Headphone Reviews

Phiaton Chord MS530 ($299)
I favorably reviewed this headphone in April, and my opinions haven't changed over time: this is a very nice BT headphone. It does come a little out of left field, however. It's as big as a full-size over-ear headphone, but it's an on-ear design. It's got an unusual silicon rubber headband pad that isn't particularly confidence inspiring, but is quite comfortable on the head. And the design is almost overly simple, though I've found it grew on me over time.

Cool features include operation with wire when battery dies, folding features for easy storage, and a really top-notch BT pairing process with voice prompts from the headphones letting you know exactly what's going on.

Sound quality is quite good, though a little lack-luster. Upper treble is somewhat recessed and transient response a tad slow. Fortunately the treble that is there is fairly clean and well behaved. Mid-bass through mid-treble response is very nicely balanced though possibly a tad forward in the presence region. On the other hand, the slightly forward presence region balances out the rolled-off upper treble and results, subjectively, in a fairly balanced sound. Low bass is nicely articulate and fairly well extended; it doesn't have the slam of really good bass cans, but it isn't murky or loose either. Probably the best bass response in the group.

One important note here is that I was unable to measure these headphones with the noise canceling on. They appear to have a similar problem as the Beats Studio with an unstable ANC circuit. I can get them to break into a low frequency oscillation when ANC is on and I cover the headphones with my hands. I did not have problems when laying on a pillow. This is all a bit of a moot point however as the sound quality takes a pretty steep nose dive with ANC on very honky and colored sounding. I prefer to review these as a wireless headset and forget it even has the ANC feature as it's so poor, and, thankfully, can be turned off.

Measurements

Raw frequency response plots show that while this is an on-ear headphone, acoustic performance when moving them on the ears remains fairly consistant.

The slight rise in the bass is well positioned so as not to encroach and muddy the lower mids. Though it does begin to roll-off at about 50Hz, the decent is slow and good bass extension is maintained. The rise between 800Hz and 2kHz is maybe 3dB too excessive and could account for the slightly forward nature of these headphones even though the upper-treble is somewhat relaxed.

30Hz squarewave response shows a somewhat swayback response related to the humped bass FR. This indicates the lows moving out of phase. I'd be a little worried about this result but for the bass level looking just about right on the FR plots, and having the lowest measured distortion in the bass of any headphone in this group.

300Hz square wave response is a bit slow in terms of the slew rate of the leading edge, but with very little subsequent noise and very nice shape this is probably the best looking 300Hz square wave of the BT headsets in this test.

THD+noise plot is very nice with almost all of the plot below the 1% line. The 100dBspl curve being almost entirely below the 90dBspl plot indicate very good power handling capability. These headphones play clean at loud levels.

Isolation at -16dB broadband gives these cans isolation among the best in this group not counting the noise canceling cans.