selfdivider
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2007
- Posts
- 228
- Likes
- 11
So I got Sennheiser PXC450 headphones as a X-mas gift (I don't think I could have spent $450 on noise-canceling phones myself.) I didn't open them until this morning, because I was going to sell them, thinking that there was no way that I can use these as my portable cans. I already have a reliable home listening station (Leben CS600 - AKG 701) so I don't need extra headphones for home use. But I wasn't sure whether mp3 players can drive the PXC450... they're rated at 150 ohms. So I posted questions in this forum, and pretty much everyone was discouraging me from using Sennheiser PXC450 with portable players w/o amp... except for Shigzeo (Thanks again, dude.)
I still have a 4G color iPod, one of the crappiest mp3 players ever made (fuzz around piano solos & voice solos, which made me unable to listen to some of my favorite recordings outside my home.) I took a deep breath and plugged in the Senns. And OMG. Not only did it manage, it was the best music I've heard come out of my crap player. Given that my existing earphones are the much cheaper Audio Technica ATH-CK7, it's probably not fair to compare the two, but really: it was not even f-ing close. On the Senns, the music had this burnish which made the music sound so warm and close. Soundstaging was obviously better, too. The bass response was surprisingly good, and the volume reached w/o amp on the Senns really surprised me. I did hear where I can get better response w/ amp, but really, the sound was surprisingly good and full-bodied enough, as is, that I felt no need for an amp. And The Clipse sounded good as good as Mitsuko Uchida playing Beethoven's Hammerklavier. Best of all: the Senns made all the lossy files sound better than they had any right to! Hooray!
On noise-canceling: these aren't going to block off ambient noise to an eerie silence. If that's what you're looking for, you should really get the canal phones. But I was walking around the Upper West Side of NYC today, on street-cleaning day. With noise canceling on, the ambient noise does filter in, for sure, but the Noise Gard 2.0 is effective enough that such noise doesn't distract from getting into the music. There is a "Talk through" button on the right can that enables you to turn noise canceling on/off in a fly, and w/ the noise canceling off, the outside noise was DEFINITELY a distracting factor. I rode on the 1 line, walked around the block a few times, and I can say this is a level of noise canceling that I'm more than happy with. You can really disappear into the music w/o vanishing the world around you completely.
These cans are also incredibly comfortable to wear, completely circumaural, with plush, soft pads. In winter, these will serve as excellent earmuffs (hehe). But even on a day like this, it got a bit clammy where the pads touch the skin, and in humid summer conditions, I can see this will be an issue. The cans are easily collapsible and the little black case is the size of a hardcover novel; you can definitely stow these away in your messenger bag w/ no worries.
Right now, I'm in the library, noise canceling off, running PXC450 in passive mode. You definitely get a better bass response w/o noise canceling (another plus: when the AAA battery runs out, the headphones slip naturally into passive mode & you can still use your cans.) The sonic character is REMARKABLY similar to Sennheiser 650. I can't really tell the difference; I saw an UK magazine review recently (Hi-Fi Choice or Hi-Fi something...) which gave these cans 4.5 stars or something, and the reviewer said they sound almost exactly like the 650, except the treble response in 650 is a bit more detailed. As for me? Honestly, I can't tell, and I probably won't be able to tell unless I intensively listen to these cans through my home system (pretty soon, I'll also do an A-B test between AKG K701 and Sennheiser PXC450.) Btw: you can comfortably disregard the iLounge review of these cans - I don't know what the hell they were listening to.
My next task is to match these cans up with a good DAP; I've kept this iPod for too damn long. I hope to God that these sound good with the new Sony 16GB flash player that's coming out in a month or so. I'm also thinking the newer incarnations of iPods will sound great with these, but honestly, I lost faith in Apple when they refused to address the sonic flaws w/ their 4G iPods and stuck their loyal fans with inferior products.
Signing off for now.
I still have a 4G color iPod, one of the crappiest mp3 players ever made (fuzz around piano solos & voice solos, which made me unable to listen to some of my favorite recordings outside my home.) I took a deep breath and plugged in the Senns. And OMG. Not only did it manage, it was the best music I've heard come out of my crap player. Given that my existing earphones are the much cheaper Audio Technica ATH-CK7, it's probably not fair to compare the two, but really: it was not even f-ing close. On the Senns, the music had this burnish which made the music sound so warm and close. Soundstaging was obviously better, too. The bass response was surprisingly good, and the volume reached w/o amp on the Senns really surprised me. I did hear where I can get better response w/ amp, but really, the sound was surprisingly good and full-bodied enough, as is, that I felt no need for an amp. And The Clipse sounded good as good as Mitsuko Uchida playing Beethoven's Hammerklavier. Best of all: the Senns made all the lossy files sound better than they had any right to! Hooray!
On noise-canceling: these aren't going to block off ambient noise to an eerie silence. If that's what you're looking for, you should really get the canal phones. But I was walking around the Upper West Side of NYC today, on street-cleaning day. With noise canceling on, the ambient noise does filter in, for sure, but the Noise Gard 2.0 is effective enough that such noise doesn't distract from getting into the music. There is a "Talk through" button on the right can that enables you to turn noise canceling on/off in a fly, and w/ the noise canceling off, the outside noise was DEFINITELY a distracting factor. I rode on the 1 line, walked around the block a few times, and I can say this is a level of noise canceling that I'm more than happy with. You can really disappear into the music w/o vanishing the world around you completely.
These cans are also incredibly comfortable to wear, completely circumaural, with plush, soft pads. In winter, these will serve as excellent earmuffs (hehe). But even on a day like this, it got a bit clammy where the pads touch the skin, and in humid summer conditions, I can see this will be an issue. The cans are easily collapsible and the little black case is the size of a hardcover novel; you can definitely stow these away in your messenger bag w/ no worries.
Right now, I'm in the library, noise canceling off, running PXC450 in passive mode. You definitely get a better bass response w/o noise canceling (another plus: when the AAA battery runs out, the headphones slip naturally into passive mode & you can still use your cans.) The sonic character is REMARKABLY similar to Sennheiser 650. I can't really tell the difference; I saw an UK magazine review recently (Hi-Fi Choice or Hi-Fi something...) which gave these cans 4.5 stars or something, and the reviewer said they sound almost exactly like the 650, except the treble response in 650 is a bit more detailed. As for me? Honestly, I can't tell, and I probably won't be able to tell unless I intensively listen to these cans through my home system (pretty soon, I'll also do an A-B test between AKG K701 and Sennheiser PXC450.) Btw: you can comfortably disregard the iLounge review of these cans - I don't know what the hell they were listening to.
My next task is to match these cans up with a good DAP; I've kept this iPod for too damn long. I hope to God that these sound good with the new Sony 16GB flash player that's coming out in a month or so. I'm also thinking the newer incarnations of iPods will sound great with these, but honestly, I lost faith in Apple when they refused to address the sonic flaws w/ their 4G iPods and stuck their loyal fans with inferior products.
Signing off for now.
