Sony MDR-1RBT ($399)Without doubt, the Sony MDR-1RBT is supremely comfortable and a beautiful headphone. It's also among the most expensive. Unfortunately, I find it leaves quite a bit to be desired when it comes to sound quality. Bass is reasonably tight, but tends to be rather one-note in nature and modestly overemphasized. Mid an treble response is somewhat disjointed and uneven, lacking a sense of smoothness and clarity. Treble, however, does seem to articulate fairly well; cymbals are fairly natural sounding without extraneous noise. The Sony MDR-1RBT faults seem rather benign to me; I never sense any harshness or have my attention drawn too strongly to it's errors. When watching movies or talking on the phone speech intelligibility is good and the experience, though unremarkable, is satisfactory. It's a headphone that most people will get used to and enjoy. When I first reviewed these cans they got placed on the "Wall of Fame" due to their superb comfort, good looks, and usability as a wireless headset.
Click on graphs image to download .pdf for closer inspection.
Compensated frequency response shows a headphone with a strong and relatively narrow bass hump that follows well with my observation of a somewhat "one-note" bass response. The notch at 300Hz and 6kHz coupled with peaks in the bass, at 2kHz, and 10kHz produce an over-all impression of imbalance to the sound.
30Hz square wave shows significant swayback related to the bass hump at the primary driver resonance. Some rise in THD+noise in the bass is also observed. Oddly, I would have though the cans would have a looser sounding bass response.
