I'm looking at getting my first good pair of headphones and have been reading all over this forum and video reviews on Youtube. So far I have narrowed it down to the Bang & Olufsen H6 headphones. A long time ago I had full size Sennheiser HD595's (I think).
Errr...so the HD595's were not good at all? What exactly did you not like about them? That way in case anyone here has heard the HD595 and whatever you're looking at can give you an idea if you're headed in the right direction.
What I like about the H6 is that it is made with real leather, machined metal, and they look very nice.
Just note that you'd be paying for those too. Of course, they'd also contribute to the sound - metal is more rigid than plastic, and leather is less porous than velour so if you were comparing earpads
on the same drivers, there would be more audible bass on the leather pads, although that doesn't mean that the better Sennheisers for example have the plastic rattling with the bass notes.
My plan is just to run them from my MacBook 12" retina headphone jack, through iTunes, at home just to listen and relax. My listening lately has been along the lines of Philip Glass and Yosi Horikawa. Sometimes some Nick Cave. Closed back is 'probably' a preference, just so my partner doesn't need to listen to my music, too. However, if open back improves the sound dramatically I might look towards them instead.
The high sensitivity of the H6 is one thing that will come in handy here. Since they get really loud with a lot less power that basically means you'd be farther off from driving mainstream devices to produce easily audible distortion. It might be audible to me and a few others here if I crank it up but to most people, I wouldn't think so. If convenience is your thing then sensitivity is the key element to still getting good sound quality along with other features like how they fold (in case being able to lug them around is a requirement).
The other though is isolation, whether you lug them around or not, as this goes hand in hand with sensitivity. The H6 has fairly small earcups, and the confusing use of "over-ear" instead of "circumaural" which very clearly states as "around the ear" where "over" is interchangeable with "on," ie "on-ear," has some descriptions using "over ear" for the H6 despite how smal the earcups are. Unless you have earlobes with the circumference of but not hte depth of Shrek's trumpet earlobes, there is just no way these will be around your earlobes. At the very least, do not expect that the earpads will sit around your ears in case that's what you prefer for comfort. Isolation will also be different as it will depend more on clamp force, as it leaves a small gap that lets ambient noise into your ear canal (vs something that wraps around the earlobes with a slightly better seal given the same clamp force, which also wouldn't press against your earlobes) and, if you go the downward spiral of using higher volume to seal out more ambient noise, then you're also potentially sending sound out from the headphones and out into the room you're in.
At the very least though get your girlfriend into the store you tried them out and check if she can hear what you're listening to. if she can't hear them with ambient noise, then there's at least some hope that she wouldn't if you were listening at a lower volume in a quiet room.
However, if open back improves the sound dramatically I might look towards them instead.
Open back by itself (ie just cutting open the closed cups on any headphone) won't improve the sound, if anything the better headphones tend to come with open back cups but half of that is due to the drivers.
In any case, for your use case, open back headphones might increase the performance a little, but decrease marital harmony if you're planning on listening in the same room where your partner is sleeping. I don't think that's worth it, but hey, don't take my word for it since my solution to the problem is "open back, don't move in until you can afford a house with a dedicated office or better yet, an audio room (or meet somebody hot and insatiable, a fellow devotee to SLAANESH, whose stress relief is banging so we just bang each other to sleep)."
I was able to go into Adelaide and have a look at some headphones. There were limited options to test and the stores were very noisy. It seemed to me, though, that the B&O H6 was better sounding than the Sennheiser Momentums. There were also Sennheiser HD569 headphones, I'm not sure how they compared. These were across multiple stores and the music from each was different, I couldn't choose my own. There were no open full size phones to try unfortunately.
If one headphone you already tried out sounds good to you then that's a lot safer than gambling on a headphone you haven't heard yet, not to mention you're not exactly going for a more all-out hi-fi set up anyway. Can't you bring your Macbook to that store though? That way you can try it with the hardware you're planning on using it with. If you're on Spotify then save a few test tracks in your local storage so you won't have to depend on having an internet connection when you're there.
How would the H6 compare to a larger full size pair of headphones? Such as the Audio Technica ATH-A990Z or the open ATH-AD900X.
Likely better imaging and slightly flatter response. However:
1. Will you even perceive either, but more so imaging improvements?
2. Flatter response curve and lower sensitivity results in qualitatively "flatter" sound, ie, what some term "boring." It's like when people get a spiky response, 32ohm/98dB or higher RS2 (RS2e is 101dB/1mW) and a smoother response curve, 300ohm/96dB to 98dB HD580/600/650/6XX and hook them up to a CMOY and declare the Grados as "very dynamic, sounds like real music" and all Sennheisers "boring as hell" without even making sure that they're listening at the same output level (and even if they were, and it's at a high level to overcome ambient noise, the CMOY would likely be struggling a lot more with the 300ohm cans than the 32ohm Grado).
Would the H6 benefit much from a portable amplifier?
I wouldn't really bet on that, on top of which, I think there are still issues with USB C 3.1 and USB 2.0 DACs.
Would the H7 in wireless be much worse than the H6 sound quality? I've read wireless is a big compromise.
Only if you're using lossless files or the wrong headphones with BT dongles. The first is due to how even Apt-X isn't perfectly lossless, but if you're not using lossless files and expecting to have a reference system, I wouldn't worry about it. Second is because BT dongles (not necessarily BT-equipped, but otherwise normal design portable amps) have low voltage and current output, so they won't provide clean output for many reference headphones that tend to have lower sensitivity than Grados, portable headphones, a few hi-fi headphones, and mass market headphones. if the BT circuit is built into the headphone the manufacturer would have already done that using high efficiency drivers to begin with, considering they need to keep the BT receiver+DAC+amp circuit as compact and lightweight as possible while a single charge gets you through a long haul flight (plus maybe some wait time at the terminal).
My aim is to keep the setup simple, and I love the stunning design and materials of the H6, but I would really love to find out if I will lose much in terms of sound quality over other potential options.
Between the wirelss H7 and wired H6 what you really have to decide on is whether your idea of simplicity would compromise with either having a cable connecting the headphone to the laptop and charge only the laptop, or have no cable connecting them but you'd have to charge the headphone (and carry the cable to do that).
