[PeteCress]

I'm shopping.... gravitating towards Sennheiser 170 or 180's.  
 
But I have to resolve the Open-vs-Closed conundrum.
 
Might even spring for 220's if Open wins.
 
Spent half a day trying to find a store where I could demo open vs closed, but no luck.
 
Application is watching TV in the kitchen and not irritating the wife.
 
Been using a set of Radio Shack's finest....  but they're falling apart and I am missing a lot of dialog - whether because of substandard DVD rips or what... I'm not sure... but a new set of headphones is in my future - one assumption being that even my low-end Vizio TV puts out good enough sound that Kleer won't be wasted on it and  BlueTooth would be a step down.
 
On the side of Open I can imagine an advantage in not having to say "Huh?  Lemme get these things off..." whenever somebody tries to tell me something.
 
On the side of Closed I can imagine that our noisy refrigerator wouldn't interfere as much.
 
As far as outbound leakage affecting other people in the kitchen.... I  have no clue.
 
Has anybody gone both ways in this situation (watching TV in the kitchen...)?

 

[jodgey4]

I've used open and closed cans in the kitchen... and I don't think closed cans is a good idea. I'd burn everything, pots would boil over, timers would all be missed, and people trying to talk to me would get irritated.
 
So unless you need a great excuse to 'not hear' someone, go with open IMHO .

 

[PeteCress]

  I've used open and closed cans in the kitchen... and I don't think closed cans is a good idea. I'd burn everything, pots would boil over, timers would all be missed, and people trying to talk to me would get irritated.

 
That leaves the irritation factor for other people in the kitchen who are not watching TV while I am.
 
What's your take?   Would the leakage be enough to bother somebody 3-5 feet away from me?

 

[billybob_jcv]

Depends on the volume and just how open they are. If it's something like a Grado - it will absolutely annoy anyone in the same room with you. I was at a head-fi meet and someone was blasting music into an Audeze LCD-3. You could hear the music in the next room, over 50 people talking and milling around!

 

[jodgey4]

Depends on your listening volume, it probably wouldn't be an issue. If you just need it loud enough to hear speech, then I think it's worth a shot. The RS220 isolates maybe just a tab better than most open headphones. I'm guessing the LCD-3 was cranked to compensate for a lack of initial isolation.

 

[PeteCress]

Just pulled the trigger on 180's from B&H Photo: $200, 1-day free shipping.
 
Jodgey4 almost had me talked into 220's, but the review at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHIi5NGXOOg - where the reviewer reported wearing them all day just to check comfort and not having a problem - pushed me towards the 180's.     That, and knowing that I have a tin ear and any diff in sound quality would be lost... plus the interchangability factor of Kleer.
 
Will report back on whether-or-not the leakage to others in the room becomes a problem.

 

[PeteCress]

Just pulled the trigger on 180's
 
Jodgey4 almost had me talked into 220's based on the "less-open" aspact, but the YouTube review where the guy reported wearing 180's continuously for a whole day to check comfort pushed me in that direction.... that plus knowing I have a tin ear and the diff in quality would be lost on me....
 
I'm hoping that the latency of Kleer decoding will not be an issue... but nobody seems to be complaining.
 
Tried cranking my Radio Shack headset up to borderline discomfort, holding it at arms length, and then getting closer and closer to somebody else until they reported being able to hear something.    Came out to be about 18".... so I'm hoping 3-5 feet will be no problem with the 180's.
 
Will report back on how others in the room react to the actual 180 leakage.
 
 
 
Edit 2014 11-25 16:39:
 
I cancelled the order for the B&H Photo order for the 180's ($200) and placed an order to Crutchfield for the 220's ($300).
 
The rationale:
 
- I subsequently read a report by somebody who was getting his ear clipped by 180's 
 
- My fallback plan involved buying just a 170 headset in case the noise leakage became
  an issue, but I realized that the bare headset was only about 20 bucks less than the whole enchilada.
 
- I subsequently saw a video by another guy who noted that the 220 ear cups were so
  generous that even his ear with an earring fit with no problem.

 

[PeteCress]

Will report back on how others in the room react to the actual 180 leakage.

 
Got them today. Crutchfield wasn't kidding about the free 2-day shipping.
 
Not bad.   In fact, my ears just fit.   If the 180's ear cups are any smaller they would pinch.
 
I do wonder about the 180's automagic volume control.    Seems like it would have been a significant nice-to-have in the context of movies where they put way loud music/sounds on the sound track for emotional impact.
 
Cannot speak to audiophile sound quality, but I would say that intelligibility is way up from the Radio Shack 900 mhz phones.
 
Ditto comfort.   
 
Everything they say about the PITA factor of the buttons is true... but it's not what I would call a deal breaker.   Maybe a layer of foam tape aound the problem buttons so they are harder to press.... I'm sure there's an easy fix here.
 
The open-earpiece-sound-bothers-other-people thing turned out to be a red herring in my case.   Turned 'em up until it hurt, asked the wife if she would hear anything from a couple feet away and nada...bupkis....nothing.    Came closer and closer and still nothing until about six inches.   I think for this to be a factor, people have to be right next to each other and the room needs to be very quiet.
 
OTOH one of the plus sides of open earpieces holds up nicely: when the wife says something, I understand it.   No more "Whuuuuut?...Lemme get these things off....."    Normal conversation, no problem.    And I think the ventilation is going to make long-time wearing more comfortable.
 
 
Closest things to gripes I can find after a couple hours use:
 
- Three hundred bucks for uber-high-end headphones, and they couldn't supply an optical cable?
  Sheesh!
 
- The sound is cutting out for maybe a 50th of a second every two or three minutes.
  Kind of a "Tick" effect.   I'd call that a deal-breaker if the phones were being used 
  primarily to listen to music - but they aren't...
 
  OTOH, the transmitter is sitting 18" away from a souped-up 2.4 ghz wireless access 
  point... so I guess it's a minor miracle that they work at all....  And who is to say it's not
  something else in the system.   If it starts to bother me, I'll start fooling around with 
  placement.... but right now, it's not really bothering me.

 

[PeteCress]

Closest things to gripes I can find after a couple hours use:

Ok, there is more: and it's all around how the base station behaves.

IMHO it is *really* bad. Bad enough to make putting the phones on a minor hassle every time...Bad enough that I have to suspect that it is the root cause of these headphones having been discontinued by Sennheiser.

To Wit:

- My expectation for any headphones is that I should be allowed to pick them up
off the base station, flip a switch or quick-press a button, put them on, and have them work.

- What actually happens is
+ The base station turned itself off when the phones were put on it to charge
it has to be manually turned on again

+ Like as not, when it comes back on, it will either have forgotten which input
was selected last time and/or no input will be selected

+ When you press the desired input, it might light up and it might not - forcing you to
fiddle around until you get the desired input lit.

+ Now you have to turn on the headset, but it needs a long press of the On/Off
button, which is not particularly finger-friendly

Might sound petty, but when you actually have to jump through all those hoops every time you put the headset on, it quickly gets old.

There's more - like the headphones turning themselves off for no apparent reason and the arcane nature of the Balance button... Enough that I downgraded my review on Amazon to two stars...

Bottom line, I'll learn to live with them, but would not recommed that anybody buy Sennheiser RS 220's.

 

[jodgey4]

Good to know, but I'm glad they'll at least work for your situation, and they sound good enough. Those power sequences seems horribly thought of!

 

[PeteCress]

  Those power sequences seems horribly thought of!

 
Given that it tends to be really smart people who develop this stuff, my knee-jerk reaction is to doubt my own judgement.
 
Truth be told, I think I *do* sometimes go a little overboard on stuff I don't like.
 
But a Google-ing indicates that I am far from alone on the Senheiser 220's - especially the buttons and the auto-off.
 
Got to wonder if somebody lost their job over this one.