I was shopping for an ANC pair the other day because I will be going on a long flight soon and so to make a semi-informed decision, I tried a family member of mine’s XM4s, and boy am I disappointed. I was not expecting this from 400CAD headphones.
The sound is just so muddy and bassy, the mids are basically just drowned down. It feels like listening to what people say early beats were; just a bunch of muddy bass.
Maybe I just don’t like bass heavy headphones though. I like my ER2SE’s even though I think they are a bit lacking in the bass department, but not by much. I also quite like my HyperX Cloud II’s, but only with the velour ear pads, the leatherette earpads sound too boomy for me, and I like that they are more open that way. (I would love if someone with the equipment could compare the frequency response with both earpads!)
So yeah, is it only me? I ended up getting QC45’s because they were A) very cheap and B) are suppposed to have a more “neutral” curve. I don’t have many headphones to compare to, so I don’t know if the XM4’s are just shitty or if I am just not used to bass heavy headphones.
I found this too, at first, but I think I ended up tweaking my EQ on my apps to compensate, which helped. It wasn’t a massive change. Now I’m pretty happy with them.
My biggest complaint is the stupid touch interface. Just give me buttons, dudes.
I tried tweaking around in the sony app, but I really didn’t like the navigation, it felt very old. I tried various EQ settings, some made it a tiny bit better, but I found most made it sound even boomier lol. I forgot to try it with wavelet which I kind of regret not doing though
And yeah the touch interface is what made me gravitate toward the QC45 over the Bose 700. I don’t think theres something less intuitive than a touch interface you don’t see and don’t get any feedback whatsoever for a few 1/100 of a second because it has to decide what gesture you were intending to do. Buttons. They are so easy. Click. Instant feedback. The action may not be instant because of delay but at least I know it registered my input
When I first tried the LinkBud S I had a similar reaction and was like “why is this so muddy and ultra bassy?” But as I spent a bit of time deactivating any random audio presets on the phone and then trying various settings with the sony app, they actually sound amazing. Very clear details and balanced bass. Mine is an IEM and not a headphone, but hopefully the experience to find a good audio balance for you is similar.