....is what my brother and I used to say growing up going to blues and dances halls. Bass at blues and dance halls in East London we would expect the speakers to rearrange our internal organs. We would expect the speakers to be vibrating with bass before so low we could not hear it.
Well, the Sony Ult Wear speakers have too much bass. For the first time ever for a pair of headphones I have said 'That Is Too Much Bass'.
I have Soundcore Liberty 4 NC's (x4) and the Sony Ult Wears are better.
I have the Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro's and the Sony Ult Wears are better.
I have the Soundcore Space One and the Sony Ult Wears are better.
I have the Soundcore Space One Pro and the Sony Ult Wears are better.
I have the Beats Studio Pros and the Sony Ult Wears are much better.
I have the Beats Studio 3 (X2) and the Sony Ult Wears are better.
I have the Beats Studio 2 (X5) and they are on the same level as the Sony Ult Wears.
The Sony Ult Wears don't just produce a lot of bass. They do bring forward the mids and treble after tinkering with the many EQ settings, LDAC, DSEE, Clear Bass, etc. It takes time setting up the sweet spot.
My test tunes come out as they should on the Sony Ult Wears. Unravel by Bjork is delivered perfectly with the vocals and bass reproduced perfectly. Resolution of the Godzilla Minus One Soundtrack builds in volume and complexity and reaches a majestic crescendo towards the end. It's Happening Again by Agnes Obel mellifluous and haunting and delivered perfectly. A new (old) test tune of mine is My Heart WIll Go On by Celine Dion in CD quality and LDAC - when she sings 'You're Here' at the 3:25 mark your headphones or sound systems needs to be able to reproduce that so that it cleans the earwax out of you ears - and the Sony Ult Wears do just that and are almost painful if I play it too loud - no distortion - just Celine at her cheesiest best. Venus As A Boy - bass and vocals balanced and soulful. Traitor by Olivia Rodrigo - vocals are perfectly produced when tuned correctly. On the Nature Of Daylight on the Arrival Soundtrack is a hard piece to reproduce properly - it has a rumbling bass line that is deep in the background that lesser speakers I have fail to produce at all - I presume the frequency is too low for those devices but with the Sony Ult Wears it is there as it should be.
I have tried the ULT1 and ULT2 settings and most of the time the ULT1 setting is just about right. But depending on what I am playing it is too much bass so I have to dial it back. The bass does not distort it just gets thumping and loud and uncomfortable - as it should be if I want it to. These are headphones for bass lovers..
Audiophiles will most likely prefer the constrained and restricted sound of say the Beats Studio Pros or Airpod Max's. Well, I don't as these so called high end headphones are far too narrow and dull for me. I like, my headphones to be able to produce controlled extreme bass and treble and this is what the Sony Ult Wears and my other favourite headphones do. I like to be in control of it and not have it controlled for me by the manufacturer.
I got the Sony Ult Wears with a big discount of £98.10 here at Amazon using a 10% discount voucher on an already discounted price. An absolute bargain. The first set I ordered I did not get as the courier must have stolen them - he said that he delivered them to a resident at my house at a time when I was not in and my 2 CCTV cameras had nothing for the time he said he delivered them - I hope Amazon fire that thief. So I got a refund that very same day and ordered again but changed the destination to the local post office and I got them the second time. Great service from Amazon - just need to employ some more trust worthy couriers...
The Sony Ult Wears are comfortable to wear. I have had them on for a few hours now and it's like they are not there. The ANC is quite brilliant as I cannot hear anything in my office with my various computers whirring in the background.
One thing that is new to me is the touch controls on the right hand ear pad. These do work for me though I did get it stuck with Google Assistant reading through my notifications which I had to wait for it to finish for about 90 seconds before my music started playing again. But doing the volume and moving backwards and forwards in the tracks and pausing and playing work.
One thing that I had to disable was the Adaptive Sound Control as it was adjusting the sound as I was walking about trying to figure out what environment I was in. I'll come back to this again when I get more used to the app which is quite comprehensive.
I tested the transparency mode by putting the palm of hand over the right earcup and the voice of my other half was totally natural. It did not sound processed at all - it sounded like the headphones were not there at all.
I had to figure out how to get it in LDAC mode as there is not a setting in the app for it as far as I can tell. I had to change it in my Bluetooth settings. Not everybody will know how to do this so it should be made clearer. But as this is the first time I am using this Sony app for headphones it might just be me.
I have not had them long enough to test the battery life but it seems to be o.k. 10% of battery usage after about 90 minutes.
So the Sony Ult Wears are on a par with my trusty Beats Studio 2.0's. This means that they are equal best headphones I have ever owned. So what I will do is buy a few more Sony Ult Wears in the different colours in the next few months in future sales so that I can use each one sparingly and have them lasting a decade at least - this is what I am doing with my Beats Studio 2.0's which all work fine after nearly 9 years.
So I am in it for the long run with the Sony Ult Wears. Bravo, Sony. Bravo.
Update 07/01 Had my ULT wears for a little while now and it is sounding looser and less tight as the drivers are run in which is great. Battery life is at 59% from when I first charged it so looks good in the long term as I am using LDAC codec and ANC all the time. Bass is still too fierce.
Also, I tried the 3.5mm audio jack from my old Sony NW-A45 and was surprised at the sound quality using this method. On all of my other Bluetooth headphones connecting this way usually results in below par and quiet sound quality but not with the ULT Wears.
Update 25/02. Bought the Grey and Black versions today at a discounted price of £118 each and am running them in to loosen up the drivers so that they sound exactly like my Off White pair. All going good so far. I think I prefer the look of the black ones the most. So between the 3 of them I reckon I'll get at least 9/10 years out of them.
Update 03/03 Couple of useful tips. 1) Use the Safe Listening activity in the Sound Connect App to make sure you don't damage your hearing. What it does it takes how loud you have listen to stuff over a week to see whether you are causing long term damage to your hearing. Some of the SoundCore headphones I have have something similar but this is a much better implementation. 2) When raising or lowering the volume using the touchpad on the right headphone swipe up from the middle and hold your finger in position to keep on raising the volume and release when you get to the desired volume. Swipe down to reduce volume and hold to keep reducing - thought I'd mention this as a YouTube reviewer of the Sony Ult Wears complained that he had to swipe up and down many times to raise or reduce the volume - no need - just hold. And the instructions on how to do this are not exactly clear on the Sony website.
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