No Noise Headphones

These are amazing headphones. Everything about them is high quality. They feel like a well worn hat with soft covers over your ears. The sound is incredible, with outstanding imaging. The negative, they are expensive, but you know that already.

From the moment I cut open the two clear tape rounds and started to open the box, I knew these were special. Oddly, Apple had them put a peg board hanger on the box – yes these headphones hung on a rack like any cheap old Apple accessory in the store. Inside the box, the headphones are nestled in a carbon fiber looking velveteen covered plastic holder. They lift out easily and the instruction manual (more like advertising literature for B&W), the straight audio cable, and 1/4 inch headphone adapter were underneath. A really beautiful black cloth case with a diamond weave is included. The interior is suede, and the flap is held closed with an invisible magnet. There’s also a small pouch inside that exactly fits an iPod or iPhone, sweet.

The headphones themselves are beautiful. The black leather (they do make a big deal out of this being sheep’s leather) cover over the headband and ear pieces is flawless. There is ample foam padding all around for the top of your head and ears. The metal swivel, headband, and speaker covers are machined beautifully and are heavy duty.

The headphone wire is interchangeable. Remove the left ear piece cover to reveal a jack and the headphone wire. The headphones come with two different wires, one with a microphone and iPod controls, and the other straight through. The little strain relief holds the wire snug. Unless you exchanged these wires every single day, that relief is never going to harm the wire. The great news about this arrangement, if the wires ever broke, it is a simple matter to replace them – both ends of the wire are 3.5mm jacks. The headphone wire is decent, a rubbery insulation, that looks like it will survive a good long bit of wear. May 22, 2010 update – a reader has mentioned that one end of the cable is 2.5mm and the other 3.5mm, so this might not be a super easy cable to replace.

These headphones feel fantastic on my head. I have a rather large pointy bald head (go ahead, conehead jokes are allowed) and a lot of over the ear headphones are uncomfortable. The P5′s are just about perfect. The band expands large enough and the padding is thick enough that the top of my head isn’t pressured. Over the ear is comfortable.

Oh you don’t care about all these cosmetics, other than you don’t want to look like a Bose lemming on your next flight (and these headphones are handsome compared to those by Bose). You care about the audio quality. I was stunned. The bass is solid and smooth. Vocals were crystal clear. These are warm speakers, there is good bass but it is not overpowering. The response seems to be very smooth across the full tone range – highs and lows were not emphasized. The first thing I noticed was imaging. In recordings that I thought were not good, I could actually pick out and position instruments that were blended across the soundstage before. These are audiophile grade headphones.

My frame of reference is five years with a pair of Shure E3c’s. Those are absolutely crystal clear, accurate, efficient speakers. The downside, they don’t deliver much bass. The P5′s are nowhere near as bright; they are not sharp and crisp in the high end like the E3c’s. But they make up for that in warmth, in some ways the P5′s are like adding a subwoofer to my Shures. The P5′s are not as efficient, they require about 2 notches more to reach the same volume. On my Sony DVD player, the E3c’s are perfect volume at 1, the P5′s need to be set at 3 or 4. There is still plenty of room to get huge volume out of the P5′s.

From a music standpoint, the P5′s are stupendous. I won’t miss my Shure headphones at all. When I first listened to these headphones I was reminded of visits to the special rooms in high end audio stores, my eyes moved all over trying to find the musicians in the room. For movies, these headphones will work very well. Dialog might not be as clear, but special effects and music are much better. Sound is better localized to different parts of the screen.

The iPod/iPhone cable has a little tiny in line controller. It is simple beyond imagination. One click in the center (there is a depression for your finger) starts and stops music or answers a phone call. Two clicks advances one song. Three clicks moves back one song. It’s kind of strange taking a phone call through these; the sound is so much fuller and warmer than through the crummy iPhone speaker. On the other hand, the microphone is no substitute for a Jawbone or Bluetooth set up. The only way this microphone thing makes sense is if you happen to be listening to music or watching a movie and a call comes in.

Sound isolation is surprisingly good. The world isn’t as dead silent as in ear canal headphones, but I was hard pressed to hear much going on around me. I was aware of noise, but it was muffled and way off in the background. These will work very well on a plane. There is no need for crazy electronics to create the sound isolation.
April 2, 2010 update – in the back of a twin engine jet where the engines are connected to the plane body (some of the loudest jets in captivity, the Embarer 150) the headphones do a decent job on the engine noise. It is not a silent world, but much quieter. My Shure headphones were pretty much dead silent, and I would guess the Bose are also. But I’ll still take a bit of noise trade off for the sound quality.

Overall these are outstanding headphones. They are super high quality. I expect they will last a very long time. The sound is wonderful, the comfort high, the materials sensuous, and they are unique (you likely won’t see two of these on a flight any time soon).

April 30, 2010 update – something very unfortunate happened, while traveling I accidently left these headphones on a plane. The sad part of the story, United Airlines can’t seem to find them. There is a crew member that is very happy right now listening to my headphones. I certainly hope they enjoy them, I will miss them. This might be a cautionary tale, if you are used to earbuds, you’ll need to figure out a home for a much larger package if you travel with them. I really messed up.

For the past 3 years my headphone of choice was wildly popular Sennheiser 555. I decided that I wanted to try something new, not because I disliked the the 555′s, not at all because they were fairly solid cans. I just wanted to hear my music with a fresh sound, and sometimes changing headphones can provide that. Let me preface this by saying I listen to many different types of music. From extreme metal, jazz, acoustic, hip hop, electronica, progressive rock, so i needed a pair that was pretty versatile. I had a few areas i wanted to focus on when getting new headphones.

No external amp needed- Didn’t want to be bothered with amping my phones

Smaller than the 555′s the Senns were huge, so that shouldn’t be so hard!

Closed headphones- I wanted to listen to music with out bothering others

Comfort- the 555′s were very comfortable

Sound – I wanted more low end, and my Sennheisers didn’t have much bass un amped (never tried with an amp)

Because I didn’t want to make a mistake and buy a pair of headphones online relying only through reading reviews, I decided to check out the Apple Store and do some demoing of headphones there. I ended up buying the Bose On Ear’s. While I am aware of the Bose hate, I was impressed by the power that came out of such a small headphone. So i bought it . Needless to say, Bose lived up to their “live sound” signature, because no matter what i played was excessive with bass. It worked well on harder songs, or hip hop, but when i played a mellow song, the bass would drowned out everything. Sounded muddy. I returned it to buy the Bose Around Ear. While these definitely had more clarity, and very comfortable, but they had very little low end, very bright and hollow sounding. My 555′s sounded better. Back to the drawing board..

Enter the Bowers and Wilkins P5′S

I came across these gorgeous headphones. The P5′s are made out of aluminum, metal, and authentic sheep leather. These scream class. They can scream anything but do they scream good sound? Lets just say, when I listen to music with the P5′s they transport me into a wooden cottage in the woods listening to music plugged into a turn table. They sound very warm, almost the warmth you would get from beautiful vintage analog.Sounds very full, not hollow. Its hard to put into words. I am definitely not an audiophile, the bass these provide are not the over exaggerated bass you would get from Dr Dre’s Beats or the On Ear Bose but provide a very audible punchy bass. Authentic natural sound all around. These are the only headphones I have listened to that sounds like the headphones are adapting to the music, rather than the music adapting to the headphones. Meaning that the headphones generally stay out of the way, and you get to hear the music as is. Not with extra bass, or power boost or what ever else headphones usually EQ into its signature sound. Its hard to believe that when I play Nick Drake, these are the same headphones that just blasted me out of the room playing Meshuggah. They adapt that well. No amp needed on these, just plug and play! The sound isolation on the P5′s are quite good, you don’t hear much of the outside world. The built in iPod volume works as advertised. Because they are on the ear designed, they did take a bit of adjusting for me because my Senn’s were around the ears. Because they are on ears they employ a closed design.

Now lets look at my areas. No amp- check. Smaller than the 555′s- Check. Closed headphones- Check. Comfort-not as much as my prior pair. Sound- Check.

Rating these headphones I give them a solid 4 out of 5.

Why not a 5 out of 5? Well lets just say I will be using these for many years as my headphones of choice, they are seriously a work of modern art. I love the industrial design, I love the size, I love the warm sound, I love that they sound this good without any amplification. I am going to be a real and say there is more than likely better headphones out there, ones that sound better or do something specifically better than the P5′s. Personally I do wish they were more comfortable, but I think I feel that way because I am not used to on the ear type of headphone. However when you look at the sound, size, design, and price the P5′s are unmatched.. For that reason is why I rate them a very solid 4 out of 5.