PIONEER SE-MS9BN WIRELESS NC HEADPHONES

Wireless Noise-cancelling Headphones

A host of features in a comfortable and affordable package at a very compelling price. But with one very aviation-related quirk…

Sometimes I know the price of equipment I am reviewing and sometimes I don’t. I sometimes check it before I start, so I can judge the product in its context, but occasionally, just for the fun of guessing, I do much of my listening in the dark as to pricing. I had used Pioneer’s SE-MS9BN wireless noise-cancelling headphones for several days before I got around to checking the price, and was surprised to find they were only $279.95, significantly below the sweet-spot for wireless noise-cancellers, which has settled around $399–$499 (and, of course, upwards).

The equipment

So a potential bargain then. But where has Pioneer saved the money? It does not seem to have been on construction, as these are substantial and well-built headphones, using aluminium for the housings, a comfortable and deep leatherette for the earcups, and a wide and thick polyurethane cushion across the full headband, which is connected and adjusted using aviator-style metal sliding rods rather than internal stainless steel.

This solid construction method prevents them from pivoting for storage, and their size makes them a little too large to hang around your neck—at least comfortably—but it does allow full-size 40mm drivers to be used, here fitted with rare-earth magnets and CCAW (Copper-Clad Aluminium Wire) voice-coils. They’re surprisingly light despite this, weighing 300g and feeling light and extremely comfortable, even over long periods.

The buttonry is fairly basic, with a recessed power button, volume and play/pause on a rocker with a central press point, and that’s about it… except for the most prominent button of all, which is a dedicated Google Assistant button. If you do as I first did, simply pair via Bluetooth and head off to work, you’ll be fine playing music, but you will have no control over noise-cancelling, which will be on by default, while the Google button just announces that it’s not connected.

An App For That

For full functionality you need to download the Pioneer Headphone App, which might be considered another surprise here, given that such smarts usually add to the price-tag. Pioneer’s Headphone App then lets you switch the noise-cancelling on and off (there’s nothing in-between), or select ‘Ambient Awareness Mode’, which adds sound from the external noise-cancelling microphones to the music while you listen. Given the need to open the app to turn this on, this will be less useful for the ‘beef or chicken’ moment where you want to briefly talk with someone—just taking off the headphones will be quicker—but it is handy for, say, sitting in an airport lounge listening to music but not missing your gate call announcement. The App also acts as your instruction manual, which is good as there’s only a ‘Quick Start’ guide in the box and nothing I could find online, so that the app is the only place you can find the (admittedly intuitive) way to answer calls, and how to use Google Assistant. For this last functionality, Apple device users will need to also install the Google Assistant app, to which Pioneer’s app helpfully provides a link.

Google Assistant

Once installed, the two apps work together extremely well. I have used many headphones that have linked to the phones’ own

assistant, but the wait-to-connect has always made the function tedious to use. Not here. Press the button—thankfully you don’t need to say ‘Hey Google’—and you can speak immediately, also receiving Google’s replies with only a fraction of a second’s delay over what a Google Home manages. So you can then use voice commands for everything Google Assistant can do: I added events to my calendar, emailed myself notes, asked it to spell diarrhoea, whether all elephants have tusks (they don’t) and more.

You can also set the Assistant to deliver notifications through your headphones from various apps. The Pioneer SE-MS9BN politely pauses playback while you do any of this, so you won’t miss any of your podcast while you chat with Google. Interestingly Google also oversees updates for the headphones— shortly after I connected, it updated both the headphones and the app, adding in-app control of music, direct access to Spotify, iHeartRadio and TuneIn (it couldn’t recognise my TuneIn Pro version, however), a volume slider, a bass boost, and an equaliser with five presets. It shows the codec being used for Bluetooth—from the basic SBC through AAC to the inclusion here both of aptX (near-CD quality) and aptX HD (mildly lossy 24-bit/48kHz), these last two requiring a phone which also supports them.

The advantage of such app control is that it can be improved via updates in this way. The disadvantage, always worth mentioning, is that should Pioneer’s app disappear or lose support five or ten years from now, there are a number of things the headphones won’t be able to do without it, including turning off noise cancellation.

You can even have the Pioneer SE-MS9BNs connected to two Bluetooth devices at once— perhaps your phone and the TV, so that phone calls will still interrupt listening to the other device. That’s darned clever! So clearly Pioneer hasn’t been keeping the price down by limiting functionality—quite the opposite, indeed.

Could it be battery life? According you Pioneer, you’ll get 27 hours using Bluetooth without noise-cancelling and 24 hours if you use noise-cancelling as well. And if you run out of batteries? In this case cabled playback is still possible and requires no power at all.

Listening sessions

Do the Pioneer SE-MS9BN headphones really need all those EQ options or bass boost to sound their best? I don’t really think they do, they’re just useful adjustments for music that needs them, or for personal preference. The fundamental sound quality of the Pioneer SE-MS9BNs is pretty solid. Of course there are several potential sonic signatures here— Bluetooth with NC on and NC off, or listening through the cable, a mode in which Pioneer notes that the SE-MS9BNs are high-res audio capable, since the quoted upper frequency response then rises to 40kHz.

But I started my listening sessions as most buyers will, using Bluetooth, and with the noise-cancelling that comes on as the default. There’s NFC touch-to-pair onboard for devices which support it, but pairing via the menu is also easy and quick. Thereafter they connected automatically on start-up.

So has Pioneer hit its price-point by cutting down on sound quality? It doesn’t sound like it. The SE-MS9BN headphones delivered a solid sound, punchy within their closed-back limits, and with impressively little to betray the wireless connection, even from an iPhone delivering AAC rather than the best possible connection of aptX or aptX HD from an Android device which supports these. Modern recordings were delivered crisply with both depth and dynamics and I was especially impressed with how older classics were servedup. Len Barry’s 1-2-3 from all the way back in 1965 emerged big, bold and brassy, full of the joys of rock’n’roll, doo-wop harmonies and mid-distance sax on the right, Edwyn Collins-sampled beats slamming on the left.

Most unusually this sounded better with noise-cancelling engaged than with it off—and since it’s on by default, that’s a good tuning decision by Pioneer. Noise-cancelling off adds a little edge, but sometimes a slight artificiality. The noise-cancelling itself is good if not class-leading, doing its job well on continuous plane-type rumble, and acting up to around 300Hz.

The EQ and ambient modes accessed via the app turned out to be an alternative to noise-cancelling—you can’t have, say, noise-cancelling plus Pop EQ; it’s one or the other.

Since I didn’t find any of the EQ modes improved the balance of sound over the flat NC, that made for an easy choice: NC always on!

going Wired

As with all headphones, wired performance is superior—clearer particularly in the accuracy of higher frequencies, so that hi-hats and strings sound tighter and less prone to tiss. There was still the slight bloom I’d noticed in the lower mids—it’s evident on male spoken voice, not dominating, just thickening the tone of lower registers. Mind you the Pioneer SE-MS9BNs could achieve some powerful bass, such as while holding down 808 State’s

Clearly Pioneer hasn’t been keeping the price down by limiting functionality— quite the opposite, indeed

Pacific State, its fizzy bits fizzy and its thumpy bits thumpy (in the right way) and the main Ab–Bb bass line positively chest-thrummingly full.

Interestingly—and unusually—it seems that you can’t use the cable and the internal processing at the same time. Plugging in the cable stops you powering them up, or powers them down if you’re already powered up… and that stops you using noise-cancelling or any other app-controlled function when you’re cabled. I can think of one scenario where this would be a problem, and that’s on a plane, when you’re connected to the inflight entertainment by cable. You couldn’t enjoy noise-cancelling at the same time. It’s entirely possible Pioneer will choose to fix this in a firmware update. It certainly can’t be termed a cost-saving measure.

So where has Pioneer saved the money to hit its price? I’m really not sure! The packaging is fairly basic, but you do get a carry-case, and the headshells don’t pivot, so they’re relatively bulky in your daybag. The SE-MS9BN’s only other negative came when I used them wirelessly on Sydney buses, where they proved prone to audible interference from the engines, and even more oddly from the bing-bong announcement of stops on the B1 bus line. The interference is at a level where it doesn’t distract over the music, but it crackles in the gaps and becomes annoying over spoken word. (This stops entirely with cabled use.) Yet they were entirely robust over big bumps where some headsets take an audible jolt. The Bluetooth connection was also strong, with never a drop-out even with the phone deep in a pocket or at the bottom of a carry-bag.

Conclusion

Pioneer’s SE-MS9BN headphones deliver a host of features—Bluetooth, noise-cancelling, app control and Google Assistant—in a comfortable and attractive package at a very compelling price and without any compromise in sound quality. Jez Ford