Active Noise Cancelling, not everyone wants it.

[oldngray]

I’m after a nice sounding pair of Bluetooth headphones that I can throw into my everyday backpack to use when I’m out and about. My simple requirements are small format ( onear suites me best), at least fold flat, bluetooth, earpads that are not pleather so leather or velour, no anc and closed back. Full size headphones that I have and like the sound of are sennheiser 6 series, grado, athR70x, oppo pm3 so you can see that I don’t like big bass and like slightly forward mids. Browsing the internet the usual ones come up, Bose, Sony, sennheiser, hifiman but they are all too bulky and have anc. I’m sure that there are brands out there that would fit my needs but I can’t seem to find them. The old worn out pair that I use at the moment are 15 years old but finally falling apart and they are plantronics sense which I found to be almost perfect for my needs. I also have been using B&o wired h6 which I rather like but would prefer Bluetooth. A lot of brands cannot be accessed in Australia, the koss porta pro wireless 2.0 and the fiio snowsky anytime are examples and reviews of them are hard to find. It would appear that all headphone designers think that everyone wants big bulky overear headphones with anc but I’m sure many are looking for the same as I want, I would be grateful for some recommendations. I have inear headphones but much prefer good onear headphones.

 

[AndreRitter]

Forgive my statement of the obvious but you can usually turn ANC off.

 

[oldngray]

Forgive my statement of the obvious but you can usually turn ANC off.

I believe that you can turn anc off on most headphones but after reading many forums it would appear that headphones with anc are usually designed and tuned to sound their best with anc on and if turned off sound quality can diminish to varying degrees from very little to dramatically. Furthermore headphones with anc often are more bulky and I would rather pay for headphones where all the effort has gone into good build and sound quality rather than paying for a technology (anc) that I will never use. At the end of the day if I can find a pair of headphones that satisfy all my requirements other than anc then I will buy them and turn anc off but my preference is no anc.