[PDevil]

  I am looking for a wireless headphone with ANC, and the 100ABN is currently on sale for $210, do you guys think this will be a good purchase? I can push myself and get the Bose QC35 but I'm not sure yet if it worth the price difference.

It depends on how much you value ANC as the QC35's have better ANC but, in my opinion, they don't sound as good as the MDR-100ABN's until you turn the QC35's up to about 65-70% their max volume (then I prefer their more bass-driven "funner" sound).  The QC35's are also a lot more comfortable than the Sony's and they stick out less.  I was never a fan of the way the Sony's fit, they would always stick out on the sides of my head way too much and their earpads are stiffer than those on the Bose headphones.  But the Sony's also have their advantages: they sound more accurate while still being bass drive, they produce the same sound quality at all volumes  (the QC35's have an active EQ that I absolutely hate), and they can connect to your devices using more codecs (AAC, SBC, aptX, and LDAC whereas the QC35's only use SBC and AAC).

 

[caenlenfromOCN]

Glad I came here before I decided to buy these, I really just want the best ACN possible, I don't care so much for sound quality, I just want the entire world gone sometimes when I put on my headphones, including flight attendants.

 

[esprithk]

Hi, everyone,

I just got mine for a few day.

I want to talk about the sound quality or music quality.
You can still listen to music when you are in wired mode and circuitry is off.
However, the sound is not good at all. Very flat and boring.

So, my advice is to turn it on at all time during use.
Turn on NC depends on the environment that you are in at the moment.

With headphone turned on, the circuitry (the SONY signature sound touch) gives a brighter vocal.

Actually, it moves the singer forward.
Even for rock music, you can hear both guitar beats, piano keys, and vocals very bright.
Clarity and Separation & Position of musical instructment are very good.

Like if you are listening to Michael Jackson's Billy Jean, it actually plays his voice brighter and higher clarity. Very amazing.

This headphone can play all kinds of music.

I have played the following music with "VOX PLAYER" on my iPhone 6 plus 64GB:
Very little change in sound signature on both wired and bluetooth mode, NC ON or OFF.
Most of the music quality results from the design of the circuitry.

(1) Vocal focus:
Diana Krall "latest Turn Up the Quiet" - I'll See You In My Dream (FLAC 16/44.1).
Barbra Streisand - Woman in Love (FLAC 16/44.1).
Ed Sheeran - Thinking out loud (FLAC 16/44.1).
John Legend - All Of Me (FLAC 16/44.1).
Sam Smith - I'm Not The Only One (FLAC 16/44.1).
Gloria Estefan(SACD) - (DSF to FLAC 24/96).
George Benson - NOthing's Gonna Change My Love To You (FLAC 16/44.1).
Sergio Mendes - Never Gonna Let You Go(from SACD - Timeless Love) - (DSF to FLAC 24/96).
*This headphone is excellent for VOCAL and GREATEST LOVE SONGs. The voice is bright, and overall clarity is very high.

(2) Live performance - Rock
SLASH - Rocket Queen (form Made in Stoke 24/7/11 Album) - (FLAC 16/44.1).
Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman, No Cry (LIVE) (FLAC 16/44.1).
*This headphone makes Bob Marley's voice "sweet". Goodness. The Mids and His are high clarity and bright. background vocal and instructment position are well separated.
*Sound Stage is very wide and deep for a close-back headphone.
*Also, the drums do not bleed into the guitar or the Mids. Excellent separation and great details.

(3) Electronic music
The Chainsmokers/Coldplay - Something Just like This (FLAC 16/44.1).
*Goodness. The digital drums(synthetic bass) just sounds amazing on this headphone.
Vocal of lead singer Chris Martin just becomes very high clarity and the synthetic bass won't leak to the Mids and His.
Does this means it is "artificial"? may be for some, but I personally like it.
I can hear many hidden details in this song with this headphone, which I have not experienced on other headhone at this price range (or lower).

(4) Rock
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (FLAC 16/44.1).
UFO (The Best of The Decca Year 1970-73) - Follow You Home (FLAC 16/44.1).
UFO (The Best of The Decca Year 1970-73) - Give Her The Gun (FLAC 16/44.1).
*This headphone makes vocal on rock music more forward than usual, but in a good way. Also, piano notes are bright, too.
*It resembles the right drum sounds for rock music. Not too deep, just solid and right amount of pounding.

(5) POP
SIA - Chandelier (FLAC 16/44.1).
SIA - Elastic Heart (FLAC 16/44.1).
Gummy (Korean singer) - You Are My Everything (FLAC 16/44.1).
BIGBAND (Korean group) - IF YOU (FLAC 16/44.1).
WHAM - Careless Whisper(from SACD - Make It Big) - (DSF to FLAC 24/96).
*This is another great match for this headphone. POPs stand out on this.
All the beats are high clarity and sound stage feels wider than most close-back headphones.

(6) Rap
EMINEM - The Monster(feat. Rihanna) *this songs has many background instructments and sound mixing.
*This headphone displays the background in great details. one will not miss anything.
*For bass, this headhpone does not go too deep, but just the right amount so that one will not get fatigue from long listening.

(7) BLUETOOTH TRANSMISSION SPEED Testing
EMINEM - Rap God *the ultra-speed rapping part (FLAC 16/44.1).
DRAGONFORCE - Through the Fire and Flames (FLAC 16/44.1).
SLASH - Rocket Queen (form Made in Stoke 24/7/11 Album) - (FLAC 16/44.1).

**Additonal (Extra) testing:

I use it in wired mode with "LG Hi-Fi Plus" module.
{connection by using "Lightning to Camera adaptor cable"}

The LG Hi-Fi Plus has its own built-in DAC (ESS brand).
{NOTE: iPhone 6 plus has OEM DAC chip by Cirrus Logic, which is a good one, too}

This does change the sound signature, since all music files are being processed by the ESS chipset now.

The result (with LG Hi-Fi Plus module) are focus in two area:

(1) The bass feels more solid.
(2) The vocal is soften, and the singer is pulled back, making the piano notes and guitar strings louder and more forward.
For vocal like John Legend-All of Me, Ed Sheeran- Thinking out loud, Sam Smith- I'm Not The Only One,
it makes listening better. Vocal is more smooth. So for the listeners, the ears feel better as voice is not as shape.

Overall, SONY MDR-100ABN is an excellent NC headphone in this price range.

I had a QC25 before it. For NC performance, this SONY headphone is very close, just behind QC25.
But in sound quality, it is much better than QC25.

Final word. I also own a SONY MDR-1ADAC. This is an excellent headphone for iPhone, as it has a built-in DAC and headphone amplifier.
It is a great sound upgrade for the iPhone.

I wish SONY would make a MDR-1ADAC with NC function. This will be the ultimate close-back headphone for travellers who want an on-ear headphones.

 

[esprithk]

I have a question.
Can anyone confirm that "When plugged in the audio cable, the headphone automatically turned off Bluetooth connection? (such as being used in an airplane)
I meant I want it to be used "wired + turned on + NC on". (but I want BT turned off).

Because in the instruction menu, the section "Precautions", it has wordings that warn users to not used it on airplane when BT is on. But I don't see any button for switching BT off.
Thx.

 

[nickjonathan]

Hi guys. Lurker here for a few weeks now since I am considering getting this. However, I am deeply contemplated between the Sony MDR-100ABN or the Plantronics Backbeat Pro (1st version) since the latter had a huge price drop in my area.

I was hoping for some in sight in terms of a long term buy since we are shelling out quite a lot of cash here.

Also, regarding our sony 100ABN, I would like to ask if there is a function similar to the MDR-1000x and the Backbeat PRO where we can temporarily hear the outside using the dedicated outside mics even with ANC on?

Thank you guys. Hoping for your feedback.

PS created an account just to ask these inquiries. lol

 

[talmarsh]

Has anyone been able to find a suitable cable with volume/pause button?

@esprithk
It goes like this:
1. Turned ON and BT connected > attach cable (even if not attached to phone on the other end!) = disconnects from phone.
2. Turned ON and attached to cable > disconnect cable from cans = power turns OFF.
You can always turn on and off manualy when connect via cable, however BT will not work (nor will the volume/skip/pause functionality). They will not connect to BT even with NFC.

Hope this helps.

 

[jeffmd]

So this headphone went through a slew of sale recently and I snagged the verdant blue up for $169. I have a few head phones under my belt now, mostly good ones but my last one, the sennheiser 4.40bt, was just all over the place and hard to enjoy. I am happy to say the mdr100abn has been a very enjoyable headphone. They are quite simular to my ostry kc06a with its solid but not over blown bass and crisp highs. Let it be known that I love my bass, but you will never mistake me for a basshead. The 4.40bt offered up quite a bit of the sub frequencies (it was essentially a crusher without the headphone shake gimmick) but I actually found it very fatiguing on the ears. The mdr100abn is a headphone that I can listen for an hour.. take em off and still feel like I could put them back on and keep listening. The sound signature is pretty much what I have read, a warm "listeners" sound in which I needed to boost the low and high end only slightly (poweramps 10 band eq, ) to suit my taste, I really like a good thump with crisp highs. With that I was able to set it and forget it, the sony's sounded great on all music genres without needing further eq touching.

It is also so far the best sounding wireless connection I have come across, the quality hit was very low. I don't spend a lot of money on my headphones but I like to make sure my other areas are strong, phone DACs, AptX support, and high quality versions of songs (I currently run around with my best stuff high bitrate AAC files made from my own FLAC libraries). So with AptX, honestly I only find one song that I can notice a definite fail point, the high end of when the chorus starts up at 1:17, it is so busy it turns to mush on re-compression. On the 4.40bt there was a definite quality difference between wireless and wired (which was unpowered to boot) but these sonys do such a good job I don't feel like I need to reach for the wire now. I also tried out a plain old SBC connection to my laptop and was yet impressed again when I actually found the sound to still be very enjoyable. I didn't notice the breakdown in the high and low end I usually do with SBC, instead the over all sound just sounded a little softer, usually I noticed it in vocals. I really wish I could play with the Ldac protocol on it but sadly I have no other sony devices around to use it. I should see android 0 not so long after release (galaxy s8) but that is still so many months away. For kicks and giggles I tried a wired connection with the amp turn down. Despite what everyone said I actually got a LOUDER sound with the amp turned off using my phones headphone jack. However I needed to use a bit more eqlizer work and I still couldn't get the mid range restored to "normal". So yea, funny things happen when you bypass the amp.

As for its noise canceling, I can't find much to complain about. It works quite well as long as you don't ask for impossible feats, but alas I am one of those people who get horribly nauseated because of the high pressure effect NC produces so I always have it off.

if I had to rate which music types I found this performed best with it would be electric, drum and bass, trap. Some of my rock albums sounded real good while some suffered, but that could be just me not liking how they are mixed. It is amazing how many songs I prefer a live show version over the cd version because of the mixing.

 

[jeffmd]

Yay for anniversaries! So I am really dismayed about the lack of excitement on such an exciting pair of headphones. I still jam to my pair, and having full LDAC support on my galaxy 8 has only increased its appeal to me. I see new versions of the headsets with the likes of the WH-1000XM2 and wh-h900n come and go and think "pfft...side grades" no real reason to upgrade. Also it looks like you can find some color variants (black, atm) that are on sale for $169 from some good store fronts. I can tell you, you will NOT find a pair of better wireless headphone for that price. I would hate to see these get lost in the sea of mid range headphones.

Lately I have been getting into electro swing, the bass line mixed with the 60s band style instruments is just so catchy.