When travelling on the plane to and from Geneva back in November, I noticed that to combat the airplane noise when using my headset, I need to turn the volume up to uncomfortable levels, to the point that I was warned by the media station on the plane seat. More alarming still, I noticed that I actually got used to the volume level after a couple of hours into a movie. As flights would likely become more frequent in the coming years of my PhD degree, for the sake of my ears, I thought it was time to invest in a set of new noise-cancelling headphones.
Choosing the headphone
Noise-cancelling headphones have been on my tech-news radar for a while. I know that bad implementations of noise-cancelling would lead to a more noisy experience and prompt the notorious “cabin-pressure” effect. During the thanksgiving season, I had the chance to head over to larger best-buy stores to try out a few headsets. I ran into bad implementations (one from skull-candy had an annoying hissing noise that is very audible above the leaked in noise), as well as being thoroughly impressed with how good noise-cancelling can be in the Bose any Sony line up.
Noise-cancelling is not the only thing to consider when a headset. How a set of headphone sounds is arguably more important for headset. Having tested the Sennheiser line-up as having decent/OK noise-cancelling from my trip, decided that I liked the Sennheiser’s a bit more than what Bose and Sony had to offer. To be entirely honest, during that time I didn’t try out the specific headphone that I eventually bought (I only got to try the PXC550 and Momentum 2), but I decided to trust the Sennheiser brand, to went for the Sennheiser Momentum 3.
My current experience
First and foremost, I don’t have the budget to tryout headphone on a regular (my previous headset was an Audio Technica ATH-SJ33 bought over 3 years ago), so I probably have no idea what I am talking about when it comes to critiquing the audio quality. That being said, I really do like the way they sound. Whether it is using the 3.5 mm line to connect to my PC/laptop, or using the USB type-C cable to use the headphones in built DAC, they both contain significantly more details than my previous headset. The 3.5 mm cable does make the output quieter (the impedance quoted from the product page is 450 Ohms, so most likely the DAC on my computer is struggling to drive them), but still within acceptable ranges. As to how good they are compared to other headsets, I have no way of comparing, so no more comments on sound quality.
The noise-cancelling capability is as tested: decent/OK. The loudest source of consistent noise in my room is the AC unit of our apartment, while the Sennheiser blocks most of the rumbling low-frequency noise very well, the higher frequency noise still gets in as a slight hiss that slightly audible when there is audio playing. This is still very acceptable, as previously when the AC kicks in, I’m nearly always tempted to dial up my volume because it in the way of what I was listening, whereas now, it is more of a brief pause when the hissing sounds up then thinking to myself: “Oh, I guess the AC kicked in”, the moving on. So all in all, the noise-cancelling is doing its job.
[Update 2019-12-30] On my plane ride back to Taiwan, the noise-cancelling is very serviceable, with the low frequency rumbling being clearly blocked out, reducing the engine noise to a low volume, higher-pitched faint hissing that is unobtrusive to movie viewing experiences and definitely saved ear pains due to uncomfortably loud volumes. The office-oriented design of not being able to fold flat of the Momentum 3 does make wearing the headphones rather unwieldy without putting the headphones away entirely, but it didn’t really matter for my using habits.
Now for a random story. When operating in wired mode, whether USB or the 3.5 mm audio line, there was a strange popping noise in the left ear. It took me a week to work out, but it turns out it as a peculiar ground loop issue with my computer and the power-line network unit that somehow only the left ear was picking up. Moving the power-line unit to another outlet solved the issue, but I’m not sure if this is a quirk of higher end audio gear, or just something with particular with the Momentum 3. But that was a strange issue that I needed solving.
[Update 2019-12-30] Another peculiar episode occurred when attempting to playback lossless audio files. Weird and irregular popping sounds started appearing every 1 minute or so, which indicated to me a buffering problem. It has since been fixed using pulseaudio settings, but just note that this is yet another issue that one might need to deal with.
Open questions and closing words
[Update 2019-12-30] There is a strange bug that after the firmware update of in early December, the Momentum 3 just doesn’t work in USB mode with Linux, I avoided this thanks to the second unit I got to fix the broken button. I’m not sure if this is fixed in future updates, as the Sennheiser mobile app is now bugged out with two Momentum devices listed in the app that both cannot be connected. I’m happy with the headphone interface as is, so I wouldn’t be attempting to solve this anytime soon (I’m more old-fashioned when it comes media control, and prefer to control everything manually instead of through smart gestures or headphone interfaces).
All in all, I would say I am happy with the overall experience, but at the same time, I have a hard time recommending this particular product, with a weird episode of the ground loop taking over a week to diagnose, and the first unit that I received had a broken volume down button. As a Linux user, I’m no stranger to debugging random issues, but that doesn’t make it less frustrating when working with the product what I paid a considerable amount to buy.