Sony MDR-MV1 Monitor Headphones Review

On this period of TWS buds, the place music is extra private than ever, over-the-ear headphones have turn out to be a distinct segment commodity. An much more uncommon class of headphones are open-back studio screens, that are reserved primarily for music producers, video editors and music fanatics. Priced simply shy of 40 grand, Sony’s spanking-new MDR-MV1 studio screens increase the eyebrows of a median listener not simply with their worth, but additionally their wired nature and lack of high-tech options equivalent to ANC. Seems, for sheer auditory excellence, analogue is nice sufficient. Learn our evaluate to seek out out extra.

Sony MDR-MV1 Monitor Headphones Assessment: Design and construct

The Sony MDR-MV1s are a novel pair of headphones due to their open-back nature, that means they purposely ‘leak’ the sound they produce. They’ve quite a few tiny holes and grilles that assist in producing a bigger soundstage and fewer reverb than a typical pair of closed-back headphones, two issues which can be extraordinarily essential whenever you’re producing music or mixing the soundtrack of a video, the place there’s virtually no margin for acoustical errors and also you want utmost management of the soundstage.

This additionally means the individuals round you possibly can hear you and, worse, you possibly can hear what’s occurring round you. That is the explanation why these headphones belong inside soundproof rooms with rolling chairs.

The latter is the explanation why these headphones include a novel wire as nicely – the three.5mm head that connects to the headphones is meant to be screwed on. This reduces the possibilities of oopsie-daisie moments of snagging within the occasion of a chair rolling over the cable. The opposite finish of the cable comes with a quarter-inch connector for plugging into consoles, mixers and interfaces. You additionally get a 3.5mm adapter within the field for connecting into a traditional mic port in your laptop computer.

As a result of these headphones are supposed to be worn for prolonged durations, each single contact level, be it the headscarf or the ear pads, are generously padded with plush reminiscence foam. Sony’s consideration to element can be immaculate – every peak adjustment notch is numbered, so precisely the way you wore your headphones in case you share these with one other particular person.

Sony MDR-MV1 Monitor Headphones Assessment: {Hardware} and audio high quality

Should you’ve by no means tried reference-type headphones, you’d be shocked by how flat the sound profile of the Sony MDR-MV1 is. There’s no overly thumpy bass right here, however the trebles are barely on the shinier aspect. The mids are spot-on although, with ample headroom to accommodate different frequencies with out making vocals or guitar solos sound stuffy.

Due to the open-back design, the soundstage, or an imaginary three-dimensional audio area, is absolutely large.

The 24 ohm impedance means you possibly can simply join it on to a battery powered machine, equivalent to a laptop computer, with out requiring an amp.

All these are paramount to knowledgeable music producer, as a result of any type of choice in direction of a frequency would find yourself interfering with the tip end result. The reverse can be true, when you’ve got the appropriate set of audio paraphernalia to go together with these, you possibly can hearken to music the best way it was meant to be heard.

In our specific case, we edited full-length YouTube movies and referenced a few electrical guitar recordings utilizing a TASCAM 2×2 audio interface. We additionally listened to music, starting from western classical tracks to Hindi hip-hop songs.

Video enhancing was a breeze, as a result of we might discover a transparent distinction between vocal and inventory music tracks, and infrequently we might nail the proper audio ranges of a video with out trying on the visualiser.

Relating to spatial audio, we weren’t capable of try it out solely as a result of there’s no platform in India (nugs.web and Amazon Music Limitless amongst others) which lets you stream three-dimensional songs in full glory.

Creators can set up Sony’s proprietary 360 WalkMix Creator as a plugin inside standard digital audio workstations equivalent to Professional Instruments, Ableton Reside 11 and Logic Professional. They will then create spatial audio tracks by shifting round particular person sounds inside a digital 360-degree sound discipline after which exporting them onto a ‘appropriate’ format which helps MPEG-H 3D Audio. We didn’t have the experience or ability to do this out, sadly.

Sony MDR-MV1 Monitor Headphones: Verdict

At 40 grand, the MDR-MV1s are catered to a really particular use-case – music and video manufacturing and high-end music consumption. A median headphone purchaser goes to be bamboozled by the analogue-only connectivity, open-back design and the shortage of ANC at this worth. For purists, it’s nearly as good because it will get, as a result of it competes immediately with the likes of Sennheiser HD 650. Plus, you get to reside the longer term with spatial audio chops.

If we needed to nitpick, we’d say it doesn’t have planar magnetic drivers such because the HiFiMan Sundara, that supply a lot better bass response whereas requiring amplifier, which is an added expense.