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Comment by rdudek | Hacker News Reader

I'm thinking about picking up the QC 35's series 2 or the Sony WH-1000MX3's. Any recommendations? Can either of those turn off the noise canceling tech? I'm not a big fan of noise canceling technologies, I'm just looking for a quality sounding wireless headset to pair with my iphone.

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I got the WH-1000MX3 for travel. It makes the otherwise oppressive cabin noise of airplanes bearable. I've had other noise-cancelling headphones before, but none that were capable of making a long flight tolerable.

On a recent flight I only found out that there was some kid crying to whole way at the end of the flight when I took the headphones off.

But its sound quality in general is nothing like a good pair of headphones. I also have the Sennheiser HD-800 and it's a totally different league, but only in a quiet room. My perception of its quality improved when I moved to a quieter apartment with no road noise coming in from outside.

They're similar, but I'd say the noise cancelation is a bit better on the sonys. I also prefer the tuning on the sonys, but that's a matter of taste. (I don't own a pair of qc35, but I did swap with a friend for a plane ride). I don't know about the qc35, but on mx3s you can turn on/off the nc features, or cup your hand over the speakers to temporarily pause them. They also have a pretty good bluetooth low energy implementation which makes them last more than 14 hours, but I haven't ever let them fully run down so I don't know the true battery life.

I have a two year old (set of?) MDR-1000X (the previous model) and the battery is still working fine. I usually have them on for 6 hours a day - with NC as it comes on by default, and I forget to turn it off - and only charge them once a week.

I have both Sony WH-1000MX3 and the much cheaper Sony MDRXB950N1B, and I prefer the latter for it's rendering of bass sounds. MX3 has better noise canceling but listening to electronic music with heavy base on the 950's is so much more fulfilling, feels like being at a concert. Maybe I am just a bass freak.

Definitely the Sony's, by far.

I owned Sonys. The make or break feature to me is the noise canceling, and the Bose 700 just murdered them, it wasn’t even a fair fight. I had a screaming baby in my arms with a tiny bit of music and could only feel the vibration of baby’s screams. The 700s are hands down industry best. I tried them all.

Active noise canceling has no way to deal with complex high pitched noise, such as a baby crying. Maybe in the future someone will reach that point but for now it's only good for predictable, and especially low frequency, noise.

Do you own the 700s? Because I can tell you without a doubt there is noise canceling on the entire range, not as great as killing engine noise, but the difference between 10, 5, OFF is noticeable everywhere. In my example I had music on, but what the noise canceling does is allow for a very low volume of music vs trying to down everything out. I encourage you to try and put a newborn to sleep if you don’t think the crying can be predictable.

I haven't specifically used the 700s but I have tried tons of different nc implementations. And by predictable, I mean "a milliwatt chip can record, analyze, and reproduce an inverted signal in real time". What sounds predictable to a human ear can be awfully complicated when you actually look at the signal on a frequency plot. Audio engineering is hard. There aren't many things that active nc can handle well without horrible distortions. I haven't heard any audio tech that has tried to deal with complex signals due to this effect, which isn't really acceptable in headphones. It turns into a weird digital sounding blips randomly interspersed, occasionally canceling things out.

Ok, so just to recap; we have my first hand anecdote of compairing the hot Sony to the hot Bose, and to you telling me I’m wrong and I must be wrong because despite you having never touched the Bose 700, “it’s a technology”. Ok, just wanted to make sure I had that right.

I actually find the Sonys to have the better ANC. They have some additional sensor to adjust the frequencies that they filter on depending on if you're walking, waiting etc. All for almost $200 less than the Bose.

I'll level with you, 700s have the best microphone in the this class. But sound, ease of use, features, and sound quality goes to the Sony, not to mention than the Sony's can be found on sale for half the price of the the Bose.

If you're a big user of wireless, Bose doesn't support LDAC which is arguably the best codec for sound quality wirelessly.

Right now in the audio community, Sonys are the the consensus recommendation unless you expect to take many calls on them.

> Right now in the audio community, Sonys are the the consensus recommendation unless you expect to take many calls on them.

Ok, but I bought both and returned the Sonys because “the consensus” was wrong imo. I have first hand knowledge with both. I paid $275 for the Bose 700s.

Maybe my first hand experience is wrong.

you can control the QC35 ANC with the app. The QC35 II's allow you to do it with a button on the headphones.

I turn it off sometimes as it can be disorienting to me at times.

https://www.bose.com/en_us/support/article/set-the-action-bu...

If you care about privacy, you might not want that app installed on your phone. It's been covered on HN before, but the app sends information about what you're listening to back to Bose.

The one annnoying thing is that, while they generally work well without the app, there's one button that can function as either:

- activate Google Assistant or Siri

- disable noise cancelling

Given that I don't have the app, I can't use the former anyway. However, to set up the button for the latter functionality, I have to use the app.

In other words, I can't turn off noise cancelling, and have a useless button on my headphones.

The WH-1000MX3 has a variety of noise cancelling modes (including off). You can set it in the app or you can have it automatically adjust the profile based on where it thinks you are. The profiles are things like transit, walking, etc. While you can turn of ANC with a button, you do need the app to adjust anything else.

The Sony's have +5db of exaggerated bass that cannot be EQ'd out on the headphones when using LDAC. Without EQ, I find them completely unlistenable for jazz or classical music. I kept them as I only use them with one device (so EQ is practical) and the NC is very good.

Sony. Not even close.

MX4’s are coming soon. Or were, before Covid-19.

The MX3s are so good, and the price is low because of the upcoming MX4s, I wouldn't wait to pay more for the next generation.

XM4 are rumored to come at least in September of 2020 since the XM3 are not listed on the IFA website, but other Sony products have been listed.

I really hope they decide on launching since everybody thought they were launching September 2019 :(

It's very easy to accidentally touch the controls on the Sony's and accidentally pause/skip your music. They were nice, but that was such a frustrating feature.

Wow, I've only had the opposite experience. Having to do a gesture twice because it missed my first attempt. I've certainly never thought it was too sensitive. I wonder if there was a firmware update which tweaked that. I only got a pair in early-mid 2019 and updated the firmware immediately.

Not me. I try to change the volume and at least one quarter of the time it restarts the track. I love these for sound and comfort, but the touch interface is not good.

I just reread your comment, and I think you should look at other options if you don't care about noise canceling. Pretty much all NC headphones sacrifice a lot to make the NC work well, so they don't sound fantastic. As for recommending general wireless closed back headphones, that depends a lot on what your tone preferences are. The pair I have that most of my non-headphone-geek friends prefer are the vmoda crossfades. Specifically I have the crossfade 1, but there have been a couple of newer versions since then which I haven't tried.

If you don't want noise cancelling the Sonys are very comfortable, usb-c charging Bluetooth headphones with average audio quality.

You can turn noise cancelling off and there are also a number of settings for the noise cancelling.

Overall they are great and I moved to Sony from Bose. But if I didn't want noise cancelling I would probably look elsewhere for better sounding headphones.

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