That’s it for the looks, now it’s time for the audio quality and especially the usability. For reference, I’m currently using an O2/ODAC combo unit as an external sound card/amplifier and Beyerdynamic DT1990 headphones, with occasional guest appearances by Senneheiser HD598 or AKG K702. While I do value audio quality, I wouldn’t call myself a classic audiophile, as I’m still settling for a Spotify subscription with “Very High” streaming quality. Of course, the WH-1000XM4’s approach is clearly different from that of studio headphones, but in order to be able to put price-performance into perspective, I will nevertheless use those for comparison.
When it comes to ANC headphones, the software is almost more important than the hardware, and that’s where I’d like to chime in. Pairing and setting up the app is a breeze on Android, I didn’t even have to do the NFC pairing myself, the headphones were immediately offered for pairing via popup from Google Assistant. So far so good, let’s move on to Sony’s “Headphones” app. While the absolute horror often starts here with other manufacturers, Sony does better here, but probably still not well. Features work, but the structure of the app is so hard to get used to that you’ll spend a few minutes looking for what’s hidden where.
But let’s get to the positive first. At the top, the currently connected headphones are shown, along with their battery charge level. Below this are the “Status”, “Sound” and “System” tabs. The former displays the currently paired devices, details of the currently playing media and the volume. But also the “Adaptive Sound Control”, a function to automatically switch between noise cancellation modes depending on the situation, has slipped in here, although it should actually be placed under “Sound”.
Since I don’t use the headphones on the road and you don’t go out as much right now anyway, I couldn’t fully test the feature, to be fair. However, in the short time I had the feature active via default, it changed modes almost every minute for no reason. Anyone who has ever worn noise-cancelling headphones knows that, depending on the type and strength, headaches can quickly develop in the wearer. So once you’ve found a comfortable setting, you don’t really want it to keep changing on its own.
Under Sound, you will also find the “Ambient Sound Control”, which constantly changes the “Adaptive Sound Control”, if you have the latter active. The “Ambient Sound Control” is a noise cancellation mode, in which subtle sounds are played, which additionally contribute to a perceived silence on the ears. This works surprisingly well and also helps against the pressure feeling of the stronger ANC compared to its predecessor. I found the sweet spot of pressure and artificial bird chirping for me at levels 9-12, depending on how strong the ambient noise is in the home office at the time.
Speak-to-Chat automatically switches to “Transparency” mode, actively routing ambient noise inward to your ears when it detects you are speaking. That’s pretty cool in itself, but unfortunately this mode rarely turns off by itself and secondly you can’t activate it manually, which by the way was still possible in the predecessor. Why?, I ask there only Sony, by the way also via support, which did not answer so far.
Another amazingly good feature is the “Optimizer”, which can also be triggered by long pressing the “Custom” button. This involves playing test tones from the headphones and then inferring current ambient noise via the delta to the ANC microphones outside so that the ANC frequencies can be adjusted. Practical example. I start the air conditioner, hear it initially despite ANC, then run the “optimizer” and by adjusting the noise frequency to the specific hum and hiss, the air conditioner suddenly becomes inaudible. Very cool, but the predecessor could do that, too.
I couldn’t detect any effect of DSEE Extreme, which is supposed to restore compression losses as a new feature with artificial intelligence, neither positive nor negative, so it may stay on in case of doubt. Sound Quality Mode lets the user choose between focus on audio quality and range, and the equalizer also does what you’d expect.
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