CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Headphone Measurements => Topic started by: Bill-p on April 16, 2015, 05:28:54 AM
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Oh hey, it's a bluetooth headphone!
Measurements were made using bluetooth mode, so in other words, this is using the built-in amp inside the headphone. God knows what Sony made the amp do to the headphone, but I hear audible hiss at high volume, so obviously something is amiss. Supposedly, there are quality "modes" that one can toggle via secret button presses, but I'm not gonna bother measuring the different modes because I don't think the headphone and the built-in amp is resolving enough to show the differences anyway...
Frequency response is LOL-worthy. Not because it's bad but because... I happen to find it quite... pleasing. Sort of a mini LCD-2 kinda signature. Rolled off very hard core on the top end, though. Much more so than the LCD-2. CSD is quite clean, but... since there wasn't even that much high frequency to begin with...
Bass is also surprisingly well-behaved as far as decay goes, as evident in spectrogram. I hear it that way subjectively as well.
There is a "bass boost" button. :& :)p13 :)p13 :)p13 :)p13
I won't bother measuring that, as you can see that the stock frequency response is already way too bass-tilted. To be fair, I don't think extension is anything to write home about, so some may turn that bass boost on to compensate for this. Personally, I find this headphone quite... enjoyable with pop music in stock form. Highly moddable, though, so if you're into that kind of stuff, I think there is some potential here.
Valley at 300-400Hz is evidence of driver's weakness, which means it needs moar pressure in the back in order to reproduce dat bass hump. Also meaning... dat bass hump is a massive gob of distortion, so it's blurry, pillow-fight as freak. In fact, pillow-fight hits harder! I think this is like... 3"-tall teddy bear trying to hug you kind of bass. Soft, warm, cushy, kinda nice but not exciting or violent enough. <- another point where the "bass boost" function again may score points... if you want to fight distortions with even more distortions.
Overall, I'd say... not a complete pile of poo. They at least got the frequency response almost right, and the spectrogram. Tuning this may potentially turn it into a decent walk-around headphone.
I think it's worth a look at $100, as I find that it sounds better than a lot of bluetooth headphones I have heard so far. But at MSRP of $199, I'd say... steer clear, unless you have absolutely no option whatsoever, or you would like to try your hands at some modding. :)p1
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The non BT version of these sounded quite nice
definitely nothing like that plot suggests
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The regular Sony XB950 is quite good, but a bit muffled.
Bill actually modded the Sony XB950 as far as I recall. Before applying similar principles to the MDR-Z7.
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This one is stock, by the way. It's also a different pair from the one I modded. I may decide to mod this one as well, just to see how the mod affects FR, but... honestly, it doesn't sound that bad. Just warm, thick, slow, low-fi, and kinda lacking in clarity.
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Well, once you open it, you'll realize one cup barely has enough space for mods because of the circuitry.
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Well, once you open it, you'll realize one cup barely has enough space for mods because of the circuitry.
Yep, pretty much this. But what's interesting is that driver matching is still quite good despite the difference in available space, which suggests that Sony at least did some engineering to this thing, and they decided this to be the signature they're going for.
I honestly don't think it's that bad. If you make me pick between this and one of the new Beats headphones (Solo 2?), I'd actually pick this one. Wired mode does sound marginally better, but I can't find where I put the wire, and the port is kinda proprietary (it needs a very thin plug), so I'm not able to measure that for now. Will post measurements on that at a later time. For now, I think I'll keep this one stock.
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Interesting how there appears to be a wall ending at 2kHz (I wonder if that's part of the amp's doing). It's all rather clean after that.