Bose QuietComfort 45 Headphone Review

[Bam!]

It's very easy to accept something as "part of the song" if you don't have a direct (and immediate) comparison (keep in mind that sonic memory retention is quite bad).

Then let's hope that Amir is as smart and reflective as you. As I said, I trust his judgement. I have a whole army of Bose headphones and have never found a serious hardware problem (unlike eg Hifiman), even with rtings it has remained a good rating. 7.6 for neutral sound.

What we can be sure of: In the audio community there are a lot of people gifted with imagination who claim to be able to hear all kinds of things.

 

[IAtaman]

The filter is for the shared dip in both channels around 8 kHz. That is very different than one channel having more energy at some frequencies and less at others in the 1 to 3 kHz region. As I mentioned, we are likely hearing the average of the two channels as far as tonality there so the difference won't be like it seems on the graph.

A week or so ago NTK posted a series of wav files that had delay in one channel and level difference in other, to play around and experience the effects of ITD and ILD on spatial perception.

Soundstage and imaging

I tried that video a while back, the guy is waaay too irritating for me. Also, classical music: who can make sense of that? But I love a good vectorscope. :) More seriously, I understand the comment about different behaviour at different frequencies and agree (normal nonlinearities in the...

audiosciencereview.com

In those tests, 6db was large enough difference to move the shift caused by delay that moved the sound to one channel clearly back to center (sort of). Even when the image was kinda in the center, it was still a bit blurry and was sounding like it is coming from behind. I was thinking maybe the conflicting cues was the culprit. With that in mind, I struggle to understand how this 6db difference between channels will not have an effect of spatial qualities.

Do you see any merit in the hypothesis that these apparent differences might be the result of DSP interfering with measurements and might not be that prevalent once worn by a human maybe?

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

This 6 dB is quite the point of contention. Perhaps it is a matter of this particular sample. Difficult to make the case that all Q45, suffer from the this ailment... Another sample, jsut to make sure?
Please?

Peace.

 

[Zensō]

Hi

This 6 dB is quite the point of contention. Perhaps it is a matter of this particular sample. Difficult to make the case that all Q45, suffer from the this ailment... Another sample, jsut to make sure?
Please?

Peace.

The Rtings measurements seem to point to it being more widespread than just one defective headphone, but another sample measured on Amir’s rig would be great.

 

[GaryH]

Yawn again. Me liking the hp is not the point. Amir liking the hp is the point. I wish "we" would get that. And my point is that I cannot imagine that trained listener Amir is not able to spot "double" the volume. Would be nice if "we" would get that too.

This is your problem. You're giving an anecdotal subjective sighted listening impression (which you hold misplaced certainty in) primacy over the measurements.

 

[amirm]

Do you see any merit in the hypothesis that these apparent differences might be the result of DSP interfering with measurements and might not be that prevalent once worn by a human maybe?

Well, the measurements are the measurements. They will likely be there on a human head as well. I just don't think without a specific test for it, it would be perceived. If this was just a channel balance issue it would be easier to test for. But this has variable differential between the two channels.

 

[Bam!]

This is your problem. You're giving an anecdotal subjective sighted listening impression (which you are placing misplaced certainty on) primacy over the measurements.

Yawn. Your problem is obviously obtuseness. Why this useless and irrelevant link to the HD 800s? I have the headphones myself, so I think Amir's review is correct, as is the positive review by rtings. In addition, Amir is not just some narrator of anecdotal stories, but someone with a lot of experience. And he furthermore explained a few posts ago what is going on. As I already wrote, there is no cure for stupid stubbornness: your sacred measurements are in my book 50-80% and in this case maybe more like 50%. I don't care about your opinion.

 

[Sancus]

It would be nice if noise canceling hiss didn't exist, but afaik it is universal to all noise canceling headphones. Given the purpose is listening in environments with much higher external noise, it's a fairly irrelevant tradeoff. You need a *really* quiet environment to even notice it, in my experience.

 

[IAtaman]

Yawn. Your problem is obviously obtuseness. I have the headphones myself, so I think Amir's review is correct, as is the positive review by rtings. In addition, Amir is not just some narrator of anecdotal stories, but someone with a lot of experience. And he furthermore explained a few posts ago what is going on. As I already wrote, there is no cure for stupid stubbornness: your sacred measurements are in my book 50-80% and in this case maybe more like 50%. I don't care about your opinion.

You keep yawning and keep calling people obtuse. Maybe best to take a little nap if you find it tiring to maintain a civilized conversation?

 

[perdido34]

You keep yawning and keep calling people obtuse. Maybe best to take a little nap if you find it tiring to maintain a civilized conversation?

I "ignored" him a while ago. Waste of time to respond, since he comes back with ad hominem comments. I thought this was forum was about science and audio, not personality??

 

[dasdoing]

I can imagine that this kind of inbalance and in this specific range will be percieved as an opening up of the center channel, rather than shifting left and right.

 

[GaryH]

Yawn. Your problem is obviously obtuseness. Why this useless and irrelevant link to the HD 800s?

Because you're making the same mistake as that poster. Read the links therein.

I have the headphones myself, so I think Amir's review is correct, as is the positive review by rtings.

This review?

As I already wrote, there is no cure for stupid stubbornness: your sacred measurements are in my book 50-80% and in this case maybe more like 50%. I don't care about your opinion.

 

[amirm]

This review?

I frequently wonder if these people are peaking at measurements and just repeating that as subjective review as to look like they have great hearing. I just don't see how joe reviewer without special content can tell such things as they wrote.

 

[markanini]

Being ignorant about the uncertainties of headphones measurements should not give anyone license to be rude. There's no guarantee that measurements match what reaches the eardrum.

Headphones and HATS are not like line signals into a ADC. The coupling interface of the pads are inconsistent and reactive to small movements, just one example. After that you would factor in the quirks of the auditory system that determine whether various measurable acoustic phenomena are audible to the listener, playing back real audio content.

Unless it's an unapologetic exposure of ones ignorance, there's no intellectually honest way of sidestepping these facts and quickly moving on to declaring cognitive biases of a single listener, with a different unit.

 

[GaryH]

Rtings finding a nearly 9 dB channel imbalance an audible problem at 2 kHz, near the nadir of the equal loudness contours, really isn't surprising.

This isn't the first time Bose headphones have exhibted significant channel imbalance either.

This is just poor engineering, and should be called out as such.

 

[markanini]

I demoed three different Bose over-ears, I don't remember exactly which ones, they were grouped next to each other in an electronics chain store. The impressions I had was that it was hard to tell them apart despite being different models, visually and sonically. Mostly the light weight and nice fit and build. The sound was okay, only lacking something in the treble, OTOH nothing objectionable. I didn't hear any channel imbalance BTW. I wasn't in need of an ANC set so I moved on to demoing other stuff.

 

[Andreas007]

I should report that spatial effects were quite good with the addition of the one filter. It was surprisingly good for such a small headphone.

Isn‘t 8 kHz the infamous Beyer-peak?

 

[astcal]

haha, this review is one week too late -- I just ordered a pair of QC45 last week and haven't got them yet!

 

[Bam!]

I frequently wonder if these people are peaking at measurements and just repeating that as subjective review as to look like they have great hearing. I just don't see how joe reviewer without special content can tell such things as they wrote.

I doubt that they have heard it, but they have seen it. Because then either way criticism comes a la "are you all deaf, the thing is totally unusable and sounds crooked". So rather proactively point it out. I can not judge whether it is really an engineering problem or perhaps (also) lies in the Bose technology and more importantly whether it would really be recognizable in normal operation. So your "defective" device vs a 100% correctly measured and then blind alternately listen to music.

They have not changed the rating and had announced that they would do so if the problem was confirmed. I think some people here in general have a strong tendency to hear what they see and thus leave science and enter esoteric.

 

[amirm]

Isn‘t 8 kHz the infamous Beyer-peak?

That's a massive peak above target:

I didn't even fully pull it up to the target here.