WIRED takes on preconception bias

[skankhobag]

WIRED magazine published an article entitled, “We Asked Audio Pros to Blind Test Headphones. The Results Were Surprising.”

The test was purely for sound quality. No other qualities were being considered.

The headphones were:

• A: Sony WH-1000XM6
• B: Soundcore Space One Pro
• C: Apple AirPods Max
• D: Bose QuietComfort Ultra (1st Gen)
• E: Nothing Headphones (1)
• F: Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3

Spoiler alert: The cheapest headphones won. The panel was rather amazed.

The article itself is well written and explores what happens when you listen with your eyes rather than your ears. The participants said the their scores would most likely be different if they knew the brands, models and prices of the headphones.

As Ben Stern told his son, Howard, “I told you not to be stupid, you moron!”

 

[JSmith]

The article itself

We Asked Audio Pros to Blind Test Headphones. The Results Were Surprising

When it comes to choosing a good pair of headphones, what happens when you take features, design, and brand awareness out of the equation, and leave it all up to the sound?

www.wired.com

1. Soundcore Space One Pro
2. Nothing Headphone (1)
3. Apple Airpods Max
4. Sony WH‑1000XM6
5. Bose QuietComfort Ultra (1st Gen)
6. Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3

JSmith

 

[mhardy6647]

The article itself is well written and explores what happens when you listen with your eyes rather than your ears.

Does it mention the pitfalls of listening with one's wallet?


I think that's the biggest problem of all...

 

[olieb]

Does it mention the pitfalls of listening with one's wallet?

Well, maybe that is not even such a bad idea .

Incredibly, at $199/£150, our blind testers’ favorite headphones are almost half the price of the next cheapest we tested, which, incidentally, came in second place.

So "hearing with one's wallet" might mean, "cheaper is better!"

 

[mhardy6647]

Well, maybe that is not even such a bad idea .

So "hearing with one's wallet" might mean, "cheaper is better!"

In fairness, it might (and certainly has been) argued that there's a fairly strong undercurrent of reverse snobbery in the hi-fi hobby.
It used to come up fairly often as a charge against the dumpster diver mentality* of old-school online audio forums such as audiokarma.
I think with the current prices of the big ol' silver boxes that "they"* covet has made it harder to argue that older is better partly because it's cheaper!

This was a $5 garage sale acquisition in good working order...but that was 25 or more years ago. Probably not many of these to be found at sub-ten-dollar asking prices in 2025.


______________
* been there, done that. Still do, but to a very minor extent in my dotage.

 

[dfuller]

Unfortunately it's a rather poor test. They only used one song, instead of a small suite of varying genre.

 

[DanielT]

Doesn't say anything about sound volume and as we know the highest volume wins.

 

[kemmler3D]

An admirable effort but as @DanielT points out, I think this is a good example of what happens when tech reviewers with no background in audio review audio. Gadget-oriented pubs like Wired and Gizmodo and such always review audio because they're electronic accessories to phones and computers in their world. But you won't even find a Minidsp EARS among the lot of them and their background in audio is usually "I love music and I've listened to a lot of headphones, like a dozen!".

So I'd say this is one of the best headphone reviews to come out of a gadget publication, but level matching apparently didn't even occur to them.

E: on the other hand the frequency response differences are probably quite large in this case so it's not totally invalid. Just not a really rigorous test like you'd hope for.

 

[tmtomh]

In fairness, it might (and certainly has been) argued that there's a fairly strong undercurrent of reverse snobbery in the hi-fi hobby.
It used to come up fairly often as a charge against the dumpster diver mentality* of old-school online audio forums such as audiokarma.
I think with the current prices of the big ol' silver boxes that "they"* covet has made it harder to argue that older is better partly because it's cheaper!

This was a $5 garage sale acquisition in good working order...but that was 25 or more years ago. Probably not many of these to be found at sub-ten-dollar asking prices in 2025.


______________
* been there, done that. Still do, but to a very minor extent in my dotage.

Those Yamahas have always been my favorite of the vintage receivers from an aesthetic point of view - classic vintage touches like all the dials, meters, and wood (or fake wood, but let's ignore that for now... ), but at the same time so clean and relatively minimalist compared to most others. The narrow selectors instead of knobs are probably my single favorite aesthetic touch - and nicely functional too!

And I always thought their Loudness control made a lot of sense: you turn up the receiver to reference volume aka the loudest volume you're ever likely to listen at, then set the loudness slider until you are pleased with the tonal balance. Then when you listen at lower volumes, the unit automatically backs off the degree of Loudness compensation based on the amount of volume reduction. It's genius.

Finally, it's also worth noting that to the best of my knowledge these units all measured respectably well for the time, so they were well-engineered too.