Sennheiser PXC 550-II

Full disclosure: I loved the original PXC 550's. After a year-long search for the perfect on-to-go cans, starting at the 50x and 40x and MSR7 Audio-Technicas, to the Meze 99 Classics, and I was feeling like nothing was really getting there. On the ANC route the Bose Quietcomfort and Sony WM-X10003's simply didn't have the fidelity I needed to truly enjoy my music besides hearing that it was there. I'd read the PXC 550's were a little bright (Tyll's review said as much) but figured I'd give it a whirl, and was glad I did -- they were great. They were not as cutting-edge as the competition but the ANC I found ample enough to suit my needs, the comfort was good, and the music! The music sounded incredible, brilliantly resolving with ample linear bass that could come across as almost light but in keeping with the Senny house sound. (In fact I'd say the PXC 550's are really very similar to the HD800 insofar as sound signature, albeit a touch less guilty of occasional sibilance.)

Lo and behold, however, my pair started experiencing some connectivity issues. I sent it in to Sennheiser, who very kindly swapped it out for the newly refreshed sequel to the 550's. I was slightly concerned to be getting the II's instead of my coveted 1's -- why mess with greatness, if it ain't broke, etc -- but am really happy that I was given the update as it's just like the 550's except just a touch more refined, both in sound and overall aesthete, and the many strengths of the originals have been merely bolstered by the refresh. Nothing's been reinvented, but nothing needed to be.

The key changes are that this pair now has a button for Voice Assistant, instead of to change sound profiles (alternating bassiness, basically -- which I never used anyway), and the new model also has all the most recent Bluetooth and wireless codecs. It still has Micro-USB, and not the more-current-gen USB-C, though why this bothers people so much is somewhat beyond me. Maybe I'd feel different if my phone used USB-C and then I'd mourn the could-have-been of using one cable for all of my electronics, but as stands both my Kindle and now my headphones use the same USB port, so I'm cool with it, and whatever extra features USB-C would provide (faster charging, easier to plug in) I'm fairly indifferent to.

Onwards. As far as audio quality, it really sounds like pretty much the same sound profile as the original PXC 550's -- balanced. Great timbre/punch in the midrange. Snares sound like snare drums and not some idea of a snare drum. Crystalline highs, no murkiness (looking at you Sony), muscular yet defined bass (and now at you, Mezes). Sound-wise not much has changed except maybe, maybe an improvement in overall clarity. I'm not one who connipses over audio codecs and lossy vs lossless streaming -- I recently switched from an LG V40 to iPhone (for work) and didn't notice any difference between the two wirelessly with the original PXC 550's, despite the fact that the V40 was using the Latest and Greatest AptX whilst the lowly iPhone only provided BT 4.0. Like, really, no difference. And so now with the Model II using BT 5.0 it is, in theory, going to be an upgrade -- and really, maybe it is. For all I know that's what the change in 'clarity' is. And granted it's been a few weeks since I'd listened to the original PXC's, but even if there is an improvement it's a marginal one; there's maybe ever-so-slightly more of a black-ground to the music, everything is ever-so-slightly more pristine. It's not worth sweating over, except for the fact that video now has no perceivable lag between the audio when watching Youtube on my phone, let's say. (To provide further context: I am one of those that feels they can differentiate pretty clearly between DACs. I am not an 'objectivist' in the sense of measurements being the end-all-be-all metric of fidelity. Yet Bluetooth codecs just don't seem to make much of an impact at all to sound, in my estimation.)

A surprising improvement would be with the noise-cancelling. I've noticed that overall ambient sound dampening is much better than the previous model in that it does a really great job even tuning out voices and aberrant noise, not just more drone-y or atmospheric noise, which was more the previous model's forte. The Listen-Through mode (my favorite implementation of it among the ANC brands -- a double-tap on the touchpad and you're listening to your surroundings through the headphones' mics, another tap and you're back to the music: much better than Sony and Bose's methods of using similar features) is much more subtle and smoothly initialized than the old model.

So if you have the original PXC 550's and are thinking of upgrading -- wait 'til they're on sale; they're not worth the price of a full purchase as an upgrade. It's a shame that Sennheiser asks for so much for these because honestly if they were to undercut the Sony and Bose offerings by a little more, they could be real commercial contenders in the On-the-Go Noise Cancelling market. But Sennheiser isn't a household name with your average Joe or Joe-ette and so people are probably simply less likely to give it a whirl -- which is unfortunate, because as of now, the PXC 550 II's are the best portable headphones available on the market. (Yes, better than Momentums.)