to test these things - all CDs.

The Celtic Connection (Bunch of stuff like Clannad, Maire Brennan etc)
U2 - The Joshua Tree
Classic FM - All time great wind chamber music
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus Dig!!!
Van Halen - Best of Both Worlds
Nick Harper - Seed
Scott Matthews -Passing Stranger
Jon Gomm - Hypertension (bit like Michael Hedges with more singing)
Led Zeppelin IV
Diana Krall -Love Scenes
Queen - Greatest Hits 1, 2 and 3
Essenchill (Nitin Sawhney remixes of variety of music)
Nitin Sawhney - Displacing the Priest
Ryan Shaw - This is Ryan Shaw
Evanescence - Fallen
The Story of Acid Jazz
Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine

These are now £49.99 (they are listed as £149.99) at Play using the voucher code PLAGLDNS19.

Play.com (UK) : Goldring NS1000 Active Noise Reduction Headphones : Electronics - Free Delivery

Goldring NS1000 Active Noise Reduction Headphones - reduced to £49.99 delivered @ Play (£100 off with code) ! - HotUKDeals Forum

Absolute steal at that price. I paid £70 for mine 2nd hand and was pleased.

I just added a Fiio e5 and it's almost completely cured the problems I mentioned in passive mode. It's very close to the active mode now. In passive mode now, they have most of the good attributes of active mode but with no hiss. The bass is maybe a tiny bit more prominent and the treble a tiny bit less prominent in passive mode. The difference is in 'sparkle' rather than tone. Passive mode is a little warmer, and active is a touch more clinical but there's not a lot in it.

Just did an A/B with these and my Creative Aurvana Live! (unmodded - same Foster OEM model as Denon AH-D1001) set. The CALs probably give a more 'fun' presentation. They're a little louder at the same volume level on the amp by default. The NS1000s are, however, considerably more realistic and detailed. They're a clear step up from the CALs

I'm absolutely amazed at what the e5 has done for these cans and am loving the idea of what a better amp could do. I guess they just weren't getting enough current. I've heard it said that in terms of pure sound quality noise cancelling phones are vastly overpriced. No so with these. Now I can enjoy these without the hiss, I think they've just become my favourite closed headphone.

Back on for £49.99

Play.com (UK) : Goldring NS1000 Active Noise Reduction Headphones : Electronics - Free Delivery

After putting a few hundred hours more on these things, I'm absolutely astounded by them. They just keep getting better and better as I put more time on them. Great throughout the frequency range. They're one of the few headphones I've heard that can render convincingly distant bass in the soundstage. Treble in active mode is rather 'hot' though. It needs quite a warm amp to tame it a little.

Superb for Dolby Headphone use with the SU-DH1 (which drives them very well). Add Auzentech Prelude to the list of sources that doesn't produce enough juice in passive mode though.

Having had them both a while, I now rate them higher than the Goldring DR150s (I know -Open vs closed and all that). There's a clear step up in detail and better note decay.

Their only real flaw is that hiss with noise reduction on. Easily avoided if you use an adequate amp in passive mode and they make a fantastic set of standard closed headphones for the money.