ruthieandjohn
Stumbling towards enlightenment
(Formerly known as kayandjohn.)
This is now the fourth in my continuing effort to rather systematically compare trios of my inventory of 21 headphones. In this case, I am comparing three headphones that start with two strikes against them in the audiophile world... they are noise canceling and they are wireless (Bluetooth). Comparisons of other headphones, using the same tests, are here:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/714904/comparing-sennheiser-hd-598-nad-viso-hp50-and-beats-pro-quasi-objective-tests#post_10465009 http://www.head-fi.org/t/714784/comparing-sennheiser-hd-598-beats-studio-2013-and-beats-pro-quasi-objective-tests
http://www.head-fi.org/t/708912/comparing-grado-ps-500-hifiman-he-500-and-sennheiser-hd-598-quasi-objective-tests#post_10341007
Before I describe the side-by-side comparisons, let me describe the headphones I compared:
Parrot Zik: These headphones, which were announced as prizewinners at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January, 2012, did not come out for sale until August, 2012, and in my eager anticipation, caused me to buy several other headphones while waiting to appease my lust.
Parrot Zik Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones ($399 list price)
These headphones are very comfortable but a bit more loose-fitting than appropriate for their weight -- as a result, they have flown off my head several times when I have been moving (e.g. vacuuming with an upright vacuum cleaner). They do the best job of noise cancelation of the three. Their flash of orange among the more traditional black and brushed stainless steel, as well as their ear-muff appearance, give them a distinctive look that some folks have complained they would not be caught outside the house wearing.
The Parrot Ziks have a high-tech method of controlling tape transport functions and volume -- you slide your finger up or down (or forward or backward) on the smooth surface of the right earpiece. A tap pauses or resumes; multiple taps move to previous or next song. They are run by an app on your smart phone, which will allow you several different equalization contours, several relative positions from which you hear the music (from all around you to subtending a 30 degree angle ahead of you), and several amounts of reverberation (auditorium, jazz club, living room, and "silence," or dead).
Beats Studio (2013) Wireless: These noise-canceling, wireless headphones, as far as I can tell, are identical in sound quality to the wired Beats Studio 2013. I stress the "2013," as both are significantly better, in both sound and build quality, than the original Beats Studios of a few years earlier.
Beats Studio 2013 Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones ($389)
I really like these headphones. They have the best overall audio quality of the three, as described below; they are light enough and firm-gripping enough to NOT fly off my head while vacuuming, and the plastic of their construction is not the hard brittle type but is of a softer, more bend-not-break type. They are second to the Parrot Zik in their noise canceling ability, but their noise cancelation is always on, unlike for the other two, where noise cancelation can be turned off. They control tape and volume functions by pressing on the ring around the "b," providing capability like the Parrot Zik in that way.
Sennheiser PXC 310 BT: These headphones are noise cancelling and bluetooth wireless as well, but are on-ear rather than over-ear. As a result, they are much smaller, lighter, and more easily packed than the other two... in fact they are labeled "travel" headphones.
Sennheiser PXC 310 BT Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones ($269)
These have on/off switchable noise cancelation, but when on, it is not as effective as the Parrot Zik or Beats Wireless. Noise reduction is harder because the headphones sit on, not around, the ears. They provide tape transport and volume control via the rocker button shown in the picture (a close look will even reveal arrows describing function). As described in the comparison below, their sound quality is the least of the three, but is the most open and transparent. Bass is weak, perhaps again due to the small size. That small size, however, covers a multitude of disadvantages... they fold up to be Really Small, fitting (admittedly with difficulty) into a shirt pocket! They have a flashing blue light when in Blue Tooth mode (they can also be used wired, as can all the others), but there is a way to turn that off.
To test various aspects of sound quality, I used an iPod source over bluetooth and had noise cancellation active in all cases.
I devised a set of 10 comparative tests (4 that are of an overall quality nature that do not depend a lot on the music being played; 6 that compare the clarity of specific acoustic "events" in certain music). I describe the test methods more fully here http://www.head-fi.org/t/704826/how-do-you-audition-compare-headphones#post_10340917 .
Rather than trying to give an absolute score to each headphone for each criterion, I simply rank ordered them, based on back-and-forth pairwise listening for each test and each pair of the three headphones (took between and hour and an hour and a half). The iPod Touch 5G was used without amplifier.
The overall, or "macro tests," were briefly (more detail in post cited above):
The event-based tests were:
Here is the result of my comparison. A 3 indicates that headphone was the best of the three in that test and contributes 3 points to an eventual headphone score totaled at the end... a 1 means it was the worst.
Though it had the highest score for the audio tests, the Beats Wireless did have some sort of funny resonance in the mid-to-upper bass that really made certain notes of the plucked string bass boom in the second test song (I had noticed this same effect in both the Beats Studio 2013 wired and the NAD hp50 closed over-ear headphones in earlier tests as well). It has displaced my Parrot Ziks as best sounding wireless noise canceling headphones in my collection; however the Zik also has a number of fun features via its software app (room reverberation; width of sound source; equalization). The Sennheiser excelled in "accuracy" features relying on precise high frequency, sch as transparency and the attack of the finger on the bass string.
Next? Probably compare my some of my IEMs (Apple In-Ear, Apple Ear Pod, Apple Ear Bud, Klipsch S4i, and Sennheiser CX-300II) to each other and to one of the over-ears that I have been using in comparisons. Eventually I will post an integrated list, likely in the thread "Rank the Headphones That you Own."
http://www.head-fi.org/t/714904/comparing-sennheiser-hd-598-nad-viso-hp50-and-beats-pro-quasi-objective-tests#post_10465009 http://www.head-fi.org/t/714784/comparing-sennheiser-hd-598-beats-studio-2013-and-beats-pro-quasi-objective-tests
http://www.head-fi.org/t/708912/comparing-grado-ps-500-hifiman-he-500-and-sennheiser-hd-598-quasi-objective-tests#post_10341007
Before I describe the side-by-side comparisons, let me describe the headphones I compared:
Parrot Zik: These headphones, which were announced as prizewinners at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January, 2012, did not come out for sale until August, 2012, and in my eager anticipation, caused me to buy several other headphones while waiting to appease my lust.
Parrot Zik Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones ($399 list price)
These headphones are very comfortable but a bit more loose-fitting than appropriate for their weight -- as a result, they have flown off my head several times when I have been moving (e.g. vacuuming with an upright vacuum cleaner). They do the best job of noise cancelation of the three. Their flash of orange among the more traditional black and brushed stainless steel, as well as their ear-muff appearance, give them a distinctive look that some folks have complained they would not be caught outside the house wearing.
The Parrot Ziks have a high-tech method of controlling tape transport functions and volume -- you slide your finger up or down (or forward or backward) on the smooth surface of the right earpiece. A tap pauses or resumes; multiple taps move to previous or next song. They are run by an app on your smart phone, which will allow you several different equalization contours, several relative positions from which you hear the music (from all around you to subtending a 30 degree angle ahead of you), and several amounts of reverberation (auditorium, jazz club, living room, and "silence," or dead).
Beats Studio (2013) Wireless: These noise-canceling, wireless headphones, as far as I can tell, are identical in sound quality to the wired Beats Studio 2013. I stress the "2013," as both are significantly better, in both sound and build quality, than the original Beats Studios of a few years earlier.
Beats Studio 2013 Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones ($389)
I really like these headphones. They have the best overall audio quality of the three, as described below; they are light enough and firm-gripping enough to NOT fly off my head while vacuuming, and the plastic of their construction is not the hard brittle type but is of a softer, more bend-not-break type. They are second to the Parrot Zik in their noise canceling ability, but their noise cancelation is always on, unlike for the other two, where noise cancelation can be turned off. They control tape and volume functions by pressing on the ring around the "b," providing capability like the Parrot Zik in that way.
Sennheiser PXC 310 BT: These headphones are noise cancelling and bluetooth wireless as well, but are on-ear rather than over-ear. As a result, they are much smaller, lighter, and more easily packed than the other two... in fact they are labeled "travel" headphones.
Sennheiser PXC 310 BT Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones ($269)
These have on/off switchable noise cancelation, but when on, it is not as effective as the Parrot Zik or Beats Wireless. Noise reduction is harder because the headphones sit on, not around, the ears. They provide tape transport and volume control via the rocker button shown in the picture (a close look will even reveal arrows describing function). As described in the comparison below, their sound quality is the least of the three, but is the most open and transparent. Bass is weak, perhaps again due to the small size. That small size, however, covers a multitude of disadvantages... they fold up to be Really Small, fitting (admittedly with difficulty) into a shirt pocket! They have a flashing blue light when in Blue Tooth mode (they can also be used wired, as can all the others), but there is a way to turn that off.
To test various aspects of sound quality, I used an iPod source over bluetooth and had noise cancellation active in all cases.
I devised a set of 10 comparative tests (4 that are of an overall quality nature that do not depend a lot on the music being played; 6 that compare the clarity of specific acoustic "events" in certain music). I describe the test methods more fully here http://www.head-fi.org/t/704826/how-do-you-audition-compare-headphones#post_10340917 .
Rather than trying to give an absolute score to each headphone for each criterion, I simply rank ordered them, based on back-and-forth pairwise listening for each test and each pair of the three headphones (took between and hour and an hour and a half). The iPod Touch 5G was used without amplifier.
The overall, or "macro tests," were briefly (more detail in post cited above):
- Transparency;
- Size, both horizontal and vertical, of sound stage;
- Resolution of position of two persons singing near each other;
- Volume of headphone with iPod turned up all the way.
The event-based tests were:
- "Twang" of drumhead at entrance to Song 1;
- Preservation of features allowing me to determine pitch of bass notes in Song1 Verse 3)
- Finger pluck at start of bass notes at start of Song 2;
- Clarity of shaker, preserving differences of each shake, in Song 2 Verse 3;
- "Ripping" sound characteristic of horns and medium low reed organ pipes at start of Song 3;
- Ability to hear additional echoing chord stacked upon a huge bombast of sustained full orchestra and organ four beats later, in about third "verse" of Song 3.
Here is the result of my comparison. A 3 indicates that headphone was the best of the three in that test and contributes 3 points to an eventual headphone score totaled at the end... a 1 means it was the worst.
| Test | Parrot Zik | Beats Wireless | Sennheiser PXC 310 BT |
| Transparency | 1 | 2 | 3 (best) |
| Width of sound st | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Positional resolution | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Volume | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Drum "twang" | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| Bass pitch perception | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Bass finger pluck | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Shaker variation | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| "Ripping" of organ/brass | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Discern added chord | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| TOTAL | 19 | 24 | 17 |
Though it had the highest score for the audio tests, the Beats Wireless did have some sort of funny resonance in the mid-to-upper bass that really made certain notes of the plucked string bass boom in the second test song (I had noticed this same effect in both the Beats Studio 2013 wired and the NAD hp50 closed over-ear headphones in earlier tests as well). It has displaced my Parrot Ziks as best sounding wireless noise canceling headphones in my collection; however the Zik also has a number of fun features via its software app (room reverberation; width of sound source; equalization). The Sennheiser excelled in "accuracy" features relying on precise high frequency, sch as transparency and the attack of the finger on the bass string.
Next? Probably compare my some of my IEMs (Apple In-Ear, Apple Ear Pod, Apple Ear Bud, Klipsch S4i, and Sennheiser CX-300II) to each other and to one of the over-ears that I have been using in comparisons. Eventually I will post an integrated list, likely in the thread "Rank the Headphones That you Own."
