these apparently might sound better than bose qc15 :)
reviews: whathifi (5/5), alatest (84/100)
35% off Sennheiser PXC 450 Noise Cancelling Headphones 46,500 QFF pts @ Qantas Store
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Agree with drmac. I have had these for about 5 years too and love them. I only use them when I travel and agree the noise cancelling is brilliant. I replaced the pads with after-market $10 ones off eBay and while they look OK, you can tell a slight difference in quality. However, the original pads cost over $100 so I wasn't going to fork out over $100 for some cushions! Best feature is the bypass mode where you can use them without a battery so if your battery runs flat, flick them over to bypass and they still work.
Did you compare the noise cancelling with the Bose? I tried these at an airport and I definitely tell that audio quality is amazingly better but I felt that the NC was worse, almost non-existent. Not sure if it was just a faulty set or if the NC is significantly inferior to the QC15s, but for a dedicated set of NC headphones, I felt that the QC15s would be a better pick in my opinion. Curious to hear your thoughts.
Yeah, I've compared with Bose a few times and I still feel that the sennheisers have a slight advantage with the active NC alone, but saying that, Bose was pretty close. I think the combination of the larger cups and the noise cancelling pushes the sennheisers just over the line IMO.
Hard to test in the airport too, active noise cancelling works best on continuous lower frequency noise.I haven't tried the Bose ones but I can attest to drmac's comments about the Sennheiser ones being a better fit and covering the entire ear. I am pretty sure I am no Dr. Spock and do have fairly average size ears, however all the Bose ones I see people wearing seem to sit on top of the ear rather than around the ear.
Also not sure if the Bose has this feature (would be surprised if it doesn't) but another thing the Sennheiser has is a talk-through button so that if someone wants to talk to you, rather than take the headset off you push a button and it lets the external noise come through.
For all I know, the Bose could be great but my only experience has been with Sennheiser and apart from the $110 cushion / pad replacements, I can't fault them.
basically any earphone/headphone is going to have "better" sound quality than bose, you just have to turn them up a bit more to hear it
from your opinions, basically any headphone that has any sort of dampening would be sufficient for your "noise cancelling" which completely negates the purpose of having active noise cancelling
i personally own the QC20 and don't mind that other headsets have "better" sound quality because i can have my music on volume 1/100 and still hear it perfectly :)
I think you are confused: bigger/more enclosed cups don't affect noise cancellation…it may improve noise isolation, but cancellation is done by the electronics of the headphone.
I think you are conflating noise cancellation and isolation.
I was being general with my wording. I'm well aware of what noise cancellation is and how it works - to the extent that I wrote an offset wave processor algorithm a while back to create a theoretical noise cancellation system…
At the end of the day, you're buying the headphones to reduce the amount of noise getting to your ears (whether actively cancelled using inverse/offset sound waves and/or by reducing the noise using physical insulation) and the combination of the larger cups and the active noise cancellation used does result in a better noise cancellation/isolation/reduction 'effect' to the user.cool story bro. so as an expert on the matter who does understand the difference, you should know better.
lest: 1) in appearing as an authority on the matter, you give people the wrong information, perpetuating the common misconception/miscategorisation, 2) you look like an idiot.
I was being general with my wording.
if by "general" you mean "factually incorrect" then yes, you were being "general"… ;)
Aha, neg away, idiots…drmac was factually incorrect. That is fact.
it's like a doctor telling a patient they have the flu, when they really have a cold…that would be factually incorrect, even if people who don't know better think they are the same thing. Even if everyone knows what was meant, it's still wrong.
But whatever…perpetuate ignorance if you wish!
Notice that drmac didn't argue that i was wrong…(because he knows I'm right!) ;)
40,000 QF points would get you a return flight from Melbourne to Bali, using them at the Qantas FF store is really bad value IMO.
The problem is trying to find flights and then paying the huge 'fee's' they charge you for the privilege of using the hard won points.
Or you could get two round trips bne-isa (normal price $700) for 48000 points +$220 in taxes. Makes the points worth almost $1180 net…
Some of us are actually Frequent Flyers. As in, we fly more than twice a month. We tend to accumulate lots of points. I earn roughly 20k points a month, normally. Hell, I earn 30k every time I fly to LA and back and I do that trip twice a year.
For Frequent flyers, this is a good deal.
using them at the Qantas FF store is really bad value IMO.
what if you need headphones and not a flight to bali? :)
It's not 35% off. It was 53,500 points a few weeks ago.
Basing on a Myer voucher is 15,000 for $100 which makes it 150/$1, this means the headphones come to around $310 which is a good price.
Still undecided on these. I don't travel much. I often get told I have the volume on too loud. I do not use my Qantas points and have not used them for the last 3 years.
I have just under a million points - should I just buy them?
I've been using a pair of these for the last 5 years and I do about 5-6 Europe or US trips a year (just used them yesterday on a flight Melborune-Edinburgh) and I can stand by the fact that they are absolutely brilliant.
I tried Bose out of curiosity and whilst they were great, in my opinion, the Sennheisers are a bit better.
They are bigger and as such they enclose more of the ear which results in very good noise cancelling. The audio quality is excellent as well - and I'd use them more on a day to day basis if I wasn't worried about wearing them out (as they are expensive to replace).
I comfortable use them on 30+ hour trips without my ears getting too sore.
After 5 years of use, the pads are starting to break up a little, but you can get replacement pads from Sennheiser or aftermarket ones.
If you have spare points, then I'd say this is a good deal - even the points + pay options.