On my recent flight from Barcelona to Miami I was fortunate enough to be upgraded to business class. In addition to the fancy food, unlimited liquor, and six BJs with the stewardess of my choice (I chose none after seeing my options), I was handed a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort Headphones with which to enjoy the in-flight entertainment.
I usually just refuse to accept them to save me the hassle of returning them 30 minutes before landing (plus they suck, y'know), but this time I took them and tried them out just to refresh my memory of their performance.... and the performance was no better than every other bad experience I had with them.
What they did do quite well was block out noise. However, that noise blocking capability has artifacts. What I heard when not plugged into anything was a weird sense of phase shifting background sounds and strange and subtle cutting in and out of the noises in the cabin. In many ways it was very disconcerting as it felt extremely artificial and it made my brain hurt. So, I plugged them into my phone to listen to some lossless music to judge their sound.
Listening to a playlist based on my world-renowned "Flint's Spectacular Loudspeaker Auditioning CD: Numbers 1 and 2", I tried to determine the strengths of the headphones. I stuck to it and listened to the entire 90 minutes of music (it was a whopping 8 hour flight) and after I was done I knew that every single impression I had made in the past about these $500 headphones was true - they sound terrible.
Why do I consider them terrible? The frequency balance is irritating with an unnatural cut in the upper midrange and a boosted lower treble and boosted upper bass. The balance resembled that of the Bose Acoustimass loudspeaker system, which I know Bose spent a fortune getting exactly right to impress buyers.There was a problem with rendering critical midrange detail where I could not distinguish multiple guitars in songs where on amazing systems I can hear up to four guitars being played. The dynamic range was odd, in that it seemed low levels were boosted and high levels were lowered. The songs I usually have to strain to hear everything during quiet sections and I feel I need to turn it down on the loud sections were mellowed so everything seemed just average. Ultimately, these headphones fail in accuracy in many ways.
Flipping the noise canceling on and off while listening was just as enlightening. They definitely sounded better with the noise cancelation turned off. When it was turn on there were artifacts in the music where it seemed critical midrange performance suffered bizarre phase shifting thing which is difficult to describe other than to say it resembled a guitar pedal phaser on each channel which was not adjusted to the same cycle rate - guitarists should know what that means. Also, the limited detail in the midrange was flattened and muddled with the noise cancelation turned on. Bad stuff.
So, in summary, the Bose Quiet Comfort headphones still suck as they always have. If they sold for less than $100 I wouldn't be so critical, because they sound like a sub-$100 headphone with electronic noise cancelation.
Also, the "comfort" aspect of their design was lacking. I wear glasses and any headphone which presses hard on my temples causes pain by pressing my glasses into be head. These do that. This is one reason I love AKG headphones because they self-adjust and apply very low pressure on my head.
So, I still refuse to ever recommend them for anyone. Instead, noise blocking IEMs are most ideal for air travel. Short of that, Audio Technica, Sony, Sennheiser and others offer very cost-appropriate sounding headphones with noise canceling electronics which are very good.
I usually just refuse to accept them to save me the hassle of returning them 30 minutes before landing (plus they suck, y'know), but this time I took them and tried them out just to refresh my memory of their performance.... and the performance was no better than every other bad experience I had with them.
What they did do quite well was block out noise. However, that noise blocking capability has artifacts. What I heard when not plugged into anything was a weird sense of phase shifting background sounds and strange and subtle cutting in and out of the noises in the cabin. In many ways it was very disconcerting as it felt extremely artificial and it made my brain hurt. So, I plugged them into my phone to listen to some lossless music to judge their sound.
Listening to a playlist based on my world-renowned "Flint's Spectacular Loudspeaker Auditioning CD: Numbers 1 and 2", I tried to determine the strengths of the headphones. I stuck to it and listened to the entire 90 minutes of music (it was a whopping 8 hour flight) and after I was done I knew that every single impression I had made in the past about these $500 headphones was true - they sound terrible.
Why do I consider them terrible? The frequency balance is irritating with an unnatural cut in the upper midrange and a boosted lower treble and boosted upper bass. The balance resembled that of the Bose Acoustimass loudspeaker system, which I know Bose spent a fortune getting exactly right to impress buyers.There was a problem with rendering critical midrange detail where I could not distinguish multiple guitars in songs where on amazing systems I can hear up to four guitars being played. The dynamic range was odd, in that it seemed low levels were boosted and high levels were lowered. The songs I usually have to strain to hear everything during quiet sections and I feel I need to turn it down on the loud sections were mellowed so everything seemed just average. Ultimately, these headphones fail in accuracy in many ways.
Flipping the noise canceling on and off while listening was just as enlightening. They definitely sounded better with the noise cancelation turned off. When it was turn on there were artifacts in the music where it seemed critical midrange performance suffered bizarre phase shifting thing which is difficult to describe other than to say it resembled a guitar pedal phaser on each channel which was not adjusted to the same cycle rate - guitarists should know what that means. Also, the limited detail in the midrange was flattened and muddled with the noise cancelation turned on. Bad stuff.
So, in summary, the Bose Quiet Comfort headphones still suck as they always have. If they sold for less than $100 I wouldn't be so critical, because they sound like a sub-$100 headphone with electronic noise cancelation.
Also, the "comfort" aspect of their design was lacking. I wear glasses and any headphone which presses hard on my temples causes pain by pressing my glasses into be head. These do that. This is one reason I love AKG headphones because they self-adjust and apply very low pressure on my head.
So, I still refuse to ever recommend them for anyone. Instead, noise blocking IEMs are most ideal for air travel. Short of that, Audio Technica, Sony, Sennheiser and others offer very cost-appropriate sounding headphones with noise canceling electronics which are very good.