Sennheiser Momentum Five and Future Outlook

Hello and welcome to the Birdcast, F flship podcast of Active Noise Ccellation I'm your friend David Peerce and today on the show, we're talking about headphones Specifically, we're talking about headphone microphones, which I have long believed are just a severely underrated bit of technology We do a lot of headphone testing here at the Verge. We all wear headphones all day. We all care a lot about sound quality. And if you read a lot of headphone reviews, you can get super deep into Noise cancellation features and you can get super deep into the interface. you can get super deep into sound quality. And then there's always just one line that's like, ah, microphone does calls I wantna know more And so every once in a while, on this show, we get somebody to bring us a bunch of different devices and we test their microphones. I care about this just as a person, but also because I think this technology matters, right? We all make calls increasingly on these devices, increasingly out in the world. and knowing how you sound to other people is important, both because you want to be a good person who doesn't make everyone's lives miserable, and also because there is lots of evidence, scientific evidence that shows if you sound good, people take you more seriously. It's just a real thing. At the same time, if you think about the way that we are all learning how to interact with AI systems, a lot of that is by voice, a lot of that is through headphones The difference between a good microphone and a bad microphone is the difference between having a good AI experience and a bad AI experience. This thing matters It also just makes for really fun and often terrible podcast audio. So John Higgins, the Virg' senior reviewer is going to come on. He's got a bunch of stuff. He is, I assume somewhere very noisy. and we're going to do some tests. But first, here's everything else happening on the verge today. This is ninety S secondconds on the ver for Wednesday june seeenth, twenty twenty six. Big Smart homeome day. The new Matter one point six smart homeome spec launched today. and stop me if you've heard this before, but it is supposedly going to make it easier to control your smart home Specifically, Matter one point six includes this new feature called joint fabric, which makes it easier to set up a smart device like a light or a sensor or whatever, and immediately have it be controlled by Alexa, Apple Home, Gemini, and all of your other stuff all at once. Supposedly it all just works There's also a new NFC setup feature that lets you tap a device to your phone to set it up rather than scanning a QR code As with all things matter, these are good ideas, and I really hope they work. And as with all things matter, I am not remotely holding my breath Meanwhile, the Google Home speaker, Google's first smart speaker in six years, is finally up for preorder and finally has a ship date. N Thursday, june twenty fifth The speaker was announced last fall, and for ninety nine dollars it promises to be the best way to get Gemini Smart homeome control into your house. It also looks really good in red and apparently, Sounds really good. There is a remarkable, interesting smart speaker thing happening right now. Alexa Plus, Apple Home, Siri AI, and Gemini are all promising these big AI upgrades to how you control your home. It's all been kind of iffy so far, but We'll see how much these new things really change the game And finally, reviews for Toy Story five are starting to come out, a movie in which the bad guy is basically an iPad What's not surprising is that virtually everyone, including my colleague, Charles Pauliam Moore, seems to love it What's more surprising is that it seems to be a remarkably maybe uniquely thoughtful look at the good and bad of what it means to be a person in a world filled with screens. Leave it to Woody and Buz man . You can read more about all of this at theverge d. com dot That is ninety seconds for Wednesday, june seventeenth Now let's test some headphones We like to do this every once in a while because I think we review a lot of headphones and we talk about headphones a lot, and we talk mostly about sound quality. and that's fine and good. That's very important. But as we live in a world where we spend more time talking to our devices, whether we're talking to assistants, or we're talking to various dictation apps, The microphone actually matters a lot, especially if you believe in AI and we're all going to record our lives and do everything, the microphone in your headphones becomes very important So every once in a while, we come on this show and we test some microphones Joining me now to help do it the Virg Senor reviewer, John Higgins. Hi, John. Hey, David. Where are you right now? I am in beautiful San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California I am sitting at a coffee shop on Venturiff Boulevard facing west down Ventura Boulevard for the Tom Petty fans. It is right around lunch time. so there's a bunch of traffic right there. We just missed a haawk having a bird fight right above me. So you know there's a lot of stuff going on. I like this. This is about as brutal an environment as you could like on a day to day basis, find yourself, right? Like we've done some of these that are sort of deliberately out of scope of a normal time you would take a phone call or spend time talking to your phone This is like There are probably people near you on phone calls or talking to their computers or doing zZooms or whatever right now. So this I think I feel like this is a fair test in a way that I really like. Exactly. I actually was worried when I sat down. and really listen to everything that was going on around me thought this is just going to be chaotic. But there was a woman at a table right next to me that was on a phone call with some airpods and the mike well Yes, it might be chaotic, but it's very truthful This is what people do This is right. Yeahah, for better or for worse. So this is also one of the reasons I like to do this episode from time to time is to make people realize hoorders they are putting onto other people when they take calls in environments like this. Like you should know what it sounds like to the other person when you do this to them. Yeah. What headphones are you on right now These are the wired earpods They are The lightning version, which I have through a lightning to USBC adapter U But yeah, the wired, you can see, there's the microphone here, which is On the street side, I never use these. Yeah, so these are like the twenty dollarars headphones that are floating around somewhere in most people's houses. Yeah. The funniest thing about this microphone to me is you sound great. Like it's actually just as a microphone, very good. and I recommend these to people all the time as sort of podcast microphones because it's a good mic and you sound good, but it picks up every little tiny bit of background noise. Every tiny bit. And so this is like this is one that you're totally fine to use like walking around your house, but I really do not recommend using out in the world Yeah, well they don't have a noise suppression really happening with them. They're just like, here's what you get. Yeah it is a microphone and nothing else. Yeah. So you've brought a bunch of stuff to test. And I think the one I want to start with, I want you to guide us a little bit, but I want to start with the AirPods Pro three because that I think in terms of like as a useful control, I think that's a good one that it's a very mainstream. lotots of people have them and we're about to see kind of what's better and what's worse. But I want to see the sort of basic most mainstream options. Sos let's switch to that and see how we do. That sounds good. Okay. sounds. Let's do it. let's go I am now on the AirPods Pro three Okay, this is fascinating So You're clearly in a very noisy place because the Airbuds Pro three actually do a pretty good job of sort of normal din noise suppression. like if you want an airplane the AirPods Pro do a pretty good job of canceling that out But you're I'm hearing a lot of background noise still It's interesting too, because a lot of people talk about all clarity of the AirPods Pro three with or AirPods Pro in general. I mean, since they were released, it's been sort of a talking point. And I've always been like, Fine But they're not the thing to focus on They're not the the the the end all be all of quality, they're just Okay You can hear me You can hear other stuff too. I'm sort of thrown by this one because what I expected and what we get from a lot of these earbuds and what I suspect we'll hear some of here is They compress the crap out of your voice in service of getting rid of all the background noise. And so it's like, you don't sound good, but I don't hear the background as much This is kind of splitting the middle in both cases Like, yeah, your voice is less rich than the earPods I'm getting less background mode. But I'm not getting No background noise Like I just heard a sound that sounded like somebody wheeled a shopping cart right past your head. That was a person that just pulled up on their Duati motorcycle and stopped like they just parked on the sidewalk. Okay, perfect example. O the earods, on the earpods I would have heard a motorcycle. Oh yeah. This made it sound like a shopping cart. So like that's actually that is a perfect example U Doesn't It's not unpleasant to listen to, but it is I am very aware that there is a lot of background noise here. And it's not It's very like beam formed on your voice, which I can sort of hear But I'm not as impressed with this as I expected to be actually That is I feel a common response when I talk to people and tell them. And like when I do comparisons, because that's one of the things I do with reviews is I have whatever earbuds I'm reviewing And then I bring along a couple others and I will talk to somebody. that I trust their opinion on audio quality. and I'll switch. between them, I'll do a call. I'll be like, OK, let me call you back. and I'll switch over to something else and I'll call them, but I won't tell them what I'm on. And quite often when I tell them, oh yeah, Those ones that you didn't like. Those were the airPods. L what I use those all the time. I' like, yes, you do. Okay. Yeah, I am confident everyone has either made or received a call from a pair of AirPods Pro threerees. U This is really interesting. Okay. so let let's actually play this game your way. I want you to switch to one of the other ones you have with you, but I don't want you to tell me which one And we're going to see how it feels. So let's let's pause here and switch and gets the next one Stound good. Okay, you've switched I'm immediately hearing Next to no background noise, but let me hear what you sound like. So these are brand new that, which you, well not bra new But these are new ear buds that I've switched to U I'm going to keep talking because the traffic has actually died down a little bit So I want there to be little bit more representative. Yeah, there's some jeeps that are going by Um Oh yeah, these are these came out Last October, I want to say Okay So this is what I expected the AirPods Pro to sound like, which is I'm getting Basically no background noise U it's almost all gone except for like the occasional little flare of background, but I'm hardly hearing anything. You sound terrible That was my next question is what the compression would have been like on these as well. It's very compressed.'re like I can hear you clearly enough but it sounds like you are in a tin can. Yeah, I'm having trouble figuring out how I feel about this actually because this is actually more like if you and I were going to spend two hours on the phone right now I would rather have this than the airPods, just because there's not so much constant noise you don't need to do as much mental work in order to understand what's happening. Exactly. But then like somebody just honked and I heard it. Like's there's just like little moments that I'm hearing, but that's about it. Well let me see if this will affect feelings. Airpods for. What are these? evenven When the AirPods Pro three are on sale for around two hundred bucks. These are R or less What are these headphones These are o am I gonna get this name right because there's so many words to it. These are the ear fun air pro four plus That is okay. So this is if I'm not mistaken, earphone is one of those kind of random Amazon brands that pops up out of nowhere every once in a while, the like straight out of a Chinese factory somewhere kind of brands. I wouldn't put them quite in that same category having met and conversed with the owners and members of the company. It's not quite the level of pop up Chinese company that just pulls a whole bunch of OEM stuff and throws stuff together.. They actually do research and they develop things but they are very much a inexpensive brands. the state. they are Hallmark is stuff underos. Yeah, your phone, if I remember correctly, is at the top of a lot of lists of best cheap headphones. Like if you want a really cheap pair of headphones, This is a brand I've heard more and more recently is like This is just the right place to start if you want Whatever, seven thousand five hundred dollars headphones. How much are these specifically? These are list price ninety nine dollars ninety nine cents. but are almost always on sale for about eighty bucks. Okay, so this is we're looking at like a third of AirPod's pro prices Fr their full price, yeah. Wow, and I'm sure they don't sound is good, audio wise and whatever. And like they sound fine. Yeah That's how I would describe this too, right? Like this this is completely normal fine phone call, useound kind of like You're on speaker a little far away from your phone. U But I this so far of the three that we've tried, this is You don't sound the best, but this would be the most pleasant phone call to have of the three that we've tried so far, I think Yeah, they make good stuff. I'm a fan of things that they could out with. Yeah, E fun. who knew? And they use Oacast, which I really love too What is Ocast for people who don't know? Ocast is a Bluetooth standard U orcast broadcast. So what you As opposed to like multip point connection on Bluetooth where you can connect know have two devices Ocast is an unonlimited amount. Oh, cool. Okay. And it's found a lot on hearing aids So it's a great way it's a great accessible feature that I really am just waiting for it to really take off. and just be found everywhere. There are TVs that you can have that have a workcast. The LG owns have a orcast and you can connect to them. So it's a really great technology and ready for it to take off and beat everyere airports that hs anywhere where you need hear and assistance That's super cool. All right, let's switch And I assume everything you want to try here is more expensive than these. These are bound to be the cheapest ones. These are the. cheapest. What do we have now These are The Soundcore Liberty fiveive pro. It just came out a few weeks ago This is like multiple orders of magnitude better than anything we've tested so far This is nuts isn't it You like just recently reviewed these, right? Yeah. They're the best quality I have ever heard on a pair of earbuds or headphones I am blown away by how good this is. U What what is soundcor,? That's not a brand I'm super familiar with It's the audio brand of Anchor Oh. I spent a bunch of time with anchor headphones kind of at the very beginning of of their headphone journey and They made a lot of like pretty good, pretty inexpensive. like on the level of the ear fund stuff we were talking about a few minutes ago.bs These are significantly more expensive than that, right They are more expensive than they normally have done, which is hundred dollars around or less They're not Ps They are one hundred seventy Okay Dad center. They have a more expensive version which is two hundred and thirty But the earbuds in both are exactly the same. The only difference that you're getting by stepping up is a case that has a larger Um touch screen on it And it also has AI transcription and summary technology, if youd like record a lecture or something like that. it'll transcribe it and then give you a summary I I mean, yeah, I cannot believe how good these sound. I'm hearing No background noise, like flatly none There's a lot of traffic happening right now. Yeah, Nhing. And you are you're still a little compressed, but not nearly as compressed as even like the earphunds you're looking at. This is almost exactly the balance you would hope for. because right, I'm willing to give up a tiny bit of your voice fidelity to not hear background noise. and it feels like I'm only giving up a tiny bit of fidelity to get no background noise I am blown away by how good this sounds These are amazing. Every time I use them, I feel great. Is your sense that there's any new or unusual technology in here? Like what did Anchor do to make this work this well They created their own chip calling the Dust chip the name. T H U S Oh Yeahah, I don't like that at all So it's, you, similar to like Apple's H two chip, right? Apple makes their own chip. They put it only in Apple products. products eventually And, you know, Sony has their chip that they put into their processing to do the processing So this is Anchored sort of making a making a bid to compete against them And my understanding is that ship will be used across the anchor lineup. So we're talking about Soundcore and we're talking about smart home things and robot vacuums. and so they're going to try and sort of connect their entire ecosystem with this Dus ship terrible name. It really is a terrible name. It's just hard to say. There's a fascinating anchor story in there that is like anchor came up by Taking that sort of direct out of a Chinese factory stuff and upleveling it a little bit, a little better design, a little better quality, just kind of improving everything and building a brand around it But now to start to do things like its own chip is really that's a leap ahead in It's a big leap what this company thinks it can be. And I mean, just based on this Its it's onto something are these good headphones otherwise I think they're great. Okay. The sound out of the box isn't the best, but they have this sort of hearing preference test that you do. they Play a sound, a music clip twice Uh, and then they u say, which one do you like better? And then they do twowo more clips, whichich one you like better and they do that seven times and it fine tunes the audio to be something that you enjoying listening to you and I really liked the way that it tuned it It fixed an issue that they had with the midrange frequencies like voices and snare and stuff made it more present and sappy and kind of tamed the base, which is I enjoy space, but was a little excessive for me. Yeah, I find a lot of headphones now. Really, really, really just want to beat you to death with base Yeah, it's it's TV's in brightness, they're just like, what if we just go super duper hard? on this one thing, you're going to love it The noise canceling on these is also great too, just to say. U they they are some of the top noise canceling. as good as the AirPods Pimate So this immediately goes on the list of like Best headphones you can buy And especially for that much less than the AirPods, that's pretty competitive Yeah, it's my top recommendation, I would say Fair enough sccore one for Soundcore, cheeez All right, I think you got one more, right? you wantan to switch to one. I feel like I feel bad not saving this one to last now because I don't think there's any chance. but hey, let's see what we can do. All right, we got one more. let's switch Werought our last one You look a little like you're wearing like air traffic control ear muffs What do we have this time These are the Senheiser momentum Fes just came out like a week ago from when we're doing this. So I'm very curious to getet your impression on how they sound So this is an interesting one. The voice fidelity is pretty solid, but I would even put this as like slightly above AirPods Pro three level Like you you sound Good not great Um but like, but good time but I'm definitely getting more spikes into the background noise than a couple of the other ones we've tried. Like it's doing a pretty good job. Uh, like in in it's sort of like where the ear fun one was where Like most of the Normal noise seems to be gone But then I'm like hearing spikes of people talking and stuff behind you as you're going Yeah, there' been some people that have sort of walked by Yeah so. And then when you talk the background noise picks up, which the Soundcore one was doing a really good job of not doing. So there's I'm getting more background noise when you're talking than when you're not. So like you can sort of hear it processing. It's one of those sets of headphones that like I can listen to the processing as we're talking, whichich is super distracting in my opinion. It is kind of distracting. I agree, especially when it's like it's coming and going as we have a conversation I am neither impressed nor disappointed by these, I would say. Well, they're four hundred bucks. Yeah. in general, it seems like the over ear headphones don't tend to have great mics. Like is that just a physics thing because the other ones can actually point their microphones towards your mouth and use beam forming that way? Yeah, I think the earbuds are usually better at beam forming. They also usually have some form of bone conduction that they're using in order to localize where your voice is coming from and with padding That doesn't really work clearly. So they really rely on on the informant. And you some do it better than others Sony generally they're they're headadphones do a good job. But say don't They don't match Yeah ear buds generally. But yeah, it's very funny, when you're not talking, it does really good noise cancellation, but it feels like the more you talk the more background I hear, which is weird and not what I expected Yeah, I can see that because it's trying to figure when I'm talking, it makes it more difficult for it to figure out pay attention to And so know my frequency range is going to match would be close to a lot of the noise that's happening around me. so it just has trouble deciding what to let. What's your take on the momentum Fives? otherwise? There are a lot of people at the verge who feel like Senheiser deserves more shine and credit in the high end headphone space Interesting. I was not aware of that I think that they are I tend to not M a huge fan of their sound tuning Um They sometimes are a little bit more what we call audio file tuning Um, which can sometimes push the high end a little too much because most audio files are older and have also we Um So It's not something that I generally gravity toward us. They don't sound bad by any means. It's just not for my taste in general That's fair All right, I think I think we're done here. Switch back to the sound cores, which sppoiler alert won this test and let's let's finish up here. So switch back to those and then let's talkal this out Cather. I have to say,'s like my heart just relaxes when you switarch back to these headphones.'s so much better Okay, so last question, and then I'm let to go here. It feels to me Lake We've been doing these tests a long time. U and microphones aren't getting sort of hugely better. I think like part of the reason I'm so surprised by these sound chords is they're the first meananingfully better set of headphones in terms of mic quality And if that I can remember since we've been doing this test, everythingthing else is kind of variations on a middle ground What is your sense of whether this is just some very hard physics problem to solve or it's just low on the list of things that microphone or that headphone manufacturers care about. like Why aren't these getting better at kind of a rapid pace that you would hope for I think it's a little bit of both. I think they are it's incredibly difficult. cancel out noise that is unpredictable a whole lot of processing power Also person that has purchased the earbuds is not hearing that They're not the ones that are experiencing it every day. I really think that's part of it So they're going to concentrate more on sound quality. on A C U on comfort on other features that you might want to use, you know, like there's we're seeing live translation popping up all over the place now It's those sort of things. heart rate sensors and workout headphones. thingsings that are are the person that has purchased the headphones uses on a daily or near daily basis and experiences on a daily or near daily basis. They might make loads of calls a day or be in a whole bunch of Zoom meetings all day They're not hearing what everyone else is hearing. And we all just have kind of accepted that that's the quality that you generally get when you're on a call, or you're in a meeting It's a real bummer that that's right, but that does feel right. My hope again, is that this increased focus on capturing audio both for AI purposes and for assistance and stuff like that might turn that that it's like, I might not notice that I sound like crap to you, but I am certainly going to notice that Siri can't hear me on a set of headphones And so I'm hopeful that that might start to turn up the heat for companies to make microphones better. I've been hopeful for that for a while. So maybe maybe I'm just not going to ever get my way here But hey, at least at least Soundcorore got it right Right. And I think because Soundcore got it right then there's a chance that other compompanies are going to take note be like, okay They're getting You know, people are saying that The call quality on those sound chords are amazing We need to beat them. Companies love to beat other companies at things true That's very true. All right. well That is a hopeful note to end on. I sincerely hope you're right and I'm going to go literally buy a pair of Doundcores right now. I could not be more excited to buy a pair of headphones I absolutely do not need. awesome All right, John. Good to see you, Thanks buddy. Thanks David. All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to John for being here. Sorry about all the terrible audio and thank you as always for watching and listening. I want to do this again relatively soon this time with like all of the high end over ear noise cancellation headphones, like the Bosees and the Sonyys of the world Those are the ones I think a lot of people have that they wear on planes and they walk through airports, yammering on phone calls. I want to know how those sound too. So we're going to have to get a bunch of those in test them out. If there's a pair of headphones you want us to add to this test or anything else you want us to talk about. We absolutely love hearing from you. You can call the hotline at six Vverge onele. You can send us an email, Virgecast at the Vverge. com. you can find me on Threads and Blue skky and anywhere else Hit us up, We love hearing all of your feedback about anything Also, as a reminder, the best thing you can do to support all of this stuff that we're up to is subscribe to the Verge Vverge. com slash subscribe. It gets you all of our podcasts with no ads, including this one. It gets you all of our subscriber exclusive newsletters. it gets you all of our coverage of headphone reviews and everything else The Virds dot com slash subscribe We appreciate it The firstirge cast is Vverge production and part of Vox Media podcast Network. epode is produced by Eric Gomez, Branding Kefer, Travis Larchuck, and Aron Locasio We will see you tomorrow Rockin