[tombrisbane]

As it seems like I'll be working from home for quite some time I bought a pair of these mainly for the microphone. Don't mind the sound either (with a bit of EQ) it turns out! Clearly not as nice as my normal portable setup but when I'm flicking between calls, with music in the middle, it's a nice, convenient, setup.

 

[hifi80sman]

A DSP-corrected dynamic driver can have extremely low distortion sub-bass with more slam than a planar, such as in the QC 35. There are almost no headphones which can compete with the sub-bass quality and quantity of the QC 35 out of the box. The treble is still distorted though, which they fixed in the NC 700, but then screwed up the sub-bass.

If you like sub-bass, try the B&W P7W if you can grab a pair. They are the best wireless headphones they've made IMHO.

 

[ubs28]

As a warning, it seems that Bose broke the multi-point with the latest firmware. You will run into audio stuttering issues if this feature is enabled.

So you have to disable to multi-point in the Bose Music app to get the Bose NC 700 working with audio stuttering.

I guess Bose doesn’t always test their firmware updates do they?

I have reported the bug to Bose 2 weeks ago but it seems they still have not fixed it.

 

[dhc0329]

That isn't the only issue the latest firmware has caused. Reduced operation time to 14 hours or wrong battery time notification.
People have been screaming for over 4 months to fix but Bose's no responding. You will see it on their forum.

 

[Bhelpoori]

As a warning, it seems that Bose broke the multi-point with the latest firmware. You will run into audio stuttering issues if this feature is enabled.

So you have to disable to multi-point in the Bose Music app to get the Bose NC 700 working with audio stuttering.

I guess Bose doesn’t always test their firmware updates do they?

I have reported the bug to Bose 2 weeks ago but it seems they still have not fixed it.

Multipoint has always been broken since launch. Whilst I do understand it is very tricky and hacky to implement, it is something they promised and it still isn’t working.

 

[Bhelpoori]

That isn't the only issue the latest firmware has caused. Reduced operation time to 14 hours or wrong battery time notification.
People have been screaming for over 4 months to fix but Bose's no responding. You will see it on their forum.

We can look at mute that still doesn’t work. The bricking of the headphones in the last but one update. The inability of anyone with 1.3 or below to update at all to the latest version. The multipoint. The battery which was reduced from 20 hours to 18 on one update and then in 1.5.2 to 15 or lower on mine etc etc.


These headphones are a buggy mess but...

I still use them. Regularly. Every day.

Nothing beats them for microphone quality when walking outside paired with Android or iPhone... but never both.

 

[dhc0329]

We can look at mute that still doesn’t work. The bricking of the headphones in the last but one update. The inability of anyone with 1.3 or below to update at all to the latest version. The multipoint. The battery which was reduced from 20 hours to 18 on one update and then in 1.5.2 to 15 or lower on mine etc etc.


These headphones are a buggy mess but...

I still use them. Regularly. Every day.

Nothing beats them for microphone quality when walking outside paired with Android or iPhone... but never both.

Yes, there is no alternative when it comes to call. I am just accepting it as is...8+ hours a day is good enough for me anyway.

 

[Bhelpoori]

Yes, there is no alternative when it comes to call. I am just accepting it as is...8+ hours a day is good enough for me anyway.

I will just add that with Sonarworks SoundID to sculpt the sound a touch, they are for me, surprisingly good for music too.

 

[AlwaysForward]

Multipoint has always been broken since launch. Whilst I do understand it is very tricky and hacky to implement, it is something they promised and it still isn’t working.

Works great for me after the May update. I’m in the apple ecosystem for reference.

 

[MayaTlab]

A quick question. I'm currently testing these. I'll probably send them back like basically all 2020 currently available BT over-ears headphones I've tried (they've all disappointed me in various ways) but I'd like to know if you are experiencing the same phenomenon on your copy of the 700.

When playing single tones (let's say via a website like this : https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/) at either very low (3-10 hz, ie below than the value the headphones can actually play) or very high (13000-16000hz) frequencies at low volume (pick your headphones' normal listening volume and set he site's volume slider to 10% for example), do you hear a form of faint distortion (it's more apparent if you pick up the slider and move it quickly across these ranges as the tone of the distortion will shift, resulting in a sort of older modem-like noise) ? At very low frequencies, let's say 10hz, in addition to a tonal distortion, you may hear a sort of flappy distortion as if the drivers were working too hard, as if the headphones were fighting against themselves.

Distortion over bluetooth regardless of codec and regardless of sources and at higher frequencies is something that I've frequently encountered with a lot of BT headphones (the Momentum 3 for example is the same) but at lower frequencies that's quite novel to me. The only pair of headphones I've tried that so far were totally impervious to these phenomenons are my pair of AirPods Pro (not surprising given how good Apple has become at wireless audio).

 

[geardoc]

Just tried it with your site from a mac. No distortion, but I hear some ~3kHz tones when the generator is at about 15kHz. Some kind of bleed thru, or harmonics, I suppose.

 

[MayaTlab]

Just tried it with your site from a mac. No distortion, but I hear some ~3kHz tones when the generator is at about 15kHz. Some kind of bleed thru, or harmonics, I suppose.

That's pretty much the thing. The spurious tone would change if the played frequency changed.
This phenomenon is quite frequent actually among BT headphones, to a varying degree (and regardless of codecs). Lately though I've tried a whole bunch of BT HPs that behave in the exact same way and I'm wondering if it could be related or not to their use a similar chip or series of chips from Qualcomm. So far of the HPs I've tried only my AirPods Pro (presumably all H1 enabled devices) and now the pair of K371 BT I'm trying avoid that phenomenon completely.

 

[geardoc]

I guess bluetooth is only for casual listening, not replacing hard wires any time soon. That's my experience trying bluetooth with high quality IEMs on the Shure BT2 adaptor. The sound is better with wires, more clarity and depth, or something like that.

 

[MayaTlab]

I guess bluetooth is only for casual listening, not replacing hard wires any time soon. That's my experience trying bluetooth with high quality IEMs on the Shure BT2 adaptor. The sound is better with wires, more clarity and depth, or something like that.

Proper Bluetooth implementation can send noise floor and distortion to inaudible levels and frequency extension to a decent level.

I don’t trust Soundguys that much but if their methodology was sound enough there is evidence of that (for example here with Apple’s implementation of AAC, at least on the emitting device : https://www.google.fr/amp/s/www.sou...-guide-to-bluetooth-headphones-aac-20296/amp/)

it’s difficult to compare BT vs wired on the same pair of phones as nearly all of them have a change in FR curve when switching from one to the other.

I think the only reasons headphones like the Bose 700 or the Momentum exhibit the phenomenon above isn’t because of Bluetooth limitations but simply a lack of care for SQ in general (SQ isn’t how you sell headphones anyway) or insufficient resources from companies to properly implement it (very few companies seem to have the capacity to develop their own BT chips like Apple, most buy off the shelf SoCs from companies like Qualcomm).

 

[geardoc]

Maybe what I'm really hearing is a different frequency response, wired vs BT. But, I'm deaf over 10kHz, so it probably isn't that high frequency roll off. I use an iPhone, so the noise floor with AAC is good. So, I'll have to try out your frequency generator again to figure out why I prefer the wired sound. Maybe it's in my head, pun intended. Should be easy to try out...