I found a pair of headphones now serving double-duty as BOTH a hi-fidelity and SWL application.
So I tried the C.Crane Senta-Forty headphones. Rather than merely repeat other reviews, I'll provide a little different info.
Yes, fit and finish are great for this price range. No, they are not Sony MDR's. But close, yet different. Superbly lightweight, flexible on-ear, and comfortable. Like wearing a pair of potato-chips. And, like my RadioSport communications phones, the cord is removable, which means that if you stand on the cord at a table and rise up, you may not be tearing your ears off. Great. Lay-Flat design appreciated. Cloth covered cord is a nice touch. At only 4 feet long, it won't tangle on the desk, but many might want the extension accessory for the lay back on the couch and drift away type of operation.
It's way beyond the typical consumer level quality at this price range, although once you hear them, you'll probably want to treat them with a little respect, rather than bang them around or toss them into the bottom of a fly-away case. Don't do that. Comes with a nice flexible case.
I got them primarily for my CCrane Pocket and 2E desktop radios, and I wasn't disappointed. Later, I tried them on an Alinco R8T, and also my Kenwood TS-590S.
Frequency response is a tasteful set of band groupings which you can see on the box. Although not labeled, I clearly see bass/vocal, presence, definition, and sparkle band groupings. Tastefully applied.
Long term - while the low-end shows a -6dB rolloff, with many formats over-emphasizing the bass, or a station's own EQ / compander thumping away on the low end, I would have preferred a -12db rolloff personally. Of course my local classical station, and fm talk has it's EQ together, and the phones sound great to me. A slight reduction of bass on the 2E radio solves any over-eq'd bass very quickly.
The wooden enclosures help provide a non-resonant transparency that I enjoy. (If you don't believe me, see the review of the Target SSB receiver where I build a top enclosure out of cardboard on purpose!)
COMM SPEAKER? You gotta' be kidding - but no.
On a lark I tried the Senta-Forty's both on my Alinco and Kenwood TS-590S. Even though the phones are 32 ohm impedance, for some reason the drivers seem to agree with the receivers audio amps fine enough not to sit in the hissy non-linear region at the crack of opening the pot up. Surprising.
Normally when I introduce a pair of higher impedance phones to the Kenwood, the quick fix to kill the hiss is to use an inline attenuator just a little to dampen the mismatched impedance, AND the usual over-sensitivity of the headphone transducers.
The Senta-Forty's were basically plug an play.
I truly expected the full frequency response of the Senta's to be totally unusable with the receivers, even on AM, but I was surprised. Note that the Kenwood has it's own RX-equalizer settings, (which I left at flat or default), and the Alinco has none.
Yes, there is a *slight* amount of unnecessary high-end response, but all it took was a slight adjustment of the Kenwood's filtering, or a tiny tweak of the IF Shift on the Alinco to tame it real quick.
I'm still getting used to the "sound" of usable hi-fi headphones on the Alinco and Kenwood, which is normally a no-go from anybody's standpoint.
Rather than just make up stuff, I like the sound of AM/SSB/CW, although it is different from the decades of comm phones I'm used to (Kenwood HS-5's, etc), but weird stuff like noise is not so harsh. Hi-Fi noise? Now you know I'm making this up right - NO. Rolling across my utility line buzzsaws on various frequencies didn't make my ears bleed.
In the end what all my hot-air means is that the Senta-Forty's frequency response and drivers seem to be useful (with some small tweaks to bass/treble depending on content) so that there is no long-term listener fatigue, and surprisingly good on the Kenwood and Alinco, which I didn't expect.
Field-day, yeah probably not. But for in-house usage without a noisy household going nuts all around you - by all means.
Reviews of headphones are like reviews of shoes - no one size fits all. For me, these fit both physically and *sonically* well for my SWL / Broadcast / Amateur operations.
So I tried the C.Crane Senta-Forty headphones. Rather than merely repeat other reviews, I'll provide a little different info.
Yes, fit and finish are great for this price range. No, they are not Sony MDR's. But close, yet different. Superbly lightweight, flexible on-ear, and comfortable. Like wearing a pair of potato-chips. And, like my RadioSport communications phones, the cord is removable, which means that if you stand on the cord at a table and rise up, you may not be tearing your ears off. Great. Lay-Flat design appreciated. Cloth covered cord is a nice touch. At only 4 feet long, it won't tangle on the desk, but many might want the extension accessory for the lay back on the couch and drift away type of operation.
It's way beyond the typical consumer level quality at this price range, although once you hear them, you'll probably want to treat them with a little respect, rather than bang them around or toss them into the bottom of a fly-away case. Don't do that. Comes with a nice flexible case.
I got them primarily for my CCrane Pocket and 2E desktop radios, and I wasn't disappointed. Later, I tried them on an Alinco R8T, and also my Kenwood TS-590S.
Frequency response is a tasteful set of band groupings which you can see on the box. Although not labeled, I clearly see bass/vocal, presence, definition, and sparkle band groupings. Tastefully applied.
Long term - while the low-end shows a -6dB rolloff, with many formats over-emphasizing the bass, or a station's own EQ / compander thumping away on the low end, I would have preferred a -12db rolloff personally. Of course my local classical station, and fm talk has it's EQ together, and the phones sound great to me. A slight reduction of bass on the 2E radio solves any over-eq'd bass very quickly.
The wooden enclosures help provide a non-resonant transparency that I enjoy. (If you don't believe me, see the review of the Target SSB receiver where I build a top enclosure out of cardboard on purpose!)
COMM SPEAKER? You gotta' be kidding - but no.
On a lark I tried the Senta-Forty's both on my Alinco and Kenwood TS-590S. Even though the phones are 32 ohm impedance, for some reason the drivers seem to agree with the receivers audio amps fine enough not to sit in the hissy non-linear region at the crack of opening the pot up. Surprising.
Normally when I introduce a pair of higher impedance phones to the Kenwood, the quick fix to kill the hiss is to use an inline attenuator just a little to dampen the mismatched impedance, AND the usual over-sensitivity of the headphone transducers.
The Senta-Forty's were basically plug an play.
I truly expected the full frequency response of the Senta's to be totally unusable with the receivers, even on AM, but I was surprised. Note that the Kenwood has it's own RX-equalizer settings, (which I left at flat or default), and the Alinco has none.
Yes, there is a *slight* amount of unnecessary high-end response, but all it took was a slight adjustment of the Kenwood's filtering, or a tiny tweak of the IF Shift on the Alinco to tame it real quick.
I'm still getting used to the "sound" of usable hi-fi headphones on the Alinco and Kenwood, which is normally a no-go from anybody's standpoint.
Rather than just make up stuff, I like the sound of AM/SSB/CW, although it is different from the decades of comm phones I'm used to (Kenwood HS-5's, etc), but weird stuff like noise is not so harsh. Hi-Fi noise? Now you know I'm making this up right - NO. Rolling across my utility line buzzsaws on various frequencies didn't make my ears bleed.
In the end what all my hot-air means is that the Senta-Forty's frequency response and drivers seem to be useful (with some small tweaks to bass/treble depending on content) so that there is no long-term listener fatigue, and surprisingly good on the Kenwood and Alinco, which I didn't expect.
Field-day, yeah probably not. But for in-house usage without a noisy household going nuts all around you - by all means.
Reviews of headphones are like reviews of shoes - no one size fits all. For me, these fit both physically and *sonically* well for my SWL / Broadcast / Amateur operations.
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