Sennheiser PXC 450 Headphones

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Mark Korff
Beth
Sennheiser
Mar. 27, 2008

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Testing

There are beginning to be quite a few headphones on the market that claim to be "noise-canceling" with varying degrees of actual validity to those claims, so when I began my testing I jumped right into listening tests that would tax the NoiseGard feature of the PXC 450. While I would've liked to test the noise-canceling capabilities in a real world test for you, say on a flight to Hawaii and back, Kurtis said we didn't have room in the budget for that trip. I think Kurtis really needs to re-evaluate his budgeting priorities, but I digress.

Since I couldn't get on a real airplane for the purposes of this review, I tried to simulate the experience as much as possible by blaring aircraft noises through my Klipsch computer speakers while listening to music on my iPod through the PXC 450. While I'm not sure I could completely agree with the 90% noise reduction claimed by Sennheiser, I must say that I was quite impressed by the NoiseGard technology. I noticed a very substantial reduction when going between "normal" (NoiseGard on) mode, and "bypass." Even with the iPod on pause and no music playing, the aircraft background noises from my speakers were significantly reduced with NoiseGard on. With NoiseGard on, and music playing at the same time, I could still feel the rumble of my sub woofer, but the noise was only slightly noticeable. The TalkThrough feature also worked as advertised. By pressing the button on the right earphone, the audio source became muted and the external speakers on the 450 engaged, allowing me to clearly hear my own voice and others around me.

As you'd probably expect from Sennheiser phones of this class, the PXC 450's overall sound quality was superb as well. The best adjective for what I experienced while listening to them would be "crisp." All the music listening, video watching, and gaming I did with the 450 was very clear, crisp, and tight. If you're a fan of powerful thumping bass, then you'll probably be a bit disappointed with the 450, but fans of higher precision and subtlety will likely be overjoyed. Since the 450 is a closed-back, circumaural design, you also won't get the more spacious sound that open-back headphones can provide. Of course, open-back headphones certainly wouldn't have the same noise-canceling success as the 450, so there's your trade-off.

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Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Testing
Page 3: Conclusion

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2 User Comments

1 - Posted by weslium on December 3, 2008 - 10:36 pm

It was a really tough choice for me whether to get these headphones or the Bose Quiet Comfort 3s. In the end, I choose the 450s after reading this comparison . . .

http://tech.spotcoolstuff.com/review/noise-canceli...

. . . and have been really happy that I did. These Sennheisers sound AMAZING. And, like your review notes, they fold up to a small size.

2 - Posted by Kurtis on December 4, 2008 - 11:54 am

Generally speaking, Bose tend not to do as well as similarly priced competitors' headphones, just FYI. They're great at marketing - great quality audio, not so much.

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