Hi guys
Happy owner of the H9 for a week now, and I just took the plane with them so I figure a few would want to hear my opinion.
For the record, I never tried the B&W P7 (love the P5s though), nor the Sony MDR.
Also, I will talk about the wireless experience as it's the thing people want to know about.
> I own the H7, which I love, and the H9 are just the upgrade I wanted.
> Design (argilla grey for me), build quality...etc : I guess there's no real debate here. They're gorgeous.
> I was surprised by the sound signature. Bass-heavy indeed. It surprised me at first. So far, I use the app, which is great, and the H9s respond perfectly. You can see that it's quality when you move that EQ, it responds smoothly and notably. I read that after burn-in, the sound got less bassy, so that's good to know but I'm fine using the app.
> ANC. I have to say that I knew ANC wouldn't be that powerful, or at least as powerful as the qc35 (which I owned) (never tried the Sonys), mostly because I had read it on here. But that was not a problem for me, on the contrary. Nonethelesw, I still bought the H9 because of it (to upgrade my H7) so it was a big deal for me. See, the reason I returned my QC35 was that the ANC was actually too powerful, in a way it affects the experience, it affects sound quality by putting a sort of pressure on sound (in my experience anyway). To me ANC must be clever. It must eliminate the frequencies that will affect your listening, that willreally distort the sound signature of your headphones. It must not eliminate all surrounding noises. You don't judge ANC by putting it on with no music. I think b&o have the same vision. And I'm very happy with the H9's ANC, as it's really important to me, I take the train to work everyday. It allows me to enjoy my music perfectly, even though I can sometimes hear a guy speaking, a car honking or any everyday urban noise. The lower frequencies that affect my listening are cleaned very well, and my music detaches itself clearly and enjoyably.
So in the plane, it was the same. You have many different noises in a plane, at various frequencies. I could still hear some of them, but my musical experience was made very enjoyable thanks to the H9's ANC and the good people at B&O.
Cheers
Xavier