Breaking free of wires – the surprise of the Sennheiser MM100 Wireless Bluetooth headphones

One of my ‘being in flow’ things is running and doing circuits at the gym. It’s a great way for me to relax and come up with novel solutions and listen what I love a lot – music; in the form RnB, Soul, Jazz, Latin, and Movie Soundtracks.

Over the years, and going from being into audiophile hi-fi, 5.1 surround systems and then portable devices such as Sony Walkman’s, Mini-Disc players and now Smartphones, I’ve had many different headphones and occasionally earphones. And there’s one universal problem I’ve had with them (including leading brands such as Sennheiser, B&W (yes, the P5s), Denon, Bose, and Bose (yes, the A8s). After about 9 to 12 months use, I repeatedly hit the same problem – something in the cord breaks and it works only one channel. The usual warranty repair is performed and we have a rinse and repeat cycle in the next 9 month time frame.  By the second time, I’ve lost trust in that model of headphone or earphone.

Today, my P5 and a backup pair Denon DJ cans (£250 worth of headphones) both failed on me as I prepared for my morning run. They both went 1-channel on me.  My spare Bose A8’s are okay but clearly lack the bass and midrange response of the B&Ws, so while running with these on, it occurred to me that I’d been looking at the wrong solution. As my home music is wireless (oh lovely Sonos), then why not the headphone solution. Enter the Sennheiser MM100’s. 

Suited for runners and gym goers, I always had the preconceived notion, that without wires, the musicality of the sound wouldn’t be good enough. Surprisingly playing non audio enhanced Spotify on my iPhone 5, they sounded musical and pleasant once paired over Bluetooth. You can always tell a good pair of cans are good when you want to play more tracks to listen to those extra tones and instruments you feel you’re hearing for the first time. So far this is has been revolutionary.  Freed around the house, at the gym and commuting to the office, the on-device controls on the headset are awkward and take some getting used to. But simply not worrying where the cables are and just concentrating on your interaction with your smartphone or tablet is a surprisingly nice feeling. I’m so surprised this had not occurred to me before.

I’ll report back after a month once the euphoria of ‘look ma no hands’ wears off and I’ve tested the headset quality in taking calls on the iPhone. But today heralds a breakthrough – and hopefully a longer life on headphones which no longer means a 1-channel pair which no longer work after 9 months. We’ll see of course.

Streaming audio wirelessly around the home

My Sonos wireless music system is one of the best gadgety things I've bought in recent years.
Now I have 4 rooms around the house where I can stream my choons.

As I listen to a lot of radio — like TV programmes, I can't always be there to listen to it at the time. As a soul music nut, it's a great source of getting new choons to stream over Spotify, Last FM or iTunes on the Sonos.

First off, I got curious around Airplay over Sonos.  I thought this would  be good to throw audio from my iOS device to the Sonos rooms without the needs for buying extra Sonos gear.  The Airport Express wired to a Sonos Play:5 solution works pretty well.  It is prone to irregular sound drops from time to time.  I think this is related to the number of hops the connection has to make over the main home wifi and the Sonos mesh.  Tip of the day — Connect the Airport Express to the Sonos zone you will mainly use for more consistent connected performance.

Going back to the radio thing.  I use some cool software on my Mac by Rogue Ameoba. I use Radioshift for Mac to schedule recordings of shows I like to playback later. Mainly Solar Radio. (Note that Radioshift is no longer available).  I then use the Fission app to open the MP4 file of the show I recorded and edit out tracks I want to keep. Then export to iTunes to sync with the iOS device or be part of the Sonos connected music iTunes library (which is all stored on my NAS drive anyway).

An article appeared on Ars Technica, extolling the virtues of Rogue Ameoba's other product for streaming audio wirelessly around the home - Airfoil.  This was the piece I was looking for (instead of wiring in a 3.5mm stereo between the Mac and my Sonos Play:5). When playing back the audio from Radioshift, Fission or any other audio touting app on the Mac, Airfoil connects it to the Sonos Zones via the Airplay connected Apple Express.

Again, reliability is not 100% as any wireless activity on the home network seems to cause problems with the quality of the streaming. Probably a clash of packets. I do get tempted by the wired connection from time to time.

So in essence, if you have a Sonos system:

• Airplay is worth exploring via a connected Airport Express to a Sonos Play:5. It's great to throw audio  from any iOS connected device to the one or more Sonos zones. Nice for parties :)
• If you have audio stuck on your Mac (or Windows if you have to), Airfoil is a nice complement to getting Mac audio streamed around the home.

Worth it?  IMO yes, each of the products mentioned are relatively inexpensive and are well designed and easy to use.  And I'm sure I'll find other useful ways of using this as I tinker with it.

Of course you can see that Airfoil is a temporary solution, as Apple are likely to be baking in this functionality in a future release of OSX.