[Hammy]

  To sum up ... in virtually any practical everyday scenario where a set of wireless headphones like the RS 180 or RS 195 will be used there is no discernible difference in audio regardless of whether you make the analog or optical connection."

 
This is just not the case.  There is a clear sounding difference between the analogue and digital inputs on my RS185.  The analogue input sounds as if there is some sort of noise compression/filtering being applied in the background, while the digital signal is clear and free of noise.  It sounds like ALC is being applied every-so-slightly even when it's turned off, but could also be inherent to noisy analogue cables.  This is pretty easy for anyone to test and hear for themselves, provided they have access to both input options (I used the janky stock RCA cable for testing).
 
My post in reply to you from May mentioned the pitfalls of multiple format conversions.  The best solution for someone who has a desktop computer and wants to use the optical input is either an internal or external soundcard with optical out.

 

[toyopl]

Anyone knows which are a better buy at the same price, 170 or 175 strictly for TV/Movies ?
Both are listed for around $165 so the price is pretty good, just can't decide

 

[Venture Guy]

185s are down to $219.99 on Amazon... a no-brainer!

 

[PaulMW]

Except for the fact that their sound quality is rubbish when compared with RS-220s - of which I, to my delight, have managed to get two pairs of from the 4thReich - one new (unsold stock - 350 4thR$s + GST etc here in Aotearoa/NZ

= ≈700Kiwi

) via Amazon and one secondhand but virtually unused via ebay for only 200 4thR$s

.
I too was originally delighted with my 185s, that I got a pair of about a year ago, especially when they are fed coax SPDIF - but when comparing them to the 220s I haven't bothered using them since!
I started a thread here a few weeks ago asking why on earth Sennh ever stopped making the 220s but it hasn't had any replies - I spose nobody knows

- I can just assume that idiots (=most people

) wouldn't like the way they do tend to drop out occasionally at ranges over ≈10m - and their design is a little on the "tacky" side too. And the 185s are a lot easier to dock etc etc too.
But WOW!: the sound quality!! - 220s have an S/N of <.1% as compared to the 185s' <.5% - and one can surely hear the difference! - I can identify the tuning temperament of the continuo harpsichords behind the baroque orchestras I listen to!
 
The 220s apparently have the same drivers as the wired HD650s that I've also got a pair of but hardly ever use - I just can't be bothered with wired cans now!.
I did an A/B test with my 650s vs the 220s and could hear little, if any, difference in sound quality - on good quality Nakamichi audio gear.
It was interesting to me to note that the man I bought my 650s offof a few years ago wasn't using them much any more because he'd gotten himself a pair of 180s - which were the (then) equivalent of the 185s.
 
Are there any better wireless cans around than the Sennh RS220s at reasonable prices??

 

[Venture Guy]

@PaulMW thanks for the heads-up! I wouldn't call the SQ of the 185s rubbish, but certainly not at the level of the 650s. Well, our friends in Deutschland REALLY screwed up the RF link on the 220s... they just can't handle the RF interference in typical urban environs. The link in the 185s is quite robust, which was a requirement for me. Back to SQ. I got these after giving up on half a dozen highly rated bluetooth cans that cost between $300 and $600. The SQ of the 185s is way better, meaning neutral with reasonably good extension high and low, than the Disco Bunny bass hump encountered in ALL the aforementioned expensive and highly rated bluetooth garbage cans! We can only hope that our friends in Deutschland recover from their rectal cranial inversion and redo the 220s. Until then, I think the 185s are tops if a reliable link is a requirement.

 

[PaulMW]

Sure Venture Guy - the 185s do work well - especially with a coax SPDIF feed - with which they sound so much better than with an analogue feed - even with good (=vandenHul, IMO) interconns - and they are physically a good solid design and are much more pleasant to look at and use than the rather plasticky/tacky 220s with their fiddly docking/charge mounting.
 
I've had Sennh wireless cans for well over 10 years now - starting with a pair of 130s ≈ 10 or 12years ago > a couple of pairs of 160s ≈ 2years ago (which I still use for TV and lofi stuff etc) > the 185s 1year ago - and they have all only had S/N ratios of .5%.
 
And, when they were available new, I thought that a pair of 220s sounded to be exactly what I needed - but they were just a little bit out-of-range pricewise.
 
Which is why I was delighted to see a few pairs advertised on Amazon a few months back as new but "Discontinued by manufacturer" at a halfway bearable price - 350 $4thR.
However, as I said in my last, even that "halfway bearable price" turned into ≈700Kiwi by the time they were landed here

- with GrabSnatch&Take, postage, and customs tariffs added - when 650s go for ≈400 on TradeMe (the local online auction site).
 
But when I got to listen to them it was WOW!!! material - and I immediately had to get another pair for my Nak SS3 "bedhead stereo" (which unfortunately only has optical SPDIF - = a little bit down SQwise on coax - but still bearable/OK).
The diff between the .5% of all the wifi cans I'd had until now and the .1% of the 220s made for such an enormous change 

- suddenly there was a full 3-dimensional soundstage with minute audio details suddenly becoming apparent - as I say I can tell the temperament of the baroque continuo harpsichords - sadly usually WerckIII nowadays - which IMO is the baroque equivalent of today's "evil (=equal) temperament" - = every note equally foul/outoftune.
 
And so there is no way I'll ever need to go back to the 185s again.
 
The range of the 220s is much the same as the 185s - at least out here in ruburbia - they start to drop out occasionally at ranges over 10-15m - but if you hold your mouth the right way

you can usually pick up the feed again. And I can live with that for the SQ they give - after all they must be sending receiving a helluva lot of data with their DSSS bizzo to produce the minute detail they can provide. As you say they might be a prob in more urban enviros.
Apparently they only go for 6 hours on a charge - but then I've not yet come any where near to that.
And, AAMOI, they do seem to charge their batteries to a very high voltage (≈2.5V each cell for Nimhs!) - which makes for quite long recharge times.
 
Now all I need is a wireless equivalent of the HD800s

.

 

[Venture Guy]

@PaulMW here's the coup de grace... I am running the One Eight Fives with the Out Of Your Head surround simulator by @darinf. It is a mind blower! It synthesizes the experience of a whole room system and stuffs it in your cans! What I came to realize by using it is that the psychoacoustics of cans is just wrong. Our brain is just not wired for this kind of sonic presentation. BTW, I feel qualified to say this because I spent many years in neuroscience, a portion of which was specifically psychoacoustics... My hypothesis is that sound without environmental reflections puts the brain in hypervigilant, fight or flight mode. So, when you add the environmental reflections, as is the case with Out Of Your Head, the mind goes into a more relaxed state and enjoyment of the music is enhanced. Another side effect is that since the sonics make sense to the brain, it becomes much less interested in the nanodetails of the presentation. Ergo, you can use crummier cans and enjoy the music more than you might without the environmental cues presented via more exotic equipment.

 

[Gary Pond]

I still use 130s for TV viewing.  When the last pair died, I bought a used pair off ebay.  Reason why is that other Senns I tried, 165s and 175s were horribly uncomfortable for me to wear long term, both very clammy and clampy feeling.  The 120s will fall off your ears.  The 130s, I can wear all night.  I know the 185s are open face, are they just as comfortable?
 
Quote:

  Sure Venture Guy - the 185s do work well - especially with a coax SPDIF feed - with which they sound so much better than with an analogue feed - even with good (=vandenHul, IMO) interconns - and they are physically a good solid design and are much more pleasant to look at and use than the rather plasticky/tacky 220s with their fiddly docking/charge mounting.
 
I've had Sennh wireless cans for well over 10 years now - starting with a pair of 130s ≈ 10 or 12years ago > a couple of pairs of 160s ≈ 2years ago (which I still use for TV and lofi stuff etc) > the 185s 1year ago - and they have all only had S/N ratios of .5%.
 
 

 

[PaulMW]

Yes, well: if you want another pair of them I've got a spare pair in almost new condition sitting gathering dust beside the HD650 box on top of of the harpsichord behind me which you can have for what I paid for them - 350Kiwi - which is ≈½retail

. I won't be using them again - I don't need to! - having gotten a couple of pairs of 220s which are SQ-wise a quantumleap better!
And I even use the 650s only rarely now as a "reference/standard" pair - eg when trying new speaker driver units - I just can't be bothered with wired cans any longer.
 
Could I suggest that you get yourself a pair of 220s offof ebay or wherever and try the @darinf simulator (which I've heard a bit about - sounds interesting) on a pair of those cans. I'm sure you'd be as blown away as I was - as someone who has spent his life involved in a thing called music - for which Pythagoras figured out all the numbers. (AAMOI I'm a ¼comma (=KirnIII) tuner myself when laying out 12tone scales - though I prefer Quantz' 17/19division octave if poss.)
 
The numbers speak for themselves: .1%THD on the 220s vs .5%THD on every other wifi pair I've yet had (apologies: I said S/N ratios in my last post when I should have said THD).
And I'm quite happy with plain old stereo with a flat frequency profile - it's just the music/instantaneousrealtimemaths that I have any interest in.

 

[Venture Guy]

Thanks for the tip. There are a bunch on Amazon USA for <$200... I'm nervous that the link will suck horribly. BTW, you into Fat Freddy's Drop? One of my fav's... Kiwis!

 

[PaulMW]

They're a little "clampy"er than the 130s - but I found them OK in the 3or4 months I used them before upgrading to 220s - but I've probably got a thick head

.
I think the headband/pressure is much the same on all of the 160-195series.
The diff between the 120s/130s and the 160,65,...,85,95s is that the earlier 130s have a much greater range (eg 40m+) but they start hissing (like cordless phones do) at those longer ranges - whereas the 160-195series (& 220s) simply cut out if they can't get enough signal.  Which in some ways is better - ie no #$%& hiss - but it does reduce their effective working range quite a lot - a max of ≈15m and through 1 or at most2 walls is about as far as 160,-185,-220s will go without too many dropouts.
And you can't log 220s onto 185 transmitters - and vv - they're different signal systems. But you can log 2x 220s onto one base-set/transmitter - with a bit of fiddling around.

 

[PaulMW]

Thanks for the tip. There are a bunch on Amazon USA for <$200...

 
Go for it - you won't look back!! I look forward to seeing your WOW!! post

 
That's what I paid for my second pair (200$4thR) - and they came with original box, accessories etc etc - in slightly better overall condition than the new ones! And, being secondhand, with no GST etc.
 
That's what I posted here about a few weeks ago - whyever would someone sell something that sounded this good??
But, as you said, maybe in urban enviros they drop out a bit more than out here in 10acreruburbia - or maybe they get RFinterference from other whatevers.
It's interesting the review profile/"numbers" for them - they either get 5stars+ (from people like me, I spose) or 1star reviews from people who presumably want them for background boomchikkaboom stuff.
 

BTW, you into Fat Freddy's Drop? One of my fav's... Kiwis!

 
I've heard of them and that they're quite good - but to me "music" finished in 1782 when John Bach moved back into the light - though I shouldn't be so prescriptive/dogmatic: Luigi Boccherini (another one of my favourite composers) did live on into the 19C - when evil temperament took over and produced the garbage that's called (classical)music now.

 

[Venture Guy]

 
but to me "music" finished in 1782 when John Bach moved back into the light - though I shouldn't be so prescriptive/dogmatic: Luigi Boccherini (another one of my favourite composers) did live on into the 19C - when evil temperament took over and produced the garbage that's called (classical)music now.

We are of one mind on that one. I love that style of music (when I listen to "classical"). I was just listening to the Baroque channel on Pandora and thought to myself "how can people stand listening to post Baroque music?". 

 

[PaulMW]

I'm currently "worshiping at the shrine"/enjoyingonmyRS220s what must be one of the greatest of all pieces of EM (Early Music): Corelli's Op.6.
As agreed to by his contemporaries - JSBoring (John Bach's father), Vivaldi, and Handel - who (GFH) named his best CGs Op.6 in homage to the Corelli "originals".
Nos.9-12, being the concerti da camera ( ie nonchristofascist ones), are my favourites of the twelve (Corelli Op.6) - but they are all sublime, even the first 8 concerti da chiesa.
 
It all comes down to the simple (Pythagorean) maths: the pure major third (the loveliest interval in all music) where two notes harmonise in the frequencyratio 5:4 - which (@ 386cents (1200cents = an octave)) is a seventh of a semitone flatter than the meaningless 400cents that evil(equal) temperament perverts it into - ie evil temp makes it into two completely (harmonically)unrelated noises.
"Music", to me, must be in UNequal temperament - where you have one (or maybe two or three) keys at the centre of the key "circle" sounding beautiful and the rest sounding progressively worse/morestriking as you move further from "home". It produces chromaticism - where every key has a different "colour"/flavour/affekt. Unlike in evil temperament (where the octave is divided into twelve equal semitones) where every key sounds equally disgusting/outoftune.
 
Evil temperament started being more commonly used about&after Mozart's time (WAM being John Bach's pupil and lifelong admirer) - it's mathematically/inpractice rather hard to lay out on a keyboard - whereas JSBoring was reputed to be able to lay out my lifelongchoice/favourite (KirnbergerIII) in under 8minutes - as I can mostly do: lay out a pure C-E, shrink the four C-G-D-A-E fifths equally into that pure third, and then tune everything else by pure fifths offof those 5. The key of C will sound gorgeous (one's ear can automatically easily correct a quite shrunken fifth - the beats between overtones2&3 are slow enough that your ear can still pick up that it's meant to be a fifth), the keys F & G will be OK/bearable, and it then gets more weird/unpleasant/interesting-sounding the further out from the "centre" that you go. Chromatics - = different "colours"

.
Or, instead of C-E, whichever key you might want to use/centreon.

 

[Venture Guy]

Fascinating! Does Signore Fibonacci's magical sequence come into play? Which CD(s) do I buy?