So help me settle a quick argument…
Has Bose, in the last few years, made a good sounding headphones?
I’m well aware that those aren’t the only factors but for argument sake lets focus on those, from my understanding that the QC35 and the 700 sound OK but have great noise canceling, but that’s about it, i can’t think of a single decent headphone that they have made
They are one of the most comfortable, if honestly, not he most comfortable headphones I own (and I own quite a few).
They are durable, I got the same pair for over 3 years now and I have to say I don’t treat it too well
No mechanical issues with it whatsoever.
Their tuning is not my preferred tuning, they lack more forward mids and trebles to my taste, but EQed they are very capable.
And tuning is very subjective thing, one likes apples, other likes pears, nothing wrong with selling good quality pears. Even better if you can EQ the pears to taste like apples.
So yeah, I think they are very decent headphones, period.
Bonus, they have pretty good ANC (or really really good ANC for the time they were released).
Then no. I had a few bose headphones and they do seem to have their ‘brand sound signature’.
Just like Grado or Beyers have their own, it just happens that Beyers’ “bread cutting trebles” are appreciated by community and bose’s ‘bland bassy pounder’ isn’t.
The Bose or Sony ANC headphones are recommended only as being the best for ANC, but are all pretty meh sound-wise. So not really, no. For $380 a Modi/Magni/58x would be way better.
The thing is that Sony do make great headphones, regardless of ANC or not - not saying their BT headphones are great (though i found them decent) but they make other really good headphones even if they are “only” wired.
Bose has never had that in the last few years at least to my knowledge
Yeah, true, the Sony MDR7506 are well-regarded as are the high-end Sony IEMs. But I think whenever people think Bose they think of their top-notch ANC, but I haven’t heard anything good about their sound.