[lindrone]

I was just randomly browsing around eBay a couple of days ago, and decided to grab a Sennheiser PXC250 to see exactly how well the noise cancellation work on these things.

They just came in today.. first impression is.. well.. they sound pretty much like the PXC200's... When you turn the noise cancellation on though, the sound characteristic does change just ever-so-slightly.

The sibilance from some of the vocals are more controlled with the noise cancellation turned on, the bass reaches just a little bit deeper. Overall though, this is still a pair of headphone with rolled off highs and lows.

I was also very surprised that I had to turn on my iPod to very, very high volume level to drive these headphones. They're harder to drive than my A900 straight from the iPod. Is this normal?

The noise cancellation works a ton better than the Philips HN-100 I had before. However, the HN-100 is more comfortable since it is circumaural.... Build quality of the PXC250 is much better though.

Either way, noise cancellation is still no substitue for the isolation you get from a good pair of canalphones.. oh wellz. It's a fun headphone to share with people.. just to show them what noise cancellation does, I suppose.

 

[Permonic]

Thanks for the info. Interesting. I would appreciate if you could you later describe in more details how much they cancel ambient noise e.g. in bus, train, on the busy street, etc. My SR-80's don't seal noise so I consider to buy closed & portable cans. I have several options and PX-200's or PX-250's are among them.

 

[ls20]

Quote:

Originally posted by Permonic Thanks for the info. Interesting. I would appreciate if you could you later describe in more details how much they cancel ambient noise e.g. in bus, train, on the busy street, etc. My SR-80's don't seal noise so I consider to buy closed & portable cans. I have several options and PX-200's or PX-250's are among them.

ive had px200, and they dont seal/isolate enough to the point that it eliminates the transportation drone...

i now have the eggos, which fares slightly better on my uses on the bus

ive auditioned the v6 a bunch and found their isolation to be minimal..against what everyone else says

i imagine there are better choices out there

 

[bangraman]

It is a 300 ohm phone (with minimal amping) after all. The sound goes somewhere between the PX200 and the 100 but better, since the in-cup resonances of the 200 are removed by the NC process.


You can still hear people talking. Beyond a few hundred hertz the cancellation no longer has an effect on the noise attenuation and you're relying on the closed nature of the phones, which doesn't keep a lot of noise out... although I'm consistently impressed at how good a job they do bearing in mind the size of the cups.


The transportation drone is what the PXC250 does an excellent job against. Jet engine noise, fan noise, bus engine noise, etc are all reduced by impressive levels.

 

[lindrone]

Hmm.. I didn't even realize they were 300ohms.. just got them for the heck of it before I even checked out the specs. They're almost as hard to drive as the HD580 and such.. lol.

To Bangra's point, they are very, very good against engine noise. You can notice it even when walking on the street with the noise cancellation turned on. However, noise cancellation is only good against certain frequencies.

For example, the train that I ride to work everyday has a different frequency noise than your normal car or airplane engine, so the noise is reduced, but not the perfect silence or anything even remotely like that.

It is reduced far enough to allow you to enjoy the music at a lower volume, so that's the important thing. Canalphones are still so much better though, in any regard.

The benefit of noise cancellation phone, is that you can still have a conversation with them on, and still hear phone rings and other things like that. Of course, given that the volume isn't high enough to drown out those other sounds.

 

[was ist los?]

I may get these very soon. Can someone tell me how long the battery life of the NC circuit is? Also what type of batteries and how many?

 

[lindrone]

2 AAA's.. and I have no idea how long they'll last.. ?

 

[Duncan]

Quote:

Originally posted by was ist los? I may get these very soon. Can someone tell me how long the battery life of the NC circuit is? Also what type of batteries and how many?

They last absolutely ages... i'd hazard a guess at 70-80hrs maybe more... I've had mine 6 months or so now, and am only on the second set of cells

 

[cannedheat]

Alkaline AAAs last approximately 45 to 50 hours. I do agree that the iPod has difficulty driving these headphones, and my Supermicro is a necessity.

 

[was ist los?]

Duncan, how often do you use your PXC-250s?

 

[Duncan]

was ist los?...

As said in my post above, I think a relatively accurate estimation for me would be 70-80hrs of use, as i'm thinking thats how much i've used them for in the past six months (thats not a lot at all really is it

)

I may be wildly wrong, and it could be a lot more than that, but I honestly cannot see it being less than that...

maybe its somewhere in the middle of mine, and cannedheats estimations, the really crappy thing is, there is no official line from Sennheiser, either on their website, or on the packaging, to give you their specs on playback life

 

[cannedheat]

I'll bet Duncan's estimate is more-realistic than mine. My second set of batteries is still running after 60 to 70 hours of use. Sorry for the underestimate. My apologies.