Wednesday, December 21, 2011

B&W C-5

C5 overview page main image template

I am a bit of a headphone / audio junkie; I have a very good pair of headphones, but was intrigued by B&W's foray into headphones. So I went and bought the C-5's, which feature an interesting "secure" loop design to keep the headphones in place. For those of you who are interested, its on special in South Africa at the moment. Very attractive, well weighted and incredibly comfortable to wear.

X749C5 F

 

 

 

The attractive Apple-esque packaging also doesn't hurt matters. So how do they sound ?

 

X749C5 o fit

I'm afraid that while the sound stage is very wide (impressively so), and the volume is good, the excessive bass response vs mid-range bass relegates these to iPhone / iPod use in cars, planes and the like. I'm afraid they are nowhere near the Klipsch's in terms of truthful reproduction of the music. It appears that B&W has tuned these for exactly that MP3 generation of music lovers. Not a bad thing, but not what I was looking for.

 

I have also ordered the P5's. Lets hope they don't suffer from the same problem.

 

PS. These cans come with the most rubbish carry case I've ever had the displeasure of using. Fiddly, without instructions and very easy to screw up. Fail!