Huge Comparison of [almost] all the Best Bluetooth Headphones - post your own comparisons here

[291835]

I recently snatched up a pair of AKG Y45BTs at the sale price of $99 Canadian. They sound good for the sale price. The Jabra Move regularly goes for about the same price and sounds roughly on par. I actually give a slight edge to the Move in clarity, soundstage, and balance. But it's close and you need to fiddle to get good seal on the Move. The Y45BT is less finicky about seal and just barely fits my large head at max headsize setting. The Y45BT's cups swivel way more than the Move's cups which I think helps Y45BT achieve better seal. Either way, a pretty good complement headphone to my Move. It's so convenient to have a BT headphone already charged up when another is dead or dying. First world problems!

 

[Giogio]

i will for denon and sony 1abt to come out then decide as i dont want to spend money and after a month be struck with regret especially both will be out soon

That's a good idea.
Another idea would be, buy the Urbanite now, in Amazon. 30 days return policy. Try them. Give them back.
So you will not stay without Headphone for one month. And you will have a better idea of what to buy when you will try the Denon and the Sony.
 

First world problems!

Yeah
I will give the Move a try. Didn't you try the Revo? They were not so problematic with sealing. And I do not have a big head.
Wirecutter say they are not much above the Move. Wait, let me see how they say.
"slightly better low frequency range" they say.
Sounds good to me
Specially considering that those guys are severely allergic to bass. People able to say that the JBL E40 are a bit boosted in the bass, one of the most dramatically bass lacking headphone in the history of headphones, the headphone which I would buy if I would love the Beatles but hate Paul McCarthney...
No. We surely have very differend concept about what "bassy" means...
So, if they say the Revo have slightly better low frequency range, it means the Move suck at bass
The Revo were just ok at bass for me. Less than that, it's no go in my world.
 
How do you compare the bass of the Move and that of the Y45BT?
Did you try decreasing the 200 to 400hz of 3db on them?  This gives them a much better sound, less darkness/muddiness, more clarity.
You can eventually increase a bit something in the higher region.
If then you boost the 40 to 80, you will se what a little miracle you have there...
So much power in so much portability. I don't think the Move are anywhere near to their portability.
What do you have, black or white?

 

[Sound Eq]

no amazon here in israel

 

[291835]

Giogio. With a good seal, I find the Move to have slightly deeper bass than the Y45BT. It also sounds more natural than the Y45BT's low end which sounds boosted and sometimes interferes with the mids.

I haven't tried the Revo. It's on my wishlist if it ever falls to $100. But the bass on the Move sounds just right. No EQ necessary.

 

[Giogio]

Would you mind comparing the ATH, M2BT, and the S1+ for me?
I am thinking about the three I mentioned above, and want to go with the one with the best, most spacious soundstage.
Music types: alternative rock mostly: incubus, kings of leon, foo fighters. Newer alt rock bands like alt-j, and some electronic being mixed in there as well: matt and kim for example.
The electronic music im not really caring about soundstage, but the music with actual instruments being played, I enjoy hearing instrument placement from a good soundstage.

  Quote:

  Gladly.
It would help if you could provide a few links to some songs which you consider particularly representative of the kind of sound which the headphones must be able to render well, and if you could explain your expectations/tastes in matter of sound signature, as also your habits (or will of changing them) regard the use of EQ.
You could also explain what did you like or dislike in the sound of the M2AEBT.

you may have missed my previous answer.
 
Anyway, answering your question is actually easier than I first thought.
The ATH are already out of the equation. They have an ok soundstage, but not a particularly good one.
The three best BT Headphones for Soundstage after the wonderful M2AEBT are:
AKG K845BT
Stance S1+
Fidelio M2BT
Tha AKG are the ones with the deepest soundstage.
The S1+ are the ones with the widest soundstage.
The Fidelio are a middle way of both.
The three sound very good, and the three are almost perfect with the music you named (I have listened to Incubus "Drive", Foo Fighters "Best of You", alt-J "Breezeblocks", Kings of Leon "Sex on Fire", and Matt & Kim "Daylight").
The AKG have the coldest sound signature. It is anyway not a clinical cold. But surely not warm.
The Stance the warmest. The difference between the two is really huge, like a tube amp vs a digital amp.
The Fidelio are a middle way.
 
Of those three, the Fidelio are the only one which can give you the amount of bass you need for electronic music. Although you did not name any Band or Dj, so I cannot know which kind of Electronic music you like. Maybe you do not need/want so much bass.
But for more serious bass, only the Fidelio can do that (actually on that alt-J track I felt it could be too much bass for some people).
They are also the more aggressive, and this was good on the Foo Fighter track.
The Incubus track was great with the Stance.
The alt-J one was magic with the AKG.
 
Your call

 

[Giogio]

  no amazon here in israel

what about Palestine?

 
 

With a good seal, I find the Move to have slightly deeper bass than the Y45BT. It also sounds more natural than the Y45BT's low end which sounds boosted and sometimes interferes with the mids

Try the subtractive EQ -3db from 200 to 400 hz. It helps a lot.

 

[n00b2]

@kayza If it is just the biggest soundstage you are after then the Definitive Technology Symphony 1 should be considered as well. Much deeper and wider soundstage than the Momentum Wireless and AKG K845BT. Easily the best soundstage I have heard for a closed headphone. The sound signature is similar to the AKG.
 
 

 

[n00b2]

Originally Posted by Giogio /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
I am using the Azio BTD-V401 and, I could try to do that, but, I am not sure. When I used the Azio without installing the CSR Harmony, the sound was terrible. I do not believe that the native Windows BT Stack is responsible, I think it is the SBC codec and/or chip and/or hardware used by Azio, which maybe only give good sound with Aptx.
Also, CSR Harmony is such a pain in the ass, to uninstall it and reinstall it well you must go in the Registry manually, look for half an hour for all the voices with CSR and delete them (paying attention that some of them are related to a windows service called csrss and which has got nothing to do with CSR and is ESSENTIAL for the OS).
Once, when I have installed the Plantronics updater software, which also installs CSR drivers, everything crashed, the Dongle was no more recognized, I had to uninstall the two thing (plantronics and harmony) clean the registry...
No, sorry, I do not want to risk again
But I will see if I can get from Avantree their SBC Class 1 Dongle. They are already sending me the Saturn Pro so that I can test headphones with that too, and I can also see the difference between it and the Avantree Clipper (a receiver for wired headphones, which I find very good).

 
Fair enough. Bluesoleil does sometimes work with another competing stack installed on the computer and from my experience has often fixed dongles which were using low quality SBC on the standard windows stack. If you don't want to uninstall CSR then you could just install Bluesoleil over the top of it and connect using that instead. See if that works and forces the AKG to use SBC. Then just uninstall Bluesoleil or do a system restore once done.

 

[Sound Eq]

here in israel they sell the momentum wireless but i do not see anything that says sennheiser momentum2 bluetooth
 
is there only one model of the momentum wireless, as i do not want to end up buying an old model

 

[Sound Eq]

man tyll review for the wireless momentum totally is opposite what i thought u told me
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzKIAIhH--M
 
man his review totally made me think to avoid the momentum wireless completely
 
and he says at the end of the video that the meelectronics which costs 99 usd sounds better than the momentum

 

[AcademicBarzo]

Reviews are opinions. Everyone has differing opinions, so people will have different, and equally valid, views about equipment. One person's ideal headphones are not ideal for someone else. Plus, with respect, I think you are being very selective in the bits of the review you quote. The headphones are added to the wall of fame which is an accolade of their overall quality.

 

[kayza]

here in israel they sell the momentum wireless but i do not see anything that says sennheiser momentum2 bluetooth

is there only one model of the momentum wireless, as i do not want to end up buying an old model

There has only been one generation of momentum headphones come out that have bluetooth, and they are called Momentum Wireless. That said, there are two models: around ear (AEBT) and on ear (OEBT). The around ear are more expensive.

 

[kayza]

  Quote:
you may have missed my previous answer.

Anyway, answering your question is actually easier than I first thought.
The ATH are already out of the equation. They have an ok soundstage, but not a particularly good one.
The three best BT Headphones for Soundstage after the wonderful M2AEBT are:
AKG K845BT
Stance S1+
Fidelio M2BT
Tha AKG are the ones with the deepest soundstage.
The S1+ are the ones with the widest soundstage.
The Fidelio are a middle way of both.
The three sound very good, and the three are almost perfect with the music you named (I have listened to Incubus "Drive", Foo Fighters "Best of You", alt-J "Breezeblocks", Kings of Leon "Sex on Fire", and Matt & Kim "Daylight").
The AKG have the coldest sound signature. It is anyway not a clinical cold. But surely not warm.
The Stance the warmest. The difference between the two is really huge, like a tube amp vs a digital amp.
The Fidelio are a middle way.

Of those three, the Fidelio are the only one which can give you the amount of bass you need for electronic music. Although you did not name any Band or Dj, so I cannot know which kind of Electronic music you like. Maybe you do not need/want so much bass.
But for more serious bass, only the Fidelio can do that (actually on that alt-J track I felt it could be too much bass for some people).
They are also the more aggressive, and this was good on the Foo Fighter track.
The Incubus track was great with the Stance.
The alt-J one was magic with the AKG.

Your call

Thank you very much for your input. I think I'm going to have to get all three, and also get the Def Tech Symphony 1 as Noob2 recommended. Unfortunately, I also want to try the Denons and the A1BTs from Sony when they are available. I suppose I'll have to wait until they are all released and available with Amazon Prime, drop $2,000+ on 6 headphones, with plans to return 5 of them. I feel bad doing that, but that's the cost of business when a company doesn't pay for brick and mortar locations for customers to find the right product for themselves.

Also, what differences are there between Fidelio M1BT and M2BT? What HiFi says it is just the addition of nfc and a different textured headband on the M2, and they also say no change in the sound. Is this true?

 

[Giogio]

   
Fair enough. Bluesoleil does sometimes work with another competing stack installed on the computer and from my experience has often fixed dongles which were using low quality SBC on the standard windows stack. If you don't want to uninstall CSR then you could just install Bluesoleil over the top of it and connect using that instead. See if that works and forces the AKG to use SBC. Then just uninstall Bluesoleil or do a system restore once done.

One of the first things I do when I install Windows is disabling the System Restore
I have found that it makes things worse and it should be only used as an emergency thing, so I rather prefer to know what I do and avoid emergency situations.
I would not willingly use that thing, ever.
Anyway, I have a, supposedly, official answer of AKG, via Email:
"K845BT does support APT-X . Es ist uns, die vergessen haben, diese Tatsache zu dokumentieren. Dies ist keine Änderung des Produkts,es ist immer so gewesen."
Translation: "K845BT supports APT-X. We forgot to document this fact. There was no change in the product, it was always like this".
So, no reason to do other tests.
Although if Avantree sends me their SBC Class 1 Dongle to test headphones with SBC, I may still have to install that bluesoleil... But in that case it would not be a drama, because I would have the Saturn for Aptx.
 

  man tyll review for the wireless momentum totally is opposite what i thought u told me
and he says at the end of the video that the meelectronics which costs 99 usd sounds better than the momentum

@AcademicBarzo answered you correctly.
It is not a matter of what you read somewhere. Each reviewer has got his own tastes and ideology on what a good headphone is.
It is a matter of what YOU need, for YOUR tastes, YOUR ears, and the music which YOU listen to.
You asked for something with good bass and warm sound. This is NOT what the MEElectronics can give you.
If you would have asked for a cheap headphone which could sound balanced and flat with a rather fresh to cold signature and an almost neutral bass response and a no more than decent soundstage, I may have talked of MEElectronics.
Btw, we suggested you the Urbanite and you talk again of the Momentum, and now you want to believe in Mr.Tyll doing the miracles of multiplications of Bread and Fishes and generating headphones which at 99 sound universally and objectively better than the 449 Momentum, which as AcademicBarzo told you is a misinterpretation of his review extrapolating just a part of it.
I do not have much more to say.
GO. Buy the MEElectronics.
As soon as you receive them, and listen to Blind Melon with them, I will watch you asking yourself "what did I do?"

There has only been one generation of momentum headphones come out that have bluetooth, and they are called Momentum Wireless. That said, there are two models: around ear (AEBT) and on ear (OEBT). The around ear are more expensive.

Not only more expensive.
Also very different sounding.
The On Ear have a very much inferior soundstage, a punchier bass compared to the more uncontrolled and rumbling one of the Over Ear, more highs (which are a bit harsh), less presence in the Mids, a more v-shaped aggressive engaging signature, not warm and smooth and refined as the Over Ear.
 
 

Also, what differences are there between Fidelio M1BT and M2BT? What HiFi says it is just the addition of nfc and a different textured headband on the M2, and they also say no change in the sound. Is this true?

 
The M2 uses a different DSP which gives them a better soundstage, more spacious, or, like somebody wrote here, 3D.
They also have a bit deeper bass on paper. You may not be able to perceive it in reality, unless you listen to really deep bass songs like those hip hop things which people listen to in cars with subwoofers which take the whole back of the car.
They also are Multipoint.

 

[Sound Eq]

I am buying beats wireless end of story