Focal Bathys vs Bowers & Wilkins Px8 vs Mark Levinson 5909

Hello Fredick from OS Soundtech, a special thanks to all the headphone fans. I immensely enjoy all the comments and tough questions you send me in the comments on my videos today. I'm going to tell them what they want. To know which of these three wireless headphones sounds best to me, we have the bers and Wilkins pxa that cost about €700, we have the fal batis at €800 and we have the

mark

livon

5909

that cost €,000, which of these three sounds best, stay and I'll let you know, So here we have three wireless headphones and only one winner. I think let's see, we have the Bowers and Wilkins px8 with carbon coated element cones, we have the fal batis with aluminum magnesium cones and we have the brand.

Lenson with berium coated cones, so three pairs of headphones and I'm just going to briefly go over the features and if you're interested in the nitty-gritty details of each headphone, I've made some pretty comprehensive review videos that are available on my channel. Check them out too after watching this video, so let's talk about B and Wilkins. I really like these headphones, they fit my head very well and I use them when I move the grass when I vacuum and I have to say that I also use them in bed just lying down listening to music because they fit my head very well and have quite a sound pleasant.

I will talk more about the sound later, their cones are carbon based and the specifications of these headphones are that they reproduce 44.1 and 48 KZ 24-bit sound and we have the fal batist with its magnesium and aluminum cones and these headphones in they actually play or support up to 192khz 24bit sound and I also really like these headphones. I use them when I edit, but I'll talk about that later, and finally, Mark Livson, these are really comfortable headphones, they sit really well on my head , the burum coated cones play up to 40 KZ which is pretty impressive for a pair of headphones and these headphones support 96 20 96 khz 24 bit sound so let's talk about the active noise cancellation of these headphones.

BS and Wilkins have an active noise cancellation mode and then they have a pass-through function that allows you to ring from outside but in a controlled way, so if you see someone talking to you and your spouse, you can quickly press the button on the left earbud and you will hear your spouse and be able to react to them. reaction or what they are saying and then you can also turn off non-active noise advice. With Mark Levenson, I believe they have three different levels of noise cancellation and they also pass the functionality, and the noise cancellation can also be disabled. uh, with the batis for call you have two levels of active noise cancellation, soft and deeper, uh uh, depending on how much noise cancellation you need on a given occasion, however, it is not possible to turn off the noise cancellation on these headphones , which is a shame because it would.

I love hearing how they sound without any active noise cancellation because noise cancellation will always affect the sound quality of music, so here are my brief thoughts on the different noise cancellations on these headphones. I'm going to start with the batis I find. They sound great with noise cancellation because I've never heard them without noise cancellation. I use it on soft mode, just a little bit of noise cancellation, but if I'm mowing the grass, I can put it on strong active mode. noise cancellation and that works very well uh there's also a pass through function uh where they let the sound in from the outside.

I think they have pretty good passive isolation just using the headphones, so let's use these and have a feeling that I actually have a little more passive isolation. I can hear my own voice a little bit more when I talk having this in my head, so to speak, and with BS and Wilkins, it's nice too, isolation, so, passive isolation of These three headphones are really good as is, so, How do I use active noise cancellation? Let me tell you about the Baris and Wilkins px8. Recently, last week I took a work trip to the Middle East and ended up at Istanbul International Airport.

Running from one end to the other I missed my connecting flight due to delays so I had to spend 5 hours at the airport. Had some Kebab, drank some FS beer, listened to really nice music through this, kept me calm waiting F five hours for me Finally boarded the connecting flight, put on the headphones, turned the AO off function, just I set them to noise cancellation, I slept like a baby for 3 and a half hours, that's how good the noise cancellation is on these headphones, same on the trip. On the way back to Istanbul I had a long flight I slept for 3 hours straight I just put them on uh I put on the noise canceling no music I slept like a baby and from Istanbul to Castro Den

mark

I think I slept an hour and a half you know you wake up when the guard it just goes with you, just turn up the volume, oh, thank you because you just fell asleep, so these headphones are really comfortable.

I find the noise cancellation very good, almost as much as necessary. There are headphones with more noise cancellation. Even stronger noise cancellation. but there's always a drawback with really strong active noise cancellation because it will affect the sound quality when listening to music and we're going to talk about sound quality in a moment so the batista's active noise cancellation really likes it. I've also had it for travel, these are a little bigger, move them just a little on my head, so it's not as comfortable as the travel companions, but the sound quality and noise cancellation are also very good.

I enjoy very much. a lot and and um so I would choose any of these for traveling mainly because they're a little bit smaller uh on my head a little bit easier to walk on with a little bit firmer grip on my Big Potato Head so how about the livon brand? They have three different levels of active noise cancellation, it is possible to turn it off like with the BS and Wilkins and with these headphones I prefer to listen to them without the active noise cancellation because I think it affects the sound too much. In the bass there is some instability in the bass when the noise cancellation is activated, but especially around 10 kHz or something like that, there is an added intensity like a uh, I don't feel like it at all, it reveals them as like headphones, so so to speak, with these headphones with active noise cancellation turned off, also when I turn on the active noise cancellation there is a slight hiss and it is only audible with the active noise cancellation turned on, which is quite strange, so I haven't really tried these headphones. a lot with uh active noise canceling aside when I did the full review so these headphones wear much better as normal headphones you put them on you have the passive isolation to be sealed headphones and closed back headphones and that's it so that's the active noise cancellation in terms of sound, what happens to the sound?

Well, the thing is with the BS and the Wilkins px8. I prefer them with active noise cancellation enabled because it inflates The Sound Stage by giving it a little more oomph. I guess it's due to the fact that Active Noise Cancellation One of the most important jobs of active noise cancellation is to cancel out the low frequency rumble, which is where the most sound energy reaches your ears or headphones and passes through. through your headphones into your air channel, so that's where I think it is too. The most tidy thing is to compare different headphones uh with active noise cancellation and what this does is that they inflate, it inflates the sound a little bit when the active noise cancellation is Ena and I quite like it.

I should also mention that after the last firmware update on these headphones a couple of months ago I found that they sounded even better. They had done something to the noise cancellation algorithm but also to the overall sound because before updating that phone there was a big difference between the performance bass and the base sound. with and without active noise cancellation without noise cancellation they sound a little boring at least when you were able to compare them with active noise cancellation now they have evened that gap a little, now they sound better in the bass they end up without active noise cancellation and they sound a little less inflated with active noise cancellation, so I went from using them with active noise cancellation and minus 2 dB base minus 2 dblow in the filter settings, now back to minus 1.5, so 1.5. less DB reduction low low end reduction so I was really happy to hear that and you know with your phone you update your apps every 3 months and then I turned on the B and Wilkins app which is a really good app with media player inside media player in and and uh and he said yeah, you need to upgrade your headphones, yeah, so I did.

I didn't think much about it and in fact didn't use them after that. I just don't know. I updated them, then used them and somehow liked it. Hey wait a minute they fixed the bass anyway that's a good thing thanks to Bars and Wilkins for improving the sound so I really like listening to this with active. noise cancellation um and the active noise cancellation is really good, it's good enough at least to make me sleep for three and a half hours on a very busy Turkish Airways flight Night flight anyway, the f batis what I like with active noise cancellation This is that the difference between soft and deep mode where strong active noise cancellation, the difference in sound quality is not as audible, is a little limited in The Sound Stage, but overall I I really like the active noise cancellation of these headphones and I can't really say how they sound without them because it is not possible to turn it off 100% and, I really like the soundstage, and these are also very pleasant when talking on the phone.

The same goes for these. I updated the firmware. I just updated it and then I saw in the app that, hey, wait a minute, they added features, so they added a ringtone functionality, so when you have these headphones on and you answer a phone call, they will actually mix a little of your own voice, so it sounds a little more like a normal phone call where you hear your own voice and you hear the person you're talking to. They could have added a little more tone, for my taste, but anyway it's just It's just nice that when you take a call you're not talking in a vacuum, just in a dark void because of the noise cancellation and, uh, just you offer a bit of an open presentation, so that was the noise cancellation of these three headphones very capable of the three Mark Lenson prefers them without the active noise cancellation, the other two headphones could be fine to use the active noise cancellation, It doesn't affect the soundstage too much and in fact, with the power and Wilkins, it's actually nice.

It makes it better, so a little bit about connectivity, which of these headphones have the best connectivity? Well, they are the foral batis because they have a wireless mode but they also have a duck mode and a digital audio converter mode. I can plug in a USBC cable and plug it into my laptop and I will have wired sound quality, it becomes a sound card. The other headphones can do that too, but the difference is that with these I can connect them to my iPhone using an Apple, uh, camera adapter, USB, there are other cables available to do that too, so that's the good thing I know about my review.

I didn't test it properly, so I said it wasn't possible to connect. up to an iPhone, but if you want the highest quality without using Bluetooth connectivity, it is possible to do so with the fal batist on an iPhone, the three headphones connecting them to an Android phone using a USBC cable produce a drop in sound level of approximately 12 DBS or something is almost unusable, so they lose a lot of sound level when connected to an Android phone via a USBC cable. I don't know why H, I guess it's some kind of U Android OS uh. things doing that so to get the best connectivity I use the calling batis with my laptop.

I use them with my laptop. When I edit my videos on the go, I just plug them in, plug in a USBC cable, put it in platform mode and they sound fantastic, no Bluetooth, muddy sound so to speak, so let's talk about Bluetooth connectivity and sound quality. All three headphones support the aptx codec, the adapter codec, the HD codec, they support Apple's AAC CeX used in iPhones, and, uh, the Lenson brand. They also support Sony ldac and I'll talk about that in a moment, so using these headphones with an iPhone I guess I can see with the BST fal because it says in the app that they connect with the AAC codec and I'm pretty sure that the other headphones work too, it's hard to tell with Apple products because you just don't know what's going on inside an iPhone, a MacBook, an iPad or whatever Apple is, so it's such a closed community, uh, programming that, but anyway. uh they connect with an iPhone and how they sound.

I think all three sound pretty good. I know there's a discussion on headphone forums saying, oh, I can't hear them forBluetooth, it sounds like shit and it's a lot. Better to connect them with the cable. Yes, you can connect these three headphones via an analog mini jack cable and via a USBC cable to the laptop, but that is not the way they are designed and intended for use. These are wireless headphones that they are designed for. for your convenience to use them while traveling in the office sleeping on an overnight flight from Istanbul and that's the way you should use them, sure there is a difference in sound quality but I don't think it's that obvious and I put my sound engineer cap.

I really enjoy using these headphones wirelessly. I really do and the sound quality is fal batis so I'm going to prepare this along with the Bluetooth connectivity and the sound quality. So, call me at BST with my sound engineer Capon and as a music lover, these are the best sounding headphones of this trio, uh, because they produce a huge and very full soundstage that just does it for me , they hardly sound like car headphones. has done a great job voicing these headphones and due to the fact that they're active, I'm pretty sure they've done some facial correction on the low end because it blends in really well with the rest of the frequency spectrum so um. to mix music, uh, to make my videos on the go, just plug a cable into my laptop, edit my stuff and just listen to music, I greatly enjoy these headphones, these are the best sounding headphones of these three, for me, worth a listen uh more Cen s the thing is with these headphones and I should mention that these are the only headphones in this trio that can actually be used passively you can connect a special cable but an analog cable that It ends in a mini jack that you can plug into a headphone amp, or even your phone, come to think of it, there are passive headphones, no, um, uh.

It takes power if you run out of battery, but that's not the way to use these headphones because, uh. passively and without any filtering, they are quite shy to me. I love the bass. I love bass, so I have two huge subwoofers here in my control room and big speakers, but you really need to enable bass boost. Lon app to make this sound warm and loud and nice in the bass so that's a problem with these headphones because when you have that bass enabled and you turn on the active noise cancellation it gets processed and if you listen loud or when I listen to music at high volume uh and High is not super loud like 85 like 90 SPL or something like that 85 90 SPL most likely distorting on the low end and it's processing Distortion, I think uh the cones I can handle it, it's something in the processing that just isn't clipped like it should, hopefully it can be fixed in an update or firmware, I don't know, so with these headphones you have to have them at least for me. have the bass boosted and uh, I prefer them without noise cancellation or activated because then they don't distort in the bass as easily and also these headphones don't sound as loud as the other two, that is, No problem if you are listening to pop music or super compressed modern music that sounds like most music, but if you listen to classical music with tons of dynamic classical music or very smooth jazz, chances are the maximum volume will be just right. a little too low on these headphones that said uh, these play up to 40khz.

I think my hearing drops to 15,500 or something last time I checked, but the speakers behind me play up to 100khz. uh, because they are Tad speakers with burum cones um, these have berum coated cones, so they play up to 40khz, is it necessary, no, there will be no sound there when sent from an iPhone, uh, to these headphones through Bluetooth, hell no. It won't, but anyway it shows the quality of these cones and of the three, I think these ones sound better in the upper midrange, they have a really open upper midrange or they sound better, they prefer to sound louder. there, so they're super detailed in the upper midrange, more than the fal batist and definitely more than the bar and Wilkins, so where would I use them well if I'm sitting on my Sunday on the couch and, uh, just on the At night I just listen to music very quietly.

I'd probably prefer these to have a really nice soundstage in the upper midrange. I mean intensity but but but. Clarity in the upper midrange. The clarity is really nice so in that way these are really good sounding headphones and it all depends on taste uh and and these are just my opinions your opinions may differ you may have already used them and love them and I certainly understand that the bars and Wilkins this is interesting because I just like how these sound, they don't have the same soundstage or depth as the other two contenders, but instead not having that depth means they produce a bit more intimacy in the music, the vocals move forward a bit, it may not sound as natural as with the Mark Lenson or Foral Batist, but lying in bed listening to some music, I really like how they sound and with the latest firmware, I'm pretty sure they've made them sound a little softer than before. before, so I'm pretty torn between Batist and BS and Wilkins because I love them both.

I wouldn't change any of them. Actually, spoiler alert and I own them both so I'm lucky but they are. Both are worth trying and I also just want to mention something about these because I've read reviews, I've read comments and I've even seen YouTube reviews where they say they sound harsh and a little boomy in the low end and you're right, they do when you don't They have broken in correctly right out of the box, yes they sound a little harsh in the upper midrange and with a slightly loose and boomy low end 500 hours later, here in my control room playing on the floor 24 hours a day, They sound much better, so don't believe those comments, do your own testing before ruling out these rulings, so that's my opinion on these three headphones.

I should also mention Mark Levenson who connected to an Android phone that supports the Sony ldac codec M Sony ldac ooh how does that sound? It sounds amazing, it's almost like a straight cable and I mean, the bandwidth is almost 1000 kilobits per second and sending 16-bit 44.1 sound is like 1500 kilobits per second. second or so, so they almost send or receive a linear sound, uh, it's audible, yeah, I really like it, so if you're on an Android phone, um, uh, these, with these headphones you'll be able to use the Sony l . codec, will that ever happen to the other two earbuds or will it ever happen on an iPhone?

Probably not. We are stuck with the AAC codec at 256 kilobits. I assume there is also support for up to 320 kilobits per second, but I don't know. If they actually use that bandwidth, I assume they connect to 256 KOB per se. If you know for sure that another bandwidth is used, put it in the comment, but with my findings, what I discovered so far after having used these. headphones for these for a year, and others for more than half a year, so I came to the conclusion that I have been using these headphones for quite some time, as I said, I really like these two headphones that I wouldn't change any of them I use them for editing, to mix music on the fly.

I use them for traveling, uh, and for lying in bed when I want the intimate sound may not be as transparent, but it's an intimate and it just fits really well on my head and and they take up a little less space around my pillow, so which, with the Lensen brand some other jack of the team, the most expensive headphones do not live up to my expectations when it comes to active noise cancellation or the Overall, uh, usability, still, they are headphones with a really nice sound and who knows, they could be the perfect headphones for you, your hearing and your head, so my suggestion is to go to your local Hi-Fi store, a well rated Hi-Fi store. and try all three models so those are my thoughts on these three headphones comparison price sound quality active noise cancellation comfort usability just your overall user experience if you like this review please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing to my channel Hit that little notification Bell and thanks for watching immersive sound technology on your Sunday on the couch.