Sennheiser MX980 Earpod Review

Sound Quality

It was more of an impulse buy as oo.com.au was selling these for $69.95 with free delivery, the price was just too good to refuse as the retail was over $200+.

I have owned the sennheiser mx980 for close to a 3 weeks now, my initial impressions of the earpods was very negative as I was testing it on my samsung galaxy nexus phone.

Using it on my phone, initial thoughts was – very clean treble, mids very powerful, excellent wide sound stage, no bass… yes that’s right no bass at all.

I was extremely let down by the lack of bass these earpods produced with my galaxy nexus as the spec stated its freq response is between 15hz – 28khz, i understand they are meant to be very neutral sounding but the lack of bass made all the music lacked definition and warmth. It came out sounding cold and treble ends up sounding very bright.

I thought to myself, something must not be right. Either these ear pods are faulty or something is wrong with my ears.

After further reading online reviews, what is clear to me now is that it must be the source that is the problem. So I connected it up to my cambridge audio azur 350a amplifier, source is from hrt streamer II connected to PC running foobar2000 with wasabi out.

What a difference, all music comes to life, treble-mid-bass all are much more powerful. Sound stage is wider. The bass is tight but not over powering, mid’s are warm, treble is clean and vibrant. Listening to Allan Taylor’s – Colour to the moon was just incredible, he’s vocals really comes through, you get this warm soothing mid range and the clean highs. The treble and midrange is on par with the Audio Technica m50 headphones and has a much bigger sound stage due to it’s more open design.

Further testing with the Fiio X3 DAP shows that these earpods need a good amplifier and DAC to get them to perform.

If you are just going to use them with an iphone/ipod/android device than don’t bother as you won’t be able to experience what these earpods can do.

Build Quality & Fit

The build quality of these ear pods reflect the premium price it is asking for, both earpods and the 3.5mm jack are made out of stainless steel. At the same time they don’t feel heavy when wearing them.

The design looks weird at first due to the angle they made the earpods but it all makes sense when you put them on as the angle keeps the cable towards your body so it doesn’t get in the way.

Some people have issues with the size of the ear pods, they are much bigger than the ear pods you get with the iphone/ipod. I did not have any issues. They fit very comfortably with the foam padding.

The included case was the only negative thing i can say, it is only good for long term storage but if you just want to store it temporarily whilst your not listening to them it is not worth the hassle to use them as it takes a bit of time to wind the cable up and you can’t have the cable clip attached if you want to put in the case. It would be so much better if they included a standard zip up padded case.

The packaging was excellent, it just oozes quality. From the premium feel of the cardboard they used to the way it opens up by sliding it apart. Everything has been thought through by the designers.

Fiio X3 – 2 week review

After owning the fiio x3 for 2 weeks it is time to do another review to see if my initial impressions still apply.

Well let me just say it still sounds as good as the first day I listened to it if not better!

Music still sound incredible, wide sound stage, tight bass, warm mids.

Battery life

I am in the middle of doing a battery stress test will update once I am done.

Findings/surprises that was not mentioned in the manual

When the x3 hold switch is set to on you can still power on the device, the hold switch is meant to disable all the buttons so you can’t accidentally turn it on but looks like for some reason fiio was not able to disable it.

Now the surprising part, initially I thought there was some problem with my x3 when it kept turning itself off after i powered it on but after some troubleshooting I came to the following observation:

When you power on the x3 with the hold switch set to on it will turn off after 10 seconds it has been on. Only flicking the hold switch off within those 10 seconds will make the device stay on. This seems like a deliberate implementation by fiio to get around the issue of the power button being still able to power the device when hold is set to on.

Bugs/Problems

The only bug i have noticed is the system freeze issue. I have noticed the odd system freeze and from my troubleshooting I could not find a conclusive answer to the issue.

When does the freeze happen?
I found It always happens when I’m changing to another album or even browsing to another album, if I just set it to play an album and not touch it, it will play for hours with no issues.

Troubleshooting:
I initially thought it was the db file after reading some comments on head-fi. So I trashed the db file and did a library rescan. Initially I thought this fixed it but after using it for an hour and plenty of albums changes it froze on me.

More troubleshooting, so after some head scratching an idea came to me what if the freeze was caused by the album cover as I get my music from various sources the album cover sizes and file types are all over the place. Also from reading on head-fi that the x3 is fussy with album covers. So I disable album covers by changing it to display lyrics instead. Since I do not have lyrics it will just display the song Id tag.

After the change I noticed there was a big improvement in albums loading and overall music browsing snappiness. It has been 2 days and so far not a single freeze.

I am not sure if this has fixed it as I have also stopped doing a lot of albums changes encoded at different frequencies and bit rate as I read this can cause issues for the x3 as the decoder needs to constantly change its decoding for the different frequencies.

FYI I have a mix of mp3 and flac, flac files are either 44/16, 96/24, 192/24

The freezing has happened to me on the following firmware: 1.31, 2.05, 2.10

More troubleshooting will need to be done.

Fiio X3 – First Impressions

So I finally purchased a Fiio X3, after searching around for an “audiophile” grade DAP. The X3 fitted my budget and due to the many positive reviews on head-fi.org.

I have had the device for 3 days now, here are my initial observations of the X3

Listening test was done with the Sennheiser MX980 earpods, all audio tracks was flac. Mix of 44/16, 96/24 and 192/24.

Player was updated to latest 2.05 firmware

Positives

Nice wide sound stage

Clean powerful treble, mids are warm and refined, songs with vocals really shine, tight bass.

Powerful amp that can drive headphone impedance up to 300ohms.

Negatives

Player firmware still not 100% stable – sometimes jumping around songs between different categories it can cause the player to lock up. A hard reboot need to get it going again.

can get warm after long use if you leave it in your pocket (laying it on a desk with ventilation it stays cool)

User Interface – General usage experience

It takes around 30 seconds for the device to turn on from off state.

The interface is simple and straight forward with 3 menu layers to navigate through. The speed is pretty good, you don’t get instant menu change, there is around a 1-2 second delay but its not that noticeable and its perfectly usable.

The default themes are quite ugly. I have updated mine with this theme: http://www.hifi-forum.de/viewthread-125-8721.html which is very slick and clean looking with the right colour.

The button layout takes a bit of getting use to but after a few hours your feel right at home. The only improvement i can think of is to move the volume buttons on the side, after using a phone for so many years that has the volume controls on the side, it is really difficult to adjust to having the buttons on the top.

The inclusion of the screen protector and silicone case is a nice touch from fiio. The box the player that came in was quite well made as well, quality printing and cardboard been used.

Sound

I have so far just tested with flac tracks, my X3 also came with “Dr. Chesky’s Sensational, Fantastic, and Simply Amazing Binaural Sound Show (2012) recorded at 192/24”. The album has some excellent test tracks for the X3, the classical pieces really bought out the X3’s clean treble and warm mids. One listen and you will go wow.

listening to Allan Taylor’s – Colour to the moon was just incredible, the wide sound stage and stereo imaging was all there and the soothing deep voice of Allan Taylor just punches through the clean treble.