Reviews by jeffmd

jeffmd

Head-Fier
Pros: Wireless sound quality, comfortable, full gamut of options
Cons: wired non amplified sounds is pretty meh.
I'm just going to cut and paste my forum writeup. Has one media link that hopefully carries over.

So this headphone went through a slew of sales 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.
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jeffmd

Head-Fier
Pros: Good looks, unique cable design, Great sounds, Greater bass response, Tons of ear fittings
Cons: I wish the jack was L shaped but it IS metal so it is hard to damage.
I bought these 9 months ago and they are still going strong. I bring them to work with me every day, storing them in a GPS pouch I picked up in a store. I was replacing a pair of klipsch S4's that had succumbed to driver flex. I read a number of good reviews on these and the price was just right so I put my money on these. In the past I have had headphones like the Grado s60 (Love it, only reason I don't have it today is the cord kept breaking all over the place) and sennheisers 280pro (Not enough bass for me so I ended up giving them away). I continued going with earbuds because I needed maximum portability and after the S4 I was convinced earbuds can be just as good as cans. 
 
So after spending way to much time testing the ear inserts to find which one I was most comfortable with (I was impressed to see the nozzles have grills to keep dirt out and yet not effect sound quality negatively) I put them through their paces. I did not need any break in time to get a satisfactory sound with these either. I went through my favorite songs and was happy with all of them. I find that these do bass even better then my s4's and I really do not need to touch my EQlizer. In fact currently I only have poweramps Tone button active which increases treble and bass slightly. The style of music I listen to is fairly unique, I guess if you want you could call it instrumental fusion. My Fav artist are sound composer and producers Kajiura Yuki and Sawano Hiroyuki, and their music features a heavy amount of orchestra work mixed with modern band instruments. Kajiura also features heavy chorus vocal work. These styles stress Lows, mids, and highs and I have been very happy with these headphones in all these areas, especially the bass. As a side note, all of my favorite albums are lossless, I try and avoid keeping MP3 around if I can avoid it. No amount of bitrate can keep MP3 from murdering highs. I do listen to popular music as well, I tell anyone who ask what types I listen to "I will listen to everything that isn't gangsta rap and country". I do have a soft spot for classic rock and 80's music too, but I don't have any in my collection. 
 
As for its comfort and fit, I find them fine and more comfortable than my S4's. The reason behind this however is because my S4's I really had to plug them in my ear to reduce sibilance and max out the bass response, this also improved its sound isolation. I do not need to put the Ostry buds that far into my ear to hit its sweet spot and that means better comfort, but it also means more sound leaks past them. I still can't hear anyone talking when the music is going though.  
 
Many people have complained about it's construction, they must be just throwing their headphones in their pocket with their phone and keys cause mine are still in perfect condition (So are my S4's which I carried in the same pouch). So if you actually take care of your headphones and don't abuse them, these will last just fine. 
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