We’re going to be looking at the sony xba-40 balanced armature earphones now if you came to this video looking for a review of the xba-4 please stick around because the xba-40 is the updated model of the xba-4 they’re very similar and I’ve owned both this video is going to go through the basic sound and design of the xba-4 as well as some of the changes they made with the xba-40 in a previous video I looked at the sony xba-1 which uses a single balanced armature driver on the sony xba-40 they’ve taken four of the drivers from the xba-1 and pack them into the same earphone however Sony’s arrangement with multiple balanced armatures is a little different from some of the other manufacturers most manufacturers for a balanced armature earphone with many multiple drivers will use a crossover to divide the audio signal between the bass mid and high frequencies and then send those frequencies to individual drivers sony has actually done something different they’ve wired all four balanced armatures in parallel and they send the same signal to all four drivers then the drivers have been mechanically tuned so that one driver can only reproduce the treble frequency.
One driver reproduces the mids one driver reproduces the bass and then there’s one more driver which reproduces subwoofer bass frequencies now the supposed advantage of not using a crossover is that you can avoid any of the distortion or phase issues introduced by that crossovers electronics however there is one bigger disadvantage to Sony’s approach basically by wiring all four drivers in parallel Sony has created a headphone with a very low impedance of 8 ohms and what that basically means is the sony xba-4 and the sony xba-40 will sound very different out of different sources it will sound different out of headphone amplifiers it will sound different out of different phones it’ll sound different out of different laptops and the difference will be nothing to do how much that laptop or that phone or that output phone amplifier cost the difference will come down to the very basic figure of what is that sources headphone jacks output impedance this is a very technical distinction and what it basically means is that out of some players the sony xba-40 will sound Basya and out of some other players the sony xba-40 will sound less bassy if you’re interested in a more technical explanation of this issue have a look at the review that i’ve linked in the description of this video this is a review I wrote on a head fie and it goes through a more technical explanation of what impedance and output impedance mean for an earphone it also links to some of the published information and graphs about the sony xba-4 now though let’s have a closer look at the sony xba-40 s design the sony xba-4 and the sony xba-40 basically share the same design however I got the xba-40 in the golden champagne color which is not available with the sony xba-4 now with the xba-40 you get quite a large earphone earpiece and this may not fit in every person’s ear that said the actual nozzle itself is fairly narrow and I actually haven’t read many accounts of people on forums with the xba-4 the xba-40 not fitting into their ears that said it’s something to look out for also with the design of the earpiece because it’s so quite so large you can’t really wear the earphone up with the cable over your ear you have to wear it in the traditional way with the cable down however that’s not such a bad thing because the xba-40 is quite a light earphone and the design of the cable means that cable noise when it bumps against objects isn’t so bad that said it’s not completely silent with the xba-4 you get a relatively well-built earphone on the Left earpiece you’ll find that there’s a little bump on the back which lets you know in the dark but this is the left earpiece now with the cable you get a flat elliptical cable which is quite interesting one difference between the xba-4 and the xba-40 is that the sony xba-40 has slight kind of serrations along the length of the cable it’s very hard to see on this video but it basically means it helps that the earphone doesn’t tangle so much on the other end we have the headphone jack which is relatively sturdy well-built and it’s quite a nice headphone jack so the xba-4 and now the sony xba-40 are the flagships in sony’s line of balanced armature earphones so how do they sound well with the xba-4 and the xba-40 let me just say that you do not get a neutral or balanced sounding earphone you will get a sound that is tuned to be very thick and very dark and very smooth and for some people this sound will be actually too dark it’ll sound congested if you’ve ever heard the Isan –ax sm-3 you actually find that this is the same kind of earphone where the emphasis on the lows and the mids will be immediately polarizing to a lot of people they won’t like the sound out of the box however if you have a careful listen you actually realize that through that kind of thickness of sound there’s actually an intensely detailed and articulate earphone lurking underneath everything is very tightly controlled and extremely articulate now one difference between the sony xba-4 and the sony xba-40 in terms of sound is that the sony xba-4 have a particular kind of metallic shimmer to the treble note which made it sound quite unnatural and unpleasant for a lot of people myself included with the xba-40 they actually corrected this issue so the xba-40 sounds much more natural and also a bit more darker as a result of the removal of that particular emphasis in the high frequencies the standout part of the sony xba-4 and the sony xba-40 sound is the holographic soundstage the way that they’re able to place instruments will be in this space so that it feels like you’re actually inside the music and it’s very enveloping and it’s quite intense ah that said for some people this actually might be a little claustrophobic because it’s a very intimate kind of soundstage and they may prefer a presentation where the the instruments are more in front of them rather than being inside the music with this sony xba-4 and the 40 I believe that these earphones are actually the perfect earphones for electronic music and for synthesized instruments because the way they put you into the music and the way tones and electronic bleeps and bloops just pop out of nowhere is really exciting with the xba-4 and the xba-40 however with more natural instruments the xba-4 and the Forty can actually sound quite off both because of the unbalanced frequency response with the emphasis on the lows and also because of that soundstage being quite quite intense and intimate now I love the xba-40 s I love the way they sound with electronic music if you’ve heard Grimes’s visions album I think that this is the earphone that was designed practically just for that album I loved the fact that they fixed most of the metallic shimmering issues with the xba-4 however I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the xba-40 to everyone because you may not be quite so into the thick and warm and dark sound of the xba-40 the other issue is that they may not sound the way you like with the source player that you’re using so if you have a chance try and listen to them on the player that you’re going to be using to make sure you actually enjoy the sound in terms of value for money I think that there are probably better options like for instance the – 9 re-400 which is about half the price of the xba-40 and sounds very very good and works with a wider variety of music however I still haven’t come across any earphone that does electronic music as well as the xba-40 and I really do like electronic and synth pop and that kind of music so I really like the xba-40 for that reason anyway thanks for watching this video thanks to everyone who’s liked my videos and subscribed to my channel and happy listening.
