PSB Speakers M4U 9 Over-Ear Wireless Active Noise Cancelling Headphone, Jet Black

Fine Sound, But ….
These sound as natural in terms of frequency response as any headphone i’ve ever owned, from lowest bass to highest treble and I’ve owned many TOTL headphones including some costing more than 10 times the price of this. They also sound very low in distortion, very open, and the Room Feel presentation does in fact put the sound out there in front of you more than most other headphones. The fact that they are use Bluetooth for connectivity rather than being wired does not seem to impair the sound quality in any way.Now the less than stellar parts:1. These are not the most comfortable headphones to wear. The ear cushions seem fine, but due to the shape/size of the headband they exert too much pressure on my ears and head for long-term listening comfort. This may not be an issue for others with different head shapes/sizes. There is no apparent way to bend the headband to decrease this pressure.2. The individualized equalization available is wrong-headed and unnatural sounding. The idea is that the heaphones test your hearing sensitivity at various frequencies and then apply equalization to boost frequencies where your hearing is less acute than “normal.” But we hear natural sounds without any such equalization. The fact that all the sound from headphones enters your ears from roughly right angles to your pinnae rather than from in front or other angles already raises the amount of treble one hears. You don’t need to hear yet more treble. I advise against enabling this equalization.3. Most annoying is the fact that these are by far the most microphonic headphones I’ve ever tried. The entire structure seems to amplify any touching or shifting of one’s head with respect to the headband or ear cups. Even once seated firmly on your head, things like turning your head or even swallowing hard will be heard through the structure of the headphones as some kind of spurious noise. Running a finger over the headband or ear cup is heard quite loudly. Some other headphones make some relatively soft swishy noises when the cable is touched, but the noises I’m talking about are louder and it’s impossible to totally avoid these noises unless you are careful not to move your head at all while listening and don’t swallow hard. Didn’t anyone on the design team hear this problem before releasing these to the public?Others might downgrade these headphones more because of the issues I’ve noted. But to me, the amazing sound quality is worth putting up with these issues, at least for now.I did not buy these from Amazon, but directly from PSB/Lenbrook from the first production run after they were announced as available for purchase.

Don’t get me wrong, these headphones are not awful. But their adaptive noise canceling was mid-tier at best, the microphone built in was unusable quiet,n the Bluetooth would sometimes cut out briefly about once every two minutes with only one device connected, and although the app was okay? It crashed frequently and did not allow customization of the equalizer beyond a small handful of presets.To be honest I expected more from this product. Glad to see they dropped the price from 750$ to what it is now, but even then I think there are better priced alternatives. Accessories and packaging was the only “premium” part of my experience.