[VICosPhi]

The AirPods Pro (APP) with factory sound are sounding better/more correct than mtw2, in my opinion, but the mtw2 having an eq app that helping making the sound better or for the taste of the user; the APP isn't having an eq. The microphone in the APP is better too and the transparency is better, very, very natural too, little better than the mtw2.

BUT the more big, BIG problem of the mtw2 is that the anc is complete rubbish, is like isn't exist. In contrast, the anc in the AirPods Pro is fantastic that competing with some of the best big headphones anc. The marketing from sennheiser of battery life of mtw2 isn't true, you never getting 7 hours, I obtaining 5,5 hours with no anc or transparency on, and with mid volume! The APP is more comfortable too because isn't going inside your ears but staying almost shallow and this is better for the ears. And the carrying case is many more portable than the case of the mtw2.

And if you're using the APP with Apple devices with more recent updates, you having more advantages too.

I returning the mtw2 only few days after I buying it.

Agreed regarding the MTW2 battery life, I only get 4.5 hours on APTX on my Android phone. According to Sennheiser, 7 hours battery life is only possible if you listen to music at 40% volume on AAC codec with all other features including EQ disabled, transparency disabled and phone is in your pocket when listening to music. ANC has very minimal effect too as you said, so agreed there as well.

However, sound quality wise, I have yet to find something close to MTW2 and feel they are very superior to other TWS.

 

[jagwap]

I went back as the H95 are back in stock at last, and of course went for another listen.

This time I new to select the high quality connection in android, and ensured aptx adaptive was on. I also mostly listened in neutral on the noise suppression setting, as there is a subtle difference, and the shop was quiet.

They are good. I like their presentation, even if the bass is elevated in the mid bass. The top end gets your attention without annoying you or being fatiguing. There is detail and focus, with good overall balance. Excellent job for a change B&O. The H6 was the last one I liked, but felt was a little uninvolving.

However I didn't buy them. The reason: my Mobius are slightly more musical. By that I mean when listening to an ensemble who are playing well together, the Mobius shows their cohesion with more clarity and joy. Take masters of rhythm like Bernard Purdey, and have him jam with Cornell Dupree and Gordon Edwards as on Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley's last track, and the H95 is fine, but doesn't wring out the playfulness like an Audeze headphone, or HD800. So as I have the Sine (somewhere, can't find them today) and the Mobius, I cannot justify these fine headphones. So I will continue to look out for a NC headphone that does this well.

 

[angelom]

They are good. I like their presentation, even if the bass is elevated in the mid bass. The top end gets your attention without annoying you or being fatiguing. There is detail and focus, with good overall balance. Excellent job for a change B&O. The H6 was the last one I liked, but felt was a little uninvolving.

I'm agree, I think b&o doing very good job with the treble (not in other h8/h9 models, specially h9i), only the shure sa50, in my opinion, doing little better, but the complete presentation is better in h95, with better mids and bass that giving very correct weight (never thick or thin) and very good layering.

Yep .. .Anyway, I will be doing a bit of A/B testing myself over the next week or two. No need for me to return the H95, I got them at 499 euros anyway. So no pain in keeping them longer.

When you having better, more complete, idea of the h95 sound (and other features), please write your impressions so I can adding to post #2 in this thread. Your experience with sa50 (and maybe other bt/anc headphones), like me, I'm sure is useful for other people.

 

[Thrifty Spender]

So the H95 came in today. My first impression is that the H95 just coming out of their box probably will have to go through a significant amount of burn-in first in order to "come loose" ... ...

Because currently my Shure Aonic 50 have way more soundstaging as well as a much more detailed and transparent mid-high .. But that's probably an unfair comparison given the fact that my Shure has already gone though 100s of ours of intensive usage ...

Question to the round: What is the current firmware revision level? My B&O app seems to have some difficulties connecting to the internet.

I totally agree with you. I just got the Silver one. i think that i need to burn in a bit and see. Right now, i can only hear that bass is intact. But everything else is not that much better than mu H9i yet.

 

[WDitters]

I totally agree with you. I just got the Silver one. i think that i need to burn in a bit and see. Right now, i can only hear that bass is intact. But everything else is not that much better than mu H9i yet.

How are you using it? On what device? I noticed for instance that there is an audible difference in SQ between AAC / APTX and on the higher end APTX-HD .. Unfortunately Samsung smartphones do not support APTX HD, so my B&O sounds audibly worse on my Note 20 Ultra. My Shure Aonic 50 however sounds exactly the same on my FiiO M15 and my Note 20 Ultra because it can use LDAC on both devices ....

 

[Thrifty Spender]

How are you using it? On what device? I noticed for instance that there is an audible difference in SQ between AAC / APTX and on the higher end APTX-HD .. Unfortunately Samsung smartphones do not support APTX HD, so my B&O sounds audibly worse on my Note 20 Ultra. My Shure Aonic 50 however sounds exactly the same on my FiiO M15 and my Note 20 Ultra because it can use LDAC on both devices ....

IPad and iphone. If u look at the box again. the H95 is made for iPad iPhone and iPods. That's why android users are having so much trouble.

 

[WDitters]

IPad and iphone. If u look at the box again. the H95 is made for iPad iPhone and iPods. That's why android users are having so much trouble.

Ok unfortunately that means that you currently do not hear the H95 at its full potential. I also have an iPhone XR, but I never use it for music purposes simply because the AAC codec operates (although very efficiently) only at 250kbps. APTX-HD offers more bandwith and the possibility to stream at 24bit/48Mhz

The qualification "made for Ipad iPhone and iPods" only says something about compatibility, not about sound quality. SQ unfortunately is defined by the maximum capabilities of the source material (spotify 320kbps versus Tidal or Qobuz 24/96) and the maximum capabilities of the codec (maximum bitrate / sample frequency) ..

Rule-of-thumb:
Codecs and Bitrates Comparison

• AAC: 250 kbps
• SBC: 328 kbps
• aptX: 352 kbps
• aptX HD: 576 kbps
• LDAC: 990 kbps

 

[Thrifty Spender]

Ok unfortunately that means that you currently do not hear the H95 at its full potential. I also have an iPhone XR, but I never use it for music purposes simply because the AAC codec operates (although very efficiently) only at 250kbps. APTX-HD offers more bandwith and the possibility to stream at 24bit/48Mhz

The qualification "made for Ipad iPhone and iPods" only says something about compatibility, not about sound quality. SQ unfortunately is defined by the maximum capabilities of the source material (spotify 320kbps versus Tidal or Qobuz 24/96) and the maximum capabilities of the codec (maximum bitrate / sample frequency) ..

Rule-of-thumb:
Codecs and Bitrates Comparison

• AAC: 250 kbps
• SBC: 328 kbps
• aptX: 352 kbps
• aptX HD: 576 kbps
• LDAC: 990 kbps

Yeah. but listening to AAC can still be nice with IEM. My only complain with my IEM is that soundstage seems to be non-existent. It. You can hear that the instruments are separated perfectly. but not together.

 

[MayaTlab]

Ok unfortunately that means that you currently do not hear the H95 at its full potential. I also have an iPhone XR, but I never use it for music purposes simply because the AAC codec operates (although very efficiently) only at 250kbps. APTX-HD offers more bandwith and the possibility to stream at 24bit/48Mhz

The qualification "made for Ipad iPhone and iPods" only says something about compatibility, not about sound quality. SQ unfortunately is defined by the maximum capabilities of the source material (spotify 320kbps versus Tidal or Qobuz 24/96) and the maximum capabilities of the codec (maximum bitrate / sample frequency) ..

Rule-of-thumb:
Codecs and Bitrates Comparison

• AAC: 250 kbps
• SBC: 328 kbps
• aptX: 352 kbps
• aptX HD: 576 kbps
• LDAC: 990 kbps

This is absolutely not at all how audio over Bluetooth codecs should be evaluated. Bitrate has some correlation with audio quality provided we're comparing different bitrates with the exact same codec.
These codecs vary very, very greatly in terms of how exactly do they compress data. aptX is actually the least sophisticated of them all. While this is no big deal in concrete terms it means, for example, that regular aptX has a built-in, sometimes audible, raised noise floor at higher frequencies that you can't get rid of : https://www.soundguys.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-bluetooth-aptx-and-aptx-hd-19914/

But even way more important is how exactly each one of these codecs is implemented on each individual devices, and how BT is implemented in general.

Soundguys evaluated AAC's implementation on various emitting devices and the results vary from crap to possibly the best audio over bluetooth codec we currently have overall (given that it only needs 256 kbps to send noise floor and distortion to inaudible levels and can reach high enough frequencies) : https://www.soundguys.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-bluetooth-headphones-aac-20296/
LDAC's actual bitrate vary depending on the device : https://www.soundguys.com/ldac-ultimate-bluetooth-guide-20026/
A good implementation of SBC can be just as excellent as aptX.
Etc.
So this is a device by device situation.

But, beyond codecs some BT implementations simply aren't that good and can introduce distortion / artefacts regardless of codec. A little test I like to do is simply to play single tones at various frequencies and particularly high ones (above 10 000hz), for example with from a website such as this one : https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
So far very few headphones I've tried pass this test without producing spurious tones at higher frequencies regardless of the codec that's selected. This year I've tried quite a few of the supposedly higher-end ANC BT headphones and most of them (M3, PX7, Bose 700, etc...) failed it (coincidentally most of them use the exact same SoC family from Qualcomm so perhaps the problem comes from there).

And finally the way these codecs are implemented may introduce other variables that may produce an audible difference, but that isn't related to the codec per se. For example, the decoding of one codec might happen on the main SoC, while for another a specific chip is used.

So the gist of it is quite simple : you absolutely cannot read a spec sheet, and even less just look at a codec's bitrate, and think that you can know with any form of exactitude how audio over bluetooth will sound.
This is a case by case basis and the whole audio over bluetooth chain needs to be taken into account, from the emitting device to the receiving one. You may have a pair of headphones that can handle LDAC 990, but your smartphone may be limited to LDAC 330, and this all says nothing at all anyway how exactly the SoC or electronics will handle the encoding / decoding process.
A pretty good primer on Bluetooth codecs IMO : https://habr.com/en/post/456182/

In the case of using the H95 with an iOS device, at the very least the emitting device's output should be totally fine. The big question is : how good exactly the H95's AAC implementation is ? How good its electronics are at handling audio over bluetooth in general ?

 

[WDitters]

This is absolutely not at all how audio over Bluetooth codecs should be evaluated. Bitrate has some correlation with audio quality provided we're comparing different bitrates with the exact same codec.
These codecs vary very, very greatly in terms of how exactly do they compress data. aptX is actually the least sophisticated of them all. While this is no big deal in concrete terms it means, for example, that regular aptX has a built-in, sometimes audible, raised noise floor at higher frequencies that you can't get rid of : https://www.soundguys.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-bluetooth-aptx-and-aptx-hd-19914/

But even way more important is how exactly each one of these codecs is implemented on each individual devices, and how BT is implemented in general.

Soundguys evaluated AAC's implementation on various emitting devices and the results vary from crap to possibly the best audio over bluetooth codec we currently have overall (given that it only needs 256 kbps to send noise floor and distortion to inaudible levels and can reach high enough frequencies) : https://www.soundguys.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-bluetooth-headphones-aac-20296/
LDAC's actual bitrate vary depending on the device : https://www.soundguys.com/ldac-ultimate-bluetooth-guide-20026/
A good implementation of SBC can be just as excellent as aptX.
Etc.
So this is a device by device situation.

But, beyond codecs some BT implementations simply aren't that good and can introduce distortion / artefacts regardless of codec. A little test I like to do is simply to play single tones at various frequencies and particularly high ones (above 10 000hz), for example with from a website such as this one : https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
So far very few headphones I've tried pass this test without producing spurious tones at higher frequencies regardless of the codec that's selected. This year I've tried quite a few of the supposedly higher-end ANC BT headphones and most of them (M3, PX7, Bose 700, etc...) failed it (coincidentally most of them use the exact same SoC family from Qualcomm so perhaps the problem comes from there).

And finally the way these codecs are implemented may introduce other variables that may produce an audible difference, but that isn't related to the codec per se. For example, the decoding of one codec might happen on the main SoC, while for another a specific chip is used.

So the gist of it is quite simple : you absolutely cannot read a spec sheet, and even less just look at a codec's bitrate, and think that you can know with any form of exactitude how audio over bluetooth will sound.
This is a case by case basis and the whole audio over bluetooth chain needs to be taken into account, from the emitting device to the receiving one. You may have a pair of headphones that can handle LDAC 990, but your smartphone may be limited to LDAC 330, and this all says nothing at all anyway how exactly the SoC or electronics will handle the encoding / decoding process.
A pretty good primer on Bluetooth codecs IMO : https://habr.com/en/post/456182/

In the case of using the H95 with an iOS device, at the very least the emitting device's output should be totally fine. The big question is : how good exactly the H95's AAC implementation is ? How good its electronics are at handling audio over bluetooth in general ?

Completely agreed.. I am not disputing that, but one has to start somewhere right? Thrifty Spender ended with a conclusion "That's why android users are having so much trouble".. That's as much a generalisation as the opposite "APTX-HD is better than AAC based on maximum throughput"... That's why it is so hard to provide a true value to how well a pair of headphones performs compared to another. There simply are so many variables that can be of influence. A poorly implemented codec versus a perfectly implemented one on another device. Ideally one levels the playing field by comparing multiple headphones with the same source material and the same codec. Spreading the comparison between headphones over multiple sources with differening codecs has a tendency of clouding the results...

 

[MayaTlab]

one has to start somewhere right?

Well where I start these days is by playing single tones through my HPs and listen for weird stuff . And boy do I frequently hear weird stuff when doing so (the Bose 700 was quite something, even at lower frequencies).
Single tones are a very synthetic way of evaluating audio over bluetooth so I can't really assert much when it comes to actual SQ with music, but if a manufacturer can't be bothered to design the electronics so that they play without audible distortion / artefact, at least beyond what the codec's built-in noise profile is (such as aptX's raised noise floor at higher frequencies), what that tells me is that they probably didn't care much at all to begin with (which is no surprise given how terrible the FR curves of most of the current high-end ANC BT headphones are anyway, so SQ clearly is optional even at higher price points it seems). And since some HPs pass these tests with flying colours (so far I haven't been able to make my AirPods Pro of K371 BT fail these tests), it means they maybe didn't even try.

 

[behemothkat]

Absolutely agree with your view to implementation process: HP manufacturer either cares of everything or doesn’t care of anything.

Single tones are a very synthetic way of evaluating audio over bluetooth so I can't really assert much when it comes to actual SQ with music

Haven’t you listened H95 yet using your “synthetic” approach?

Mine H95 should arrive tomorrow, I will try to do (thx for software tone generator recommendation in your above message) but I’m very curious to read if you have done it already.

 

[MayaTlab]

Haven’t you listened H95 yet using your “synthetic” approach?

Nope, never even listened to it .
I may try the H95 next year if by then I've exhausted other options.

 

[Thrifty Spender]

Completely agreed.. I am not disputing that, but one has to start somewhere right? Thrifty Spender ended with a conclusion "That's why android users are having so much trouble".. That's as much a generalisation as the opposite "APTX-HD is better than AAC based on maximum throughput"... That's why it is so hard to provide a true value to how well a pair of headphones performs compared to another. There simply are so many variables that can be of influence. A poorly implemented codec versus a perfectly implemented one on another device. Ideally one levels the playing field by comparing multiple headphones with the same source material and the same codec. Spreading the comparison between headphones over multiple sources with differening codecs has a tendency of clouding the results...

When i mentioned that Android users have so much trouble was referring back to when they didn't know how to set up their Bluetooth Headphone. I had same problem when i bought the Blackberry which is possible to work with my Airpods.

 

[Higaida]

Hi everyone! I have finally got my headset. B&O sent me a pair of new H95 with a little gift for 45 days of awaiting. Regarding sound — I've been listening a lot and here is my verdict.

What I do not like: I am not fan of super-flat sound and I have some other stuff from B&O and I like how they sound: now I have two B&O speakers and three headsets. Most of all I like the sound of Beoplay A9 speaker with it's default sound signature. But this model (H95) has just too bright trebles. It is over-bright even for B&O. In some songs it is so annoying that I can only skip them (For example "The Glitch Mob — We Can Make The World Stop", "Laura Pergolizzi — Muddy Waters" or "Aurora — Running With The Wolves" ).

And it is impossible to correct with EQ in B&O application because this over-brightness located higher then ~14KHz and if I decrease trebles then 8-12Khz diapason becomes underexposed. But 14Khz still sounds over-bright even after any EQ corrections. And this it even worse because in some tracks high frequencies sounds really artificial because some metal clanking overtones(Probably because of metal diffusor in this headset). And it is even much worse: some tracks reveals strong digital artefacts as it was in my previous pair of H95s. It sounds the same.

I don't know how they approved production headset with such a big problem . I may admit that in some tracks this bright trebles sounds OK. But it is very artificial anyway. The best solution that I have found to partially solve this is to put a half of cotton pad in each pad of headphones. It reduces over-brightens above 12-15Khz but doesn't affect lower frequencies much. I tried a few types of cotton pads and some of them completely block all the hights and some of them affects very smooth and delicate. So now I am listening with some EQ adjustment and with those pads ) It will be happy if this solution helps anyone.

Two more things that I do not like: they are heavy. It even affects on noises that they produce on each step that you make during listening. I can even hear blood pressure in my neck. It is strange but it is here. Interesting that NC can decrease even all those body-noises. So I am listening them with NC only And I have some connection-issues with my macbook pro 13.3". Sometimes it disconnects without any reason and I have to switch them off and turn on again to solve it. What it can be? It seems that they work better with iPhone bluetooth. Has anyone had this problem before?

What I like: I really like details in low frequencies and nice midrange (but H6 here works better). And the greatest thing why I will keep this headset is an incredible sound stage for the closed headphones. In some tracks a can even feel the size of room. It is just really good. (For example: "Jonathan Bree — Drones & Satellites" or "Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Neeme Järvi — Act II - Variation II (Pour la danseuse). Danse de la Fée-Dragée. ", "Patricia Kaas — Hymne à l'amour") Piano and jazz-vocal tracks sounds amazing. It souns not inside your head like the vast majority of closed headphones sounds. It sounds really outside! Classical music reveal all the details and here is no problem over-brightness.

I also like how they looks and feels. I really like the design of B&O products after all.
I will try to forget all the problems that I've got with B&O warranty service and support and I'll try to find more cases where this headset really shines. There are a lot of tracks where I really amazed by them. Sound stage really matters I have to say. It is knockout for my old H6 headset that I really like.

And! One more thing! I've never thought I will tell this but it is awesome to watch movies with this headset! H95 puts you at the center of events. Before H95 I always preferred to watch movies using out-loud speakers that can kick your chest. But it is different experience that I really like as well.