[Techfixation]

Absolutely it is better. I called B&W and spoke with their technical support department where it was confirmed that the P7 wireless has an all new driver design from that of the P7 wired so sound signature differences make sense. The ear pads are also different in terms of the material used inside if I remember correctly.

Yes as well as an improved driver the wireless version use more of a memory foam in their pads which take longer to regain shape opposed to the standard foam in the wired version that bounce back right away. They've also redesigned the frame of the pad slightly so that it better seals the cable port.

 

[msturg29]

Hi All,
 
If anyone is interested in my thoughts.... I received the Onkyo H500BT and the Sony MDR-XZ770BT. 
 
The Sony's sound pretty good, nice balanced sound.  I switched to "high quality" sound and overall bass response improved.  They are comfortable, but get warm after a short time.  For $100 they are pretty good in my opinion. 
 
Now the Onkyo, you guys werent kidding.  These things sound amazing.  The instruments are brough forward enough where I can hear each of the instruments on Beck's Loser and Jethro Tull's Locomotive Breath.  I havent had such a nice sounding pair.  They are also pretty comfortable for an on-ear headphone.  I really want to keep them, but not sure I can afford the $240 price tag....  

 

[Sonic Defender]

  Hi All,
 
If anyone is interested in my thoughts.... I received the Onkyo H500BT and the Sony MDR-XZ770BT. 
 
The Sony's sound pretty good, nice balanced sound.  I switched to "high quality" sound and overall bass response improved.  They are comfortable, but get warm after a short time.  For $100 they are pretty good in my opinion. 
 
Now the Onkyo, you guys werent kidding.  These things sound amazing.  The instruments are brough forward enough where I can hear each of the instruments on Beck's Loser and Jethro Tull's Locomotive Breath.  I havent had such a nice sounding pair.  They are also pretty comfortable for an on-ear headphone.  I really want to keep them, but not sure I can afford the $240 price tag....  

Find a way to keep them if you can mate, given how anything as good or better sounding costs more, it is a good price. Where did you purchase the H500BT from? Glad you are enjoying them, and as you get more acclimated to the signature you will really start to appreciate them even more. It is a shame more people haven't tried them. Cheers.

 

[msturg29]

Interestingly enough they came from Target... of all places didnt expect to find there.  Ugh  if only $40 cheaper... have to figure it out. 
 
Thanks for the recommendation!!!

 

[RonO]

I had the B&W P7's and while I loved the sound, they were quite uncomfortable to wear for more than about 30 minutes.  Additionally, they hiss at all times when using the BT connection.  Can any of you that have the Onkyo comment on the background? Is there hiss or static?  Is it completely black and silent?  A secondary use of the HP for me is for listening to podcasts, and with spoken word, there is a lot of gaps in conversation (silence), where it's just full of hiss (on a P7).  Thanks in advance for your feedback.

 

[Techfixation]

I had the B&W P7's and while I loved the sound, they were quite uncomfortable to wear for more than about 30 minutes.  Additionally, they hiss at all times when using the BT connection.  Can any of you that have the Onkyo comment on the background? Is there hiss or static?  Is it completely black and silent?  A secondary use of the HP for me is for listening to podcasts, and with spoken word, there is a lot of gaps in conversation (silence), where it's just full of hiss (on a P7).  Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Here's a post I wrote on the B&W P7 Wireless thread about a month ago after the same topic was brought up;

"The hiss you can hear is the headphone amp, I've tested over 20 pairs of the very best Bluetooth headphones and they all have it to some degree or other.

Many headphones hide it by switching off the amp when they can't detect a signal meaning the only time it can be heard is when it's being masked by the audio. The hiss will only then become apparent during quiet parts of a song or just after a song finishes or as the headphones are turned on.

I use Bluetooth headphones a lot for watching movies and the hiss becomes very apparent and quite distracting during spoken parts. This is one of the main reasons I've spent so long looking for the right pair!

One solution is to reduce the volume on the headphones and increase the source volume but this can create audio clipping (distortion) especially in the bass, however I find the P7 wireless cope very well with a lower volume and the hiss can be reduced to about a quarter. With the volume reduced they have one of the lowest levels of hiss I've experienced. The Onkyo H500BT's are also very good as are the majority of Sony's with the Sony XB950BT's having the least hiss out of all the headphones I've tried!

With my Bluetooth transmitter (Avantree Priva II) connected to my TV the P7's are always detecting a source and the hiss can always be heard whether any audio is playing or not. When connected to my iPhone the hiss can only be detected once a song starts but is hard to hear through the music.

If I have the P7's connected to the Priva II and start with the volume on max, I can then with each press of the volume - button reduce the hiss gradually until around half way when the hiss level can't be reduced any further. If I get any distortion then I can gradually up the volume until I find the right balance between headphone and source volume.

It's also worth mentioning that all songs/movies will have some sort of background hiss produced during their original recording, this shouldn't be confused with the headphone hiss. Some recordings are far worse than others, especially many older recordings.

Hope this helps!"

Also in answer to your question the Onkyos have one of the least noticeable hiss that I've experienced.

Another interesting thing is that I've recently been playing around with different pads for the P7's and this actually reduced the hiss significantly as the stock pads are rather thin meaning your ears are very close to the driver and cause the amp hiss to be far more audible!

 

[RonO]

Thanks for that reply.  I did send the P7's back, but right before doing so, I did flash them with the latest firmware update which greatly improved the volume control as far as going very quiet.  I had experimented with reducing the volume on my phone down to about 40-50% when listening to podcasts. After the update, it had so much more volume control, you could play it really quiet. Ultimately, I wasn't going to be satisfied paying the P7 price and getting that hiss.  At the lower Onkyo price, I may be more tolerant of it. I'm thinking we may be seeing a lot more BT phones coming out soon, and AptX HD eventually, so whatever I do get would be a holdover most likely. 

 

[Sonic Defender]

  ... and AptX HD eventually, so whatever I do get would be a holdover most likely. 

That assumes we can actually hear a difference between Apt X and Apt X HD, which frankly I'm sceptical about. I conducted a 7 subject, multiple trial blind listening tests at a head-fi meet I organized about three years ago. I wanted to see if listeners could tell the 320mp3 from the lossless master it was made from. With really good controls in place I can tell you that not one of the subjects could tell them apart at better than 50% accuracy so complete guessing. Two of the subjects going into it were cocky telling me they had tested themselves plenty of times and they were completely confident that they would have no issues at all.
 
This experience, and many others that I have read about or experienced leads me to believe that if the listener isn't told what they are listening to, they won't be able to tell a level matched Apt X from an Apt X HD stream, but I could be wrong.

 

[Ling Vu]

That assumes we can actually hear a difference between Apt X and Apt X HD, which frankly I'm sceptical about. I conducted a 7 subject, multiple trial blind listening tests at a head-fi meet I organized about three years ago. I wanted to see if listeners could tell the 320mp3 from the lossless master it was made from. With really good controls in place I can tell you that not one of the subjects could tell them apart at better than 50% accuracy so complete guessing. Two of the subjects going into it were cocky telling me they had tested themselves plenty of times and they were completely confident that they would have no issues at all.

This experience, and many others that I have read about or experienced leads me to believe that if the listener isn't told what they are listening to, they won't be able to tell a level matched Apt X from an Apt X HD stream, but I could be wrong.

I did do a quick comparison between AAC and AptxHD (iphone vs Lg v20) on DSR9BT notice a fairly clear upgrade in subbass and treble details at around 70% volume level. However, aac still sounds thicker than both aptx and aptxHD in my opinion, the aptxs codecs seem to be more airy though.

 

[Sonic Defender]

I did do a quick comparison between AAC and AptxHD (iphone vs Lg v20) on DSR9BT notice a fairly clear upgrade in subbass and treble details at around 70% volume level. However, aac still sounds thicker than both aptx and aptxHD in my opinion, the aptxs codecs seem to be more airy though.

Sadly if you didn't do blind testing there is no real value in such things, but that is for the sound science forum so I will leave that alone.

 

[dfnj123]

Quick followup from my questions in this thread from two weeks ago.

I was able to find the new B&O headphones, Beoplay H4, for a little over 60$ off msrp - $240-ish + tax - with a St. Patrick's weekend sale.  Spent about 30 minutes listening to them and decided it was around the best deal I was going to get for a wireless, aac, on/over ear, non-active noise cancelling, headphones in that price range... so bought them 

They are a little flasher looking than I would have liked, and I would have preferred on-ear for portability usage.  The bass is also a bit over pronounced imo.  Not viewing that as a negative though since the bass isn't overpowering, just punchier than I used to.  Most of my prior headphones had a more balanced sound.  B&O does have an app for the iPhone to change the eq, so maybe I'll find a sound I'm more used to when playing around with those settings.

At the end of the day balanced sound isn't my highest priority when it comes bluetooth headphones as long as they are enjoyable to listen to... and enjoyable they are 

On the plus side the H4 is extremely comfortable to wear and light weight.  Build quality seems pretty good too.  Generally satisfied so far.

 

[Kuddabous]

Hello everybody, this is my first post.
I just tried the Avantree Audition Pro.
 
I can't comment on audio quality because I don't have enough expertise to do so, and also because I just listened to maybe 2 or 3 minutes of music with these headphone.
I just want to warn potential buyer of a 'feature' of these headphone that may (or may not) ruin your listening experience.
 
I tested the Avantree Audition Pro connected to an Avantree Priva III transmitter, connected to a Windows 10 computer using the supplied USB cable.
In this testing environment, the unbearable feature (for my own taste) is that these headphone will play a loud beep each and every single time that you change the volume.
They beep when you change the volume by using the headphone buttons.
They beep when you change the volume by using the windows keyboard media button.
They beep when you change the volume by using the computer mouse to click on the windows mixer.
 
Do you wan to go from min volume to max volume? prepare yourself to hear 10 or 20 beeps.
 
This feature render these headphone totally useless to me, your mileage may vary.
My main use-case is to use the headphone to listen to film and music playing on my computer, so I didn't test the headphone when connected to a smartphone, or other device.
 
Other than this feature, the headphone are nice, comfortable, and the music quality seem good.
Anyway, I didn't find any way to disable these beeps, so I'll return them.

 

[RadarJammer]

Android O will support:
 

 
http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/03/21/feature-spotlight-android-o-looks-like-it-will-add-support-for-aptx-bluetooth-streaming/
 

 

[Disturbd1]

Hello all
 
I have been a head-fi member for a number of years now, sort of coming and going, not spending my day-to-day here. So forgive me if the question I'm about to ask is old. I'd like to get opinion from more seasoned folk on a good pair of entry-level BT cans that pack a low end punch. I listen exclusively to rock, which I realize most don't necessarily associate with the "basshead" preference, but such is life. I've been doing some reading, the Ghostek GHOHP001 were touted as being pretty bass-heavy and have an excellent price tag. I would say that my ceiling here is ~$200, depending.
 
My humble thanks!

 

[minh278]

Long-time lurker here. Not sure if this helps anyone but i found the onkyo h500bt superior in nearly everything compared to the sennheiser on-ear wireless. My only complaint really would be that the sennheiser can sound better in a noisy area due to active noise cancelling and seems to have an easier time handling multiple bluetooth devices. The sennheiser is also a better headphone to run with (stays on the head better) and the build quality inspires more confidence in me). I still think the onkyo h500bt is worth it even though it was $220 vs $150.