Sony MDR-XD200 Stereo Headphones
11/03/22 at 17:39 EST

The headphones I'm wearing atop my head have been in my possession (though not necessarily clinging to the aforementioned skull) for a while now. I bought them back in May 2010 to use with my V-Drums. They're big (huge, really), they're comfy, and they sound pretty good. I didn't get much use out of them, however, because I've been using them exclusively with my drum kit until recently, when a pair of decent Fender Stereo headphones took their place. I'm not saying the Fender headphones are better, but they're good enough to have made me think about a more optimal usage pattern. I'm at my desk at work for about 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. On average I'd say that 6 of those hours may involve usage of headphones, which is likely more in a day than I'd use everywhere else combined in a week, so why not put my best foot (or in this case audio delivery mechanism) forward in that respect?

This is all a precursor (and, in fact, largely irrelevant) to what I'm about to say. The MDR-XD200 headphones tote around a "dual-setting" feature: each of the speakers (that's Left and Right, yes) has their own individual settings. By settings, I mean there's a switch on each speaker labeled "Sound Mode" with the options: Music and Movie. Both modes of entertainment offer different optimizations in the ranges of sound being delivered.

The switch, however, does absolutely nothing save a satisfying "click" sound when toggling between settings. I am all but convinced that this is nothing more than a placebo; a marketing gimmick for a product that does just fine without it. When these headphones go the way of all electronic devices made after the mid-90s and eventually stops working, I'm quite tempted to take them apart and see if the switch is even connected to anything else.

These headphones are nice, but I feel like they're making a fool of me.
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Tagged under: music
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