Sennheiser RS170 or Audioengine W3 with wired headphones

[usr33t]

Evening all,

I wonder if anyone would be kind enough to give their thoughts on the following please.

My hifi is set up in a room used as the home office and following a cut-down now just consists of my trusty Squeezebox 3 connected to a silent PC running the Squeezebox server (or whatever it's called nowadays) under Windows XP. I listen to music exclusively with Sennheiser wired headphones.

I would like to listen to music in the living room, however, do not want to move the Squeezebox from the office.

I initially considered buying a set of Sennheiser RS170 wireless headphones and simply connecting the transmitter to the RCA or headphone socket of the squeezebox. However, having read a lot about the RS170s I have read that although good quality wireless headphones such as these perfom well, it is likely that they will not be as good as a decent quality wired pair.

Looking for alternative ways of getting music from the office to the living room I came across the Audioengine W3 wireless music adapter to broadcast sound from one of the outputs of the Squeezebox to some wired headphones.

So I guess my question is twofold:

(1) Where does the majority of the reduction in sound quality with wireless headphones compared to wired ones occur? Is it in the transmitter/receiver, the headphone circuitry or both?

and

(2) Which option above would result in the best audio quality? Sennheiser Rs170s or Audioengine W3 connected to a decent set of wired headphones?

I appreciate that this question is probably difficult to answer as everyone has differing opinons as to what constitutes a "decent" set of wired headphones, however, any thoughts would be gratefully received.

Many thanks

Russ

 

[techboy]

Decent $100-150 wired headphones will beat Sennheiser RS 180 which is quite a bit better than rs 170.

 

[quadpatch]

I would say that the biggest loss in sound quality for wireless headphones comes from the all the power, processing and amplification being done inside the ear cups of the headphone. Wireless technology is getting pretty damn good these days and is mostly perfectly good enough for audio (depending on the interference, distance et.), so if you're looking for the ultimate in quality I would go for the W3.

I'm in the process of writing up a review for the SoundMAGIC WP10 wireless headphones, which also have a wired mode. The difference it tiny, but the quality on offer is about half as good as what you're paying. I'm really eager to test the Sennheiser RS220 because I've heard it gets close to the HD650 in sound quality, which is an amazing boast.

Good quality power, DAC and Amplification components can be pretty big and heavy so fitting all that into a headphone cup along with the drivers is a pretty big undertaking. At the moment it's just not good enough to compete with £150+ headphones as far as I can tell, but maybe we will get there one day.

 

[usr33t]

Many thanks for your replies techboy and quadpatch. Your input is greatly appreciated.

Probably not for this forum but I've been playing around with the server so that I could access it using a Denon Ceol Piccolo/CD-version in the living room with hard wired headphones. I don't know about sonic performance but it gets a good write up and seems a slightly neater solution than having the W3 hanging out the back of the Squeezebox, plus another power supply. I've just seen the NAD D 7050 amplifier which looks really good but a bit out of my price range.

Thanks again

Russ