At the beginning of this week I finally decided my Klipsch on-ear headset was really becoming irritating. Of late, I've been asked to attend WebEx conferences with the government - using a separate phone to catch the audio since WebEx web audio can get very flakey making it hard to understand what's being said. My Klipsch headset has muddy bass yet provides clear sound for listening to voice, but, being on-ear, they smash my ears and that's hard to put up with for several hours at a crack. I've used in-ear and they work OK for a while, but I hear too much ambient noise, they slip out on occasion, and they're not the best for voice clarity.
So I happened to be in the Apple Store here and wandered over to the headsets, most of which were Beats, some Bose, one B&W, and 2 B&Os. Most of these were on-ear headsets and 2 were over-ear (like airline pilot headsets). I was really looking for an over-ear set that wouldn't smash my ears. The prices of the sets varied from $150 to $400. I picked one song to use to test the headsets - it happened to be Timberlake's Mirrors which has a lot of range, instrumentation, and voice - actually a better piece of music than I thought it would be. All the players for testing the head sets were the same model iPod.
Rundown - all the Beats had strong but muddy (too strong) bass with reasonably strong midrange for voice and treble. Unfortunately the bass seemed to muck up the clarity. The Bose were better as the bass wasn't as muddy, but not totally clear.. All but one Bose was on-ear, the Quiet Comfort 15 at $300 was over-ear. It was pretty good until I tried the Bang & Olufson H6 at $400 - this over-ear headset is as clear as a very good in-house sound system. I told myself that the B&O was too expensive for me, so started rechecking the other headsets. I was set on getting an over-ear headset as comfort was my first priority. I only had the two choices, the Bose and the B&O. $300 or $400? I decided on the B&O after all - if you're in for $300, why not $400?
These are amazing for music and for WebEx conferencing. I can wear them for hours. |
