Lawyer, unabashed nerd and geek. Purveyor and pusher of excellent sci-fi/fantasy, good food, and repartee. He/him. Dog dad/servant to @Goldendenali.
I’m experimenting with Amazon Affiliate status in an attempt to defray some of the costs of headphone reviews; Amazon links may be affiliate links (depending on whether or not I’ve figured out how to use them correctly). Please feel free to buy elsewhere; this is just one way to recoup the costs of this hobby.
[ORIGINAL MSRP $279.95. Purchased from Amazon for $139.99 in March 2026]
[Tl;dr: These headphones are so not for me. I don’t know if it’s a function of the specific unit I have, or if it’s the way the HD 560S interacts with my anatomy, but this is one of the least comfortable frequency responses that I’ve personally experienced, and I was unable to find an EQ profile that made them comfortable on my head. Add to that their reasonably uncomfortable physical design, and I just can’t recommend these for anyone. I genuinely am confused as to how they’re so frequently recommended on Reddit and in other forums; that’s part of why I’m open to the possibility that it’s a bad unit or a physical mismatch with my head.
Either way, there are a lot of great open backs on the modern market under $200-300 and I would point you to any of them over this model. A rare miss from Sennheiser to my ears; while I didn’t particularly like the 660S in relation to the rest of the 6X0s, it didn’t sound BAD, just boring. This … sounds bad to me.]
[MSRP $3001 and $350.2 Purchased from for $220 (R70x Refine) and $200 (R70x) in December 2025 and February 2026 off of r/AVexchange.]
[Tl;dr: This is a great headphone family, and one that makes me excited for future Apos collaborations (and willing to consider future Audio-Technica products). They’re not super easy to source these days (there were only 1,000 units of the Refine manufactured, and the R70x has been superseded), but if you get a chance to get your hands on them they’re worth a listen, especially via tubes. To me, they’re better than most of the competition around their price point, which given the crowded and excellent market open back market in this sweet spot around $250 is really saying something.]
[ORIGINAL MSRP $1,200? Purchased from XXX for $450 in December 2025 off of r/AVexchange.]
[Tl;dr: This review isn’t going to be suuuper helpful for anyone so I’ll keep it brief; this is a 14 or 15 year old headphone, and nothing like it has been produced since like 2017 (when Audeze adopted Fazor technology for their headphones), so this is mostly just a placeholder for myself. BUT, if you can get your hands on a pair of these, I cannot recommend them strongly enough.]
[MSRP $699. Currently available from Amazon for $515. Purchased via r/AVExchange for $325 in February 2026.]
[Tl;dr: The Hadenys are a great headphone, and a worthy successor now that Focal is deprecating the Elex and Clear models that I really love. It’s a hair bassy for me, and I don’t find the new, smaller model Focals nearly as comfortable as the older, larger models, but I’m genuinely quite pleased with the Hadenys overall. I do think it’s a little on the pricey side, even with the current markdown to $500, and used models appear to be in short supply. If you can get a pair for $300 or $350, they’re a great value. At $500 … there may be better value options in the market, though you wouldn’t go wrong if you bought a pair.]
[ORIGINAL MSRP $799. Often available used around $300. This pair were inherited from my dad, purchased in October 2018.]
[Tl;dr: Even eight years later, the Elex still deliver one of my favorite listening experiences. While there are certainly more resolving and detailed headphones on my wall, VERY few pairs deliver the fun, vibrant, rich listening experience of the Elex (particularly if you’re willing to spend a little time with EQ). Focal dynamics are hard to beat, and this is a benchmark for full, but well-controlled bass performance for me. I think every person who considers themselves an audiophile (whether or not they admit it in public) should spend some time with the Elex at some point, especially if something like the Focal Clear is out of your price range. Just budget $30 to get better quality of life cables!]
Printing time: 10+ hours, depending on printer and materials (almost exactly 10 hours on Bambu H2D). Cost (in January 2026): $66 + a cable based on portion of materials uses, $126 for all materials out the door. Moderate difficulty.
[Tl;dr: I have been enjoying the Satyr 4 the last week or two. It’s a really fun, engaging project, and results in a really fun, engaging headphone. This isn’t the easiest 3D printing project out there (that’s the Head(amame) kit), and doesn’t produce the most resolving headphone I’ve ever built (that’s either the Satyr 3 or the DMS Open Omega), but it’s a good middle ground. I’d say that it’s not unlike the Sennheiser x Drop HD 6XX in tuning, with a little less resolution and a little more fun.
Great project. Pretty easy to source, relatively straightforward to both print, and mostly straightforward to assemble, and an output that I really like listening to.]
[ORIGINAL MSRP $499.95. Currently available on Amazon for $499.95 new in February 2026.]
[Tl;dr: I’m going to offer a hot take here and zig where everyone else is zagging. The Sennheiser HDB 630 are a good pair of headphones at a bad price point. I love the ethos behind the 630 and I hope that future active headphones follow its path in terms of offering parametric EQ, dongle compatibility, and a good, neutral-ish baseline tune, but I just can’t justify paying this price. For the money, I’d personally rather get a pair of Sennheiser’s older model Momentum 4 headphones and a pair of good open-back headphones for non-mobile use. The audio delta and different feature set between the M4 (properly EQ’d) and the HDB 630 isn’t as big as the price differential would suggest. The things that make the 630 better than the M4 are mostly things that a wired pair of open-backs do better than the 630 anyway. If you want one pair of headphones to rule them all, these might suit you. But for almost every use case, there’s a better, more affordable option in the current market.
The 630 is the Swiss Army Knife of audio, and there’s a reason I don’t carry a Swiss Army Knife.]
A question that pops up frequently on headphone Subreddits and forums is whether it’s better to take an active, active noise canceling (ANC) headphone like a Sennheiser Momentum 4 and use it wired (losslessly) via the included 3.5 mm analog cable or listen to it via (lossy) Bluetooth.1 To the point where I wrote a bit about it in my Frequently Asked Questions.
My answer to this question has always been no, based largely on the assumption that one of two things is happening when you do:
You’re turning off all of the active components in the headphones and relying on a) the frequency response of the driver, b) the passive characteristics of the headphone’s physical design and build, and c) the quality of signal you’re getting from whatever your source is. You’re also hoping that whatever a + b + c produce, it’s not thrown off by the ANC when it’s turned on.
You’re converting the analog signal to digital (via an ADC), applying DSP/EQ/etc., and reconverting it to analog and amplifying it using the internal DAC and amp.
The first was maybe a safer bet in a prior era when ANC headphones were less reliant on DSP to correct their physical shortcomings. For example, the earliest generation of Bose wireless ANC headsets (the QC35) weren’t badly tuned as a passive headphone, even if I preferred their sound via Bluetooth (to the point where I returned my pair after a few weeks). It’s dicier with modern production headphones that do rely on DSP for reasonable(ish) frequency responses; the manufacturer has a lot less incentive to invest the time and resources in creating a headphone that sounds good running passively when they can just make changes via DSP.
The second option involves a lot of processing, likely mostly on board the headphone, and I question the amount of effort and expense a headphone manufacturer puts into the onboard ADC in particular given how rarely it’s going to be important for their use cases. This is definitely a better option than the first, as at least you’re using all the components that were designed around working together, but it also relies on multiple conversions being done under reasonable conditions. You can probably get away with it with a decent source, but I’m skeptical of how often it’s going to approach the quality you get from a decent Bluetooth codec.
[The other thing worth mentioning is that modern Bluetooth protocols, while still flawed, are definitely better than they used to be and companies are doing clever things to minimize the delta between wired listening and competent Bluetooth implementations.]
But, despite this opinion, I’d never taken the time to test this other than taking a few minutes to listen to most ANC headphones I review via the analog option, which generally resulted in a “I don’t hate it but I wouldn’t ever choose to use it” statement.
It came up again yesterday in r/HeadphoneAdvice, and I had some time last night, so I decided to try it with the pairs I had on hand. I pulled out my collection of current ANC headphones to test that age old question: is it worth plugging them into a source via 3.5 mm analog cable to listen losslessly?
[Tl;dr: Bathys is no worse running via 3.5 mm, everything else is worse (or at least in some way compromised) unless *you* personally like the default tune on any of them and don’t mind giving up the ability to apply EQ. Quelle surprise!]
Here are the results:
Sennheiser HDB 630: Plugging in the 3.5 mm cable automatically turns off Bluetooth and creates the following signal path: analog source in –> 630’s ADC –> DSP –> 630’s DAC –> amplification. This means at least two conversions, not counting any that happens before the analog signal (if you’re playing a digital source, for example). Running this way sets the 630 to their default DSP tune (maybe a hair brighter?), turns off the ability to adjust the EQ or interact with the headset via the app (though pinching appears to still affect transparency vs. ANC), and draws down the battery. The baseline tune on the 630 isn’t BAD, per se, but it’s not great. If you have no other way to listen to your signal, this isn’t the worst, but I’d take Bluetooth over it anytime that’s an option.
Sennheiser M4: same as HDB 630, plugging in the 3.5 mm cable turns off Bluetooth and creates the same internal signal chain, but with a substantially worse baseline tune (at least to me, the M4 out of the box are muddy in the bass and a bit intense on the treble; they can be corrected via the Sennheiser app which is a huge win compared to the competition but it’s not great without EQ). It’s not the worst, but I definitely don’t want to listen to anything I care about this way and I 100% prefer Bluetooth + the in-app EQ.
Focal Bathys: You have to manually move the toggle to “On” and plug in the 3.5 mm cable. Doing so creates this signal path: analog source in –> Bathys’ ADC –> DSP –> Bathys’ DAC –> Bathys’ amplification. It disconnects you from the app and EQ, though the ANC/transparency mode button still works. The Bathys appears to default to the EQ profile you were using last, so unless you swap EQ profiles a lot, you’re probably going to get a reasonable version of its frequency response. I struggle to think of a scenario where I would prefer to listen to this over the normal Bluetooth functionality, but in a pinch it would be fine.
B&W Px7 S2: B&W takes a different (and potentially better?) approach and provides a 3.5 mm-to-USB-C dongle, so it seems like the analog to digital conversion is taking place in the cable.2 This means you’re functionally using the Px7 S2’s DAC mode rather than a passive one. The upside of this is that you’re using the full suite of software tools that B&W offers and getting their best performance; the downside of this is that you’re using the B&W suite of software tools and getting the Px7 S2’s best performance and it’s … not great. It’s a pretty bad tune, boomy in the bass and spikey in the treble, and the B&W app’s EQ is limited to two bands: bass and treble and you can’t fix the problems without creating worse ones.
Dyson Zone: The Zone doesn’t offer an analog input option. As far as I could tell, it doesn’t work with the Px7 S2’s 3.5 mm-to-USB-C ADC cable, either. Clever them.3
So what’s the takeaway? You’re not likely to ever get a better sound experience by plugging an active headphone into a 3.5 mm source; at best, you’re going to get a similar experience and in most cases you’re going to get some substantial degradation in the listening experience when you use an analog signal over a digital one. Whether that’s a degradation that matters to you, only you can decide. I won’t be using 3.5 mm anytime I have another option, and I personally would prefer to use a Bluetooth transmitter when listening to an analog-only source.
For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to leave aside whether lossless vs lossy is a meaningful difference. For the record, I can hear a difference on decently resolving equipment in quiet listening environments, and I don’t think it’s particularly subtle. In fact, I’m pretty sure that almost anyone could hear a difference in a quiet room with a good setup. However; it’s not a huge difference, most ANC headphones aren’t that resolving, and the moment you’re in non-ideal conditions that delta gets smaller and smaller. And how often do you use ANC headphones in ideal conditions? There’s a reason the AirPods Pro 2 are my most used headphone. ↩︎
It’s possible that they’re using USB-C to transmit an analog signal, but that would be pretty weird and isn’t supported by the rest of the headphone’s behavior). ↩︎
As pointed out by a Redditor, Dyson does sell a Flight Pack that lets you use the Zone via 3.5 mm input. ↩︎
[ORIGINAL MSRP $499. Currently available directly from Drop.com for $429 new in January 2026. Purchased used from r/AVExchange for $225 in June 2025.]
[Tl;dr: The Aeon x Closed is a solid closed-back offering in the current market, and my personal choice under $500 if you can’t get your hands on a lightly used or new old stock Focal Elegia. They’re a little bass light, and a little treble heavy, so if you pick up a pair I strongly suggest investing some time with EQ. I’d also love to spend some time with a new pair of these, as based on a couple of things I heard I’m curious if I have a non-standard pair. Oh, the joys of buying used!]
Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm 