Sound Cancelling Heaphones

[Meldrew2]

I wasn't overly impressed by the QC2 and QC3 over the Sennheiser equivalents. I'd happily live with QC2 but don't perceive tangible benefit in paying extra for them.

How about the single lead - IIRC the sennheisers have a lead from each ear.

One other thing I love about the QC2 is that I can unplug the lead and just wear the headset to block out sound.

 

[timskemp]

I guess that some of the biggest clubs in the world use Bose speakers for absolutely no reason then, including montiors for the DJs....Either that, or when i turn to my right and see the Bose logo on the monitor speaker it must be just the box with some other speaker inside!!?? The small room at the Ministry of Sound has the loudest club soundsystem in the UK and they Bose, or at least they have gone to the trouble of Bose logos on there boxes with some other speaker inside......

Are they really?

I would doubt the "loudest club soundsystem" quote, you'll find Funktion One are the company making the premium sound systems for the UK these days. Bose will be found as fills and BGM speakers, but I'd be surprised to see them anywhere modern as a full on house sound system now, especially for high energy dance or livesound.

BTW, according to LS&I MOS clubs are very much tied into Martin Audio systems.

 

[horsesuitedfool]

Are they really?

I would doubt the "loudest club soundsystem" quote, you'll find Funktion One are the company making the premium sound systems for the UK these days. Bose will be found as fills and BGM speakers, but I'd be surprised to see them anywhere modern as a full on house sound system now, especially for high energy dance or livesound.

BTW, according to LS&I MOS clubs are very much tied into Martin Audio systems.

There are lots making premium sound systems, all of them come and go as being the best and then someone else beats them. I prefer Focal speakers for high energy load music with large amounts of mid bass punch.....BTW Eden use them also in Ibiza and that soundsystem is the loudest i have ever come across bar none!

 

[Dryce]

How about the single lead - IIRC the sennheisers have a lead from each ear.

One other thing I love about the QC2 is that I can unplug the lead and just wear the headset to block out sound.

The Sennheiser PXC350 and 450 models have a single lead and it can be unplugged. (The plug on the headphone is a jack with a moulding that makes it conform to the profile of the curve of the phone so it's not obvious that it's not fixed).

 

[rf065]

I guess that some of the biggest clubs in the world use Bose speakers for absolutely no reason then

Apparently most of the major car manufacturers do too, including Maybach!

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]"2003 Mobile Surround Sound[/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]
Driver and passengers can now enjoy a true surround sound experience on the road, even from conventional CDs. Bose unveils the auto industry's first discrete 5.1 surround system in the Maybach 57/Maybach 62."[/FONT]


[FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]Other firsts are here,[/FONT]


[FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]http://www.bose.com.au/site/about_bose/milestones/index.aspx[/FONT]


[FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]Not bad for a "Bring Other Sound Equipment" company, fitted as upgraded equipment in Mercedes, Audi etc etc. How can so many people be fooled by one company?
[/FONT]


[FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]Russ
[/FONT]

 

[Dryce]

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]Not bad for a "Bring Other Sound Equipment" company, fitted as upgraded equipment in Mercedes, Audi etc etc. How can so many people be fooled by one company? [/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]
[/FONT]

Fairly easily.

I'm not dissing Bose on this but the issue for the car makers will be a given % performance and a given % brand identity when advertising an option.

In the case of companies such as Bose, B&O, Linn and others the % brand identity is way over 50% in that mix.

If you designed a significantly better setup chances of MB or any other manufacturer taking it up are absolutely zero. Customers won't know what it is and won't pay for it. You could offer to pay the carmaker to put it in the car and they still wouldn't take it as the high end option.

 

[st13phil]

Not bad for a "Bring Other Sound Equipment" company, fitted as upgraded equipment in Mercedes, Audi etc etc. How can so many people be fooled by one company?

I'm not going to get into a debate about club sound systems because I know nothing about them, but as far as high-end domestic Hi-Fi (audiophile stuff) is concerned, Bose are not even on the radar. If you want processed audio pyrotechnics - which is what Dolby 5.1, THX, and all the other proprietary stuff like that is - then Bose are possibly as good as anyone else but are premium priced which means you can almost certainly get something that sounds as good ("good" is qualified in this context) for much less money.

A car is, frankly, a rubbish environment for proper Hi-Fi and so the "high-end" ICE kit installed by car manufacturers almost always relies heavily on digital processing to get something that to most users sounds impressive. Note that I said "impressive" rather than "accurate". The car manufacturer also needs an identifiable brand name on the kit that people commonly think of as being "good", e.g. Bose, Mark Levinson, B&O, etc., otherwise - as Dryce says - the average punter won't buy it.

If you want faithful audio reprodution in a domestic environment then, as I say, Bose are not even in the same league as a myriad of other brands and in fact are often thought of as a bit of a joke.

 

[Spinal]

Really......I was about to order the BOSE, not sure now. Spinal where did you get the info from?

I think the ones I bought on eBay for £12 (CX500) will turn out to be fakes as well.. but hey!

Regarding headphones direct, I just googled the url and "review" then opened a few links... here's one:
www.headphones-direct.co.uk - pink fish media
I have bourght some headphones from this site and they are definitely fakes.

Very good fakes but fakes nevertheless. The quality is rubbish with the silver rubbing off, the writing on the box is green not blue there is no hologram or warantee sticker on the warantee card and there are other tell tale signs as identified by other blogs.

hecking a few details from their contacts page:

The address "21, Southbourne Grove, Bournemouth, BH6 3QS" (note: not "Unit 21" as stated as their contact address) is a Red Cross charity shop.

The "Contact Us" button links to IP address 124.217.247.210, is revealed by a whois to be registered to 'PIRADIUS'. Though they may be something legit, they do seem firmly rooted in Malaysia.

A 'whois' on the domain headphones-direct.co.uk shows it's registered to a Danny Williams from Birmingham (though he wouldn't be the first to fail to update his domain registration info when moving--I'm guilty of that too), nor would he be the first to have a domain hijacked.

Internet snooping is fun. Anyone know any more tricks to do background checks?

Having just thrown some more fuel on the fire of distrust, I do hope it's not a legitimate attempt to get a business going by an enthusiast who has a couple of contacts.

The domain name was only registered on 25th Aug (see Whois Search - Domain name whois ) in the name of a private individual. There's no VAT registration number on the site and no contact phone number. And there is no record of the trading name "Acoustics" given on the info page at companies house ( WebCHeck - Select and Access Company Information ).

Googling a bit more brings up more results... I might still tempt fate and give them a shot... but at least with eBay I know I can get my moolah back!

M.

 

[timskemp]

Apparently most of the major car manufacturers do too, including Maybach!

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]"2003 Mobile Surround Sound[/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]
Driver and passengers can now enjoy a true surround sound experience on the road, even from conventional CDs. Bose unveils the auto industry's first discrete 5.1 surround system in the Maybach 57/Maybach 62."[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans-serif]Not bad for a "Bring Other Sound Equipment" company, fitted as upgraded equipment in Mercedes, Audi etc etc. How can so many people be fooled by one company?
[/FONT]

5.1 surround, from ordinary CDs, if you can't see that that is marketing over substance then obviously you can't see beyond the Bose hype.

Bose don't do much when it comes to the audio side other than some psychoacoustic modelling and design of the processing systems, which does make the experience "different". Harman provide more of the system (Harman group own Harman Kardon, Becker, Infinity, JBL and others) when you get a harman branded one. Bowers and Wilkins provide speaker drivers for (from memory) Jaguar and Aston Martin. Linn did a system for one of the Astons that was very technology laden and very expensive. Bang and Olufsen design drive units for top end Audis. There's lots of tie-ins and cobranding when it comes to in-car audio in order to try and match one aspirational brand with another. Bose spend more on marketing than any other company in their sector and do produce some good products, but they are far from being the high-technology high-fidelity company they want the world to believe.

The best factory systems I've listened to are the Dynaudio ones that are optional in Volvos, my S40 had one (our V50 is base spec and no options unfortunately) and the one in the old shape C70 was amazing.

 

[Noodle-Pulp]

You do on a plane though, that is where a good set of noise cancelling headphones come into their own.

Unfortunately I cannot *completely* ignore my wife sitting next to me on a 12 hour flight.

 

[masqueraid]

I've had Bose QC'2s for about 6 years now and for long haul they make a huge difference.

Last flight had some fun passing everyone's 'round and checking out differences. The noise cancelling wasn't significantly different on most of them, what did score was the QC2's are the "old-fashioned" cover the whole ear design and that does seem to make a difference with the airplane drone. The QC3's rest over the ears and the users of the in-ear "bud" versions (which i didn't fancy swapping with my fellow passengers!) said this was a big improvement on their smaller versions.

Someone mentioned rechargables and the QC2's use a single conventional AAA which runs about 24 hours continuous. But they don't work at all (as conventional 'phones) if the power is off.

An aside is sleeping with them. For some reason I can't sleep with in-ear phones but no problem with the QC's.

And what's this Business Class users rubbish - we were all in first!

 

[Donbronski]

sennheiser

 

[Meldrew2]

sennheiser

there's no need to shout





.

 

[timskemp]

there's no need to shout





.

There is with all this noise cancelling going on...