Table of contents for March - April 2021 in Sound + Image

This model from JBL has been around for a couple of years now and will likely be pushed from the ranges by incoming Tour One and 660 models (see News p10). We’ll be sorry to see it go: it’s been an easy recommendation as an affordable noise-cancelling headphone that seems to give away very little compared with significantly more expensive designs. So there’s Bluetooth, active noise-cancelling, an app (pictured) which allows customisation, even a direct connection to the voice assistant of your choice (well, Alexa or Google). So do they suffer on sound quality or build to balance the books? We’ll cut to the chase, and tell you that the answer is ‘no’. Indeed we warmed quickly to the JBLs, as these proved a pair of headphones which just got…

When we first reviewed the ANC900BT wireless noise-cancelling headphones, they were priced at $499, with a $150 gap between these and the company’s ANC700BT headphones, with which they share a great deal but gain app operation which allows three levels of noise cancellation. We thought that favoured the lower model. But since then the price here has fallen to a very attractive $349, with the lower model only $70 cheaper. That tilts things back in favour of this superior model. The ANC900BTs also have a slightly better battery, quoted at a handy 60 hours with cabled NC (as on a plane, should we ever fly again) or 35 hours of Bluetooth with NC (as on a train). Supported Bluetooth codecs rises from basic SBC through the Apple-friendly AAC to the…

For a great many users and reviewers of wireless noise-cancelling headphones, Sony got everything right with the WH-1000XM3. Quite frankly, it was hard to imagine what could be improved upon when reviewing those, but Sony has added enough polish to the new WH-1000XM4 to keep the XM3 gleam intact and add some new precious gems in the process. While Sony certainly hasn’t strayed far from its regal headphone lineage, the WH-1000XM4 is better for it. From a design sense, very little has perceptibly changed — the lightweight, comfortable and subtly stylish design has returned almost unscathed, just a tiny bit more padding on the earcups and a touch less on the headband. Battery life remains the same, which is great, although so does the lack of any IP-rating or weather…

The Technics brand, along with the brands Panasonic and National, were all originally sub-brands of the giant Japanese company Matsushita Electric Industrial, founded in 1918 by Konosuke Matsushita. In 2008, one hundred years after it was founded, the company changed its name to Panasonic Corporation in recognition of the fact that Panasonic was the name most recognised by consumers, and the one it used in most countries around the world to identify its distributors. While the Panasonic brand was used on most consumer products, the company always reserved its ‘Technics’ brand name for its higher-quality audio products. Although abandoned for a while, the brand is now back with increasing depth, initially on the strength of the vinyl revival which prompted a revived and reimagined range of increasingly high-end direct-drive turntables,…

DALI’s first-ever headphones have just won our Sound+Image award for Wireless Noise-Cancellers of the Year, so clearly they’ve impressed us. This is all the more remarkable given they are the Danish speaker company’s first-ever headphones — DALI says it was put off until now by the low quality of Bluetooth connections. And they further break the headphone mould in a number of ways. While relatively compact, the iO-6 headphones manage to incorporate large 50mm cone diaphragms, which show DALI’s speaker heritage in using not the common Mylar or other synthetic material, but honest-to-goodness paper/fibre cones. The over-ear enclosures are braced and stiff like speaker cabinets, with rubber dampeners inside to eliminate vibrations. Even the fabric inside guarding the diaphragms is imprinted with a matrix structure like a loudspeaker grille. Clearly,…

These are luxurious headphones indeed, and even their packaging proclaims their greatness. They arrive in a huge slip-cased box 39cm high, stylishly emblazoned with Japanese calligraphy and an anticipatory circle of woodgrain, this outer casing seemingly so enormous that you might expect it to yield headphones built to adorn some monumental sumo wrestler. But inside the first box is a second, inside that second a third, this last being of lighter wood. And like the inner sarcophagus of a Pharaonic tomb, only when you open the third box are the headphones themselves finally revealed, nestling in satinlike fabric (which smelled very nice). The cups of these headphones immediately grab your attention, though in the most sophisticated and gentle of grabs. They are beautifully carved and hand-finished from a solid wood,…

Closed & open, wired & wireless: group test AKG ◆ APPLE ◆ AUDIO-TECHNICA ◆ BEYERDYNAMIC ◆ BOSE ◆ BOWERS & WILKINS ◆ DALI ◆ JABRA ◆ JBL ◆ SHURE ◆ SENNHEISER ◆ SONY ◆ TECHNICS While ‘true wireless’ buds (see round-up in issue #333) are the headphone category of the moment, they are not for everything, and not for everyone. In-ear buds are limited in the spatial presention they deliver, they can be hard to control, and have limited battery life. And sticking things in your ears for long periods is simply inadvisable, period. How much more sophisticated to have a comfy pair of over-ear headphones to cosset your noggin while you enjoy the maximum quality the headphone world has to offer? But what type, brand and model to choose?…

On paper, the full combination of wireless Bluetooth and active noise-cancellation makes the HD 450BT look quite the bargain next to Sennheiser’s $599 flagship Momentum Wireless model (see p50). This design builds on the previous HD 4.50BTNC, the new model upgrading to USB-C charging, extending battery life to an impressive 30hrs, and with a new white option available (pictured) as an alternative to deep-grey/black. They are solidly if purposefully built in sturdy plastic, with synthetic leather earpads and soft silicone rubber under the headband; they hinge closed compactly to fit into the included small soft cloth bag. The Bluetooth implementation includes the AAC codec to improve audio from Apple devices; Android devices which are compatible can take advantage of the only slightly lossy aptX options, including aptX Low Latency which…

Austrian headphone company of renown AKG has undergone significant changes in recent years, not least of which involves far closer ties with Samsung, which gained the brand when it purchased Harman, and soon took to bundling AKG buds with its Galaxy phones — a massive expansion for AKG. Meanwhile the brand’s distribution here in Australia is complicated by its more professional studio-style entering through one channel, while more consumer models appear on Samsung’s website. And this K371-BT falls somewhere between those categories — you’ll find them mainly in music stores as a closed-back headphone for cabled studio and DJ use, so they come with three mini-XLR to (perhaps surprisingly) minijack-terminated cables, including a three-metre coiled cable. Yet they also have Bluetooth onboard so can be used wirelessly, though in this…

Bowers & Wilkins, famed for its loudspeakers, has been making headphones for a decade now, but Bluetooth models only since 2017, and full-size noise-cancellers only now with this PX7. This launched and remains at $599.95, the premium end of the market (until Apple came along to break that ceiling), with build and construction seeming focused more on solidity than the overt executive luxury of previous designs. The PX7 is initially available in space grey (which looks like black) and silver (which looks like grey), without the browns and golds of previous launches. The cascades of steel connectors have been replaced by remarkable moulded arms made of a composite which includes carbon fibre, yielding a slightly strange patchy matte native finish but positively screaming strength and rigidity, while also keeping the…

Sennheiser’s third-gen Momentum Wireless builds on the success of the originals, only minimally restyled, though with an entirely rethought button layout, and a whole lot of smart stuff. The first innovation is simple but very handy— a plastic overlay on the right earcup that shows what all the buttons do. The one thing not on the sticker is how to turn them on and off... because there is no button for this. Instead you fold the headphones into storage position — not just flattening the earcups, but fully curled up. There’s a learning curve here: you must fold the left headshell first, because the switch is in the left hinge. They also have smart pause, which stops the music when you take the Momentums off or drop them around your…

So to the Apple AirPods Max, the arrival of which prompted this whole group test of over-ear headphones. We had plenty of time to prepare — this particular Apple release was one of the worst-kept tech secrets prior to launch. But we hadn’t expected the price: $899 pushes them up above even premium wireless noisecancelling headphones. Can they justify it? Well the short answer is yes, they can. While the styling may not be to everyone’s tastes, and you may prefer the silver, space grey, green or sky blue to the pink shown in the main image here, there is no denying the quality of the materials and build. The solid-enough Sony XM4s look and feel almost cheap compared with the Apples, which boast pristinely machined, single-piece anodised aluminium ear…

Richter can lay claim to being one of Australia’s oldest loudspeaker manufacturers, and the Harlequin one of its longest-running designs. The Harlequin name derives from the mischievous ‘devil’ or ‘demon’ character in French passion plays of the 16th century, though it is better recognised today with the chequered costume developed during Italy’s subsequent commedia dell’arte. The name fits well among Richter’s mystic speakers — the Wizards, the Merlins, and the outlying Thor, this last chosen for the presumably ‘thunderous’ subwoofer of the latest Series 6 line-up. Equipment As you can see from the photographs here, the Harlequin is an unusual design, a two-way, two-driver floorstanding loudspeaker. That’s unusual because most two-way designs are in small cabinets that are intended to be placed on stands or on a shelf or side-table…

THE SMASHING PUMPKINS Cyr Billy Corgan’s trademark sharp melodies fly on upbeat synth-pop. With Billy Corgan having overseen numerous works of myth-laden grunge rock and spent much of the past decade releasing chunks and snippets of an unfinished 44-song concept album called ‘Teargarden By Kaleidyscope’, based on tarot, it’s not surprising that his quasi-reunion of the original Smashing Pumpkins line-up is turning out to be anything but straightforward. For a start, while guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin are back on board, bassist D’arcy Wretzky has claimed she was excluded from sessions, in interviews detailing the unbearable stresses of being in the band in the ‘90s. And the traditional comeback nostalgia tour — the Pumpkins’ will be themed around their ‘Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’ commercial peak —…

STREAMING PLATFORMS There’s always Bluetooth, but it’s often a lower-quality of streaming than you can achieve from other streaming connections like Chromecast or AirPlay. Some systems can also stream direct from the internet, as do Spotify Connect and the new Tidal Connect (see News p10), which is preferable to doubled streaming to your smart device and then again from there to the system, a longer less reliable method that can reduce quality through re-encoding with different codecs. The easiest access to music is often via the dedicated apps provided by the various wireless multiroom platforms, many of which have their own product ranges (think Sonos), while other platforms have been included in full-on hi-fi as well as smaller speakers — think BluOS in Bluesound and NAD, HEOS in Denon and…

Ultra-short-throw projectors are going great guns. Even mainstream companies not previously or no longer involved in projection (LG, Samsung, Hisense) have realised that a projector sitting on a bench can deliver a large-screen ‘TV-like’ experience with a convenience that a conventional projector cannot when it has to be pushed back in the room or hung on a ceiling. As a consequence the ultra-short-throw is rapidly evolving. Since it’s going to work like a TV, shouldn’t it have speakers? Shouldn’t it be smart, like a TV? Yes it should. So here comes Epson, a company which declares itself the world no.1 in projection (on the reasonable basis it has been declared so by Futuresource Consulting for the last 17 consecutive years), with new models for just this space, the EH-LS500 (see…

CLOSED OR OPEN? It’s your first choice, and the easiest — because the answer is probably ‘closed’. Open headphones spill sound into the environment, and let sound in as well, so there’s only really one circumstance for which they’re suitable — private listening at home, where the lack of a sealed earcup can gift them an open airiness which closed designs struggle to match. But for anything else, even for listening in the same room as others at home, it’s ‘closed’. WIRELESS OR WIRED (OR BOTH)? Wireless headphone sales overtook cable-only headphones several years ago; they’re just so darned convenient. Yet there are compromises, first among them the reduced quality of Bluetooth transmission compared with cable, also being a slave to battery life, or subject to drop-outs. You might think…

As we’ve just awarded this design our Home Headphone of the Year under $1000 in our 2021 Sound+Image Awards, it’s clear that we rate them highly. They also provide a complete contrast to the wireless HD 450BTs on the previous page. The price is similar, but all the street features are stripped away: no Bluetooth, no noise-cancelling, no voice prompts, no app. Instead you have an open-backed design (meaning the headshells allow music out, as well as external noise in) which connects via a cable that terminates in a full-sized quarter-inch stereo jack, but with an adaptor cable provided for minijack sockets. They proved a reminder of the headstart to performance that is granted by cable over Bluetooth, and by open designs over closed. And they demonstrate what Sennheiser does…

While ‘hi-fi’ headphone companies know how to deliver good sound but have spent a decade learning to handle Bluetooth, Jabra came from the other direction — it knew all about Bluetooth but had to learn how to tune a musical headphone. Having established that ability without doubt in the last few years, it now delivers both bud and over-ear wireless noise-cancellers that challenge the value of the most established brands. And its expertise in communication might even give it an edge. The 85h has no fewer than eight microphones in total — four used during noise-cancellation, six used when making calls, and are the only headphones of which we’re aware which provide EQ options not only for your music, but for the calls as well: you can nudge up the…

Shure was once the biggest name in hi-fi, by virtue of selling more phono cartridges than everyone else put together, and the biggest name in microphones too. Perhaps it was the closure of its phono division in 2018 that prompted its surprise entry into the consumer headphone market in 2020, and in the highly competitive wireless noise-cancelling arena at that, with the recommended price of $599 placing them amid plenty of strong competition. Shure’s Aonic 50s certainly look every bit the modern up-market noise-cancelling over-ear headphones, with easily detachable leather-and-memory-foam ear-pads, a leather-covered headband, and aluminium arms that articulate through 90 degrees to allow the headphones to lie flat. Though wireless, with an excellent selection of Bluetooth codecs, they can be cabled for in-flight connection as well as a back-up…

For much of the last two decades, Bose’s QuietComfort noise-cancellers have set the benchmarks. But these 700s (their official unwieldy name is ‘Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700’) ditch the QuietComfort tag, inaugurating a new premium series along with two pairs of true wireless in-ears for which the company claims “the biggest leap forward in headphones since the iconic QuietComfort” — a mightily bold statement. The 700s bring the aesthetic up to date, with a strikingly modern look. And heading the feature list is Bose’s new noise-cancelling system, with everything from new acoustics to new digital signal processing, all running off Bose’s own NC chip. It features an eight-microphone system (six to cancel noise, two for voice pick-up) and 11 increments of noise-cancellation intensity to choose from, although zero doesn’t actually…

Having hit the peak for wireless noise-cancellers, the rest of the headphones in our group here are cabled models, and given the increasing prices, they are cabled headphones of great quality. Here we have two, indeed, as beyerdynamic has repeated the trick it delivered with the DT1770 Pro and 1990 Pro, one open-backed, one closed-back, but otherwise similar in their construction and sound, so that you could buy whichever suited your purposes, or heck, get one of each. This time around the headphones are the T1 and the T5, both established models of renown, now released in their third generation. The T5 is the closed-back version, keeping external sounds off and internal sounds in, and the company therefore notes this model as being “easily connected to mobile devices”, further supported…

One of our Editor’s earliest moments of hi-fi revelation came courtesy of MartinLogan. Back at the advent of the 1990s, a tour was organised for him, then a UK junior reviewer, to gain what was, in retro-spect, a rare and privileged insight into the home hi-fi systems of the most esteemed reviewers in the country at that time. Three memories from this tour were etched deep. The first of these was the inconceivable size of the LP and CD collection of Jimmy Hughes. Second was the sound of Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick played through Malcolm Steward’s Linn/Naim system (the speaker model is forgotten, but the song very much remains). And third was being sat in front of a pair of MartinLogan electrostatic speakers at the home of Alvin Gold, to…

Wireless speakers The most modern of hi-fi, from portable Bluetooth speakers to large all-in-one wireless units which can challenge separates systems, there seem no limits to the technology being incorporated to achieve convenience along with sound quality. Check your preferred services and filetypes are covered, then sit back and enjoy all the app-enabled extras. JBL LINK MUSIC W2021 / $199.95 / www.jbl.com.au The mains-powered Link Music offers great sound for the price, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, full Google Assistant abilities and AirPlay 2. For our money JBL pretty much rules the value-per-dollar roost at this price and below. JBL LINK PORTABLE W2021 / $249.95 / www.jbl.com.au With Bluetooth, Google Assistant, AirPlay 2 and battery operation, the JBL Link Portable is a winner at home and away, although there’s a price for…