wireless headphones

I lived in Europe in 2003 and purchased a pair of Sennheiser wireless headphones there that I really liked--they were a little more expensive than this pair, but worked great. Unfortunately, they worked on 220V, and I didn't really have room anyhow, so sold them when I moved back to the US in 2004. I bought these as a replacement, but they were NO replacement!

Here's the problems I encountered:

(a) No RCA->mini plug adapter is included, as another reviewer states. Funnily enough, the box DOES say it is included! Who has RCA jacks for headphones? If anything the default should be a mini-plug, with an included adapter to RCAs. (Scratching head...)

(b) Interference. Always present. Even from 10 feet away. Moving around helps, but you end up having to hold your head in the "perfect" position.... not feasible. My old pair worked great, didn't have this stupid manual tuning knob these do, and had almost no interference (until I got a significant distance away).

(c) Standard NiMH batteries are included, BUT with a caveat. This is a good thing in general, because my old set came with 2 batteries, but they were 'custom' and probably not ideal in that regard (but you could charge 1 set while listening; you can't do that with these!). The caveat is, they included the absolute cheapest nimh battieries they could find, GP 600mAHs. If you DO buy this, make sure to replace those with some 1500mAH+ ones (that should only cost a few bucks).

(d) The on-hook charging is picky. If you adjust the headphones to make them larger (pulling down the ear parts), sometimes it won't charge when it goes back on the hook. How silly is that?? It shouldn't be finicky. The older ones I had also had problems with engaging the charge mechanism when put on-hook, and it was an ENTIRELY different design. So, this is the SECOND design Sennheiser has screwed up. (If you don't adjust the size, it works fine though. So you'd better have a small head.)

(e) Probably the worst thing: Auto-shutoff. Hey! A great feature right? The base station shuts itself off if it doesn't sense audio for a while... for example, if you pause a DVD or TV, to go to the bathroom, or whatever. When you come back, you'll notice the base station has autoshutoff, but the headphones haven't, so they will be squealing SUPER LOUDLY since there is no signal coming from the transmitter. Brilliant! I bet if you fall asleep during a DVD without music on the menu, it would return to the menu, transmitter shuts off, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could get hearing damage from this "feature".

I'd give it 0 stars if I could. I won't be buying another Sennheiser product (I owned the previous wireless pair, I own a noise-canceling pair that I'm pretty happy with, and I have a 80s-era wired pair in storage somewhere). None of them have been perfectly designed, but the others at least had good sound quality to make up for it. This product failed on every account, and convinced me that their designs just aren't worth "putting up with" for the sound quality. I'll seek out another manufacturer.

This was my first set of wireless headphones. I've been looking for a while for a set to use at the computer because I dislike the wires running all over from my current headphones. I would say that these headphones are OK, but not great.

Pros:
> I'm no audiophile, but the sound was pretty good to me. Better than my cheapo corded headphones.
> The "hook" charging system is nice, don't have to muck with some tiny connector to make sure it's charging, just drop them on the hook.

Cons:
> My main gripe is that when there is no music playing you can hear a constant low hiss. I tried all three frequencies to no avail. Maybe this was due to interference in my home? Don't know for sure.

>The headphones come with stereo "RCA"-type output jacks, not a headphone jack. This would probably be nice if you're using it for a home stereo but my computer only has headphone jacks so I had to buy some adapters.

> I found the headphones to be somewhat uncomfortable. I have a somewhat large head (hat size ~7 5/8) but after about 1/2 hour or so these weren't very comfy.

Overall these are decent headphones, just not what I'm looking for.

I've only had this headset for about a week, but I've been able to listen to it quite a bit, and so far, I like what I hear. It took only five minutes to set up, and when I first turned it on, I was amazed how clear the sound was, especially for wireless. I was able to hear quieter parts of my favorite songs, which on my computer speakers I was never able to hear. The only bad part about this headset is that you can't go too far from the receiver without hearing loud clicks and static. I went outside no more than 150 feet from the receiver and I could barely even hear the music over the static. Overall, I'd say buy this headset if you are planning on staying within 50 feet or so of the music source the majority of the time you would use the headset. When you are close to the receiver, the sound quality is great, especially when you look at how cheap this headset is compared to other similar headsets.