Beyerdynamic Aventho Wireless
FOR Punchy bass; smooth treble; personalised sound AGAINST No active noise cancelling; lack of dynamism
If we all hear sounds differently, it stands to reason no one pair of headphones will suit everybody. That, anyway, is the idea behind Beyerdynamic’s ‘personal sound profiles’ feature in its Aventho Wireless headphones. Here, a companion app measures how well you hear certain frequencies and tunes the headphones specifically for you.
This personal touch makes them an interesting proposition, but is it enough to push the Aventhos ahead of their rivals?
The lack of traditional buttons makes the Aventho Wirelesses look sleeker than some rivals. They are well made, feeling sturdy, luxurious and tight enough to block out much background chatter, even though there is no active noise cancelling here.
Beyerdynamic has opted for touch controls, found on the right housing. However, balancing practicality with aesthetics is a difficult feat, and the controls here simply don’t provide the same tactile feedback as buttons. It's difficult to tell whether your command has gone through, and we occasionally find that the headphones don’t respond to our swiping.
Hearing aids
We can’t fault them for comfort though, and after a weekend of dedicated listening we are still ready for more. Unfortunately, they don’t fold down, so they’re a little awkward to carry around, but there is a snazzy felt bag to make that task easier.
Underneath the sharp design, Beyerdynamic has included a lot of interesting tech, the highlight of which is the 'Make It Yours' companion app. With this, you take a listening test comprising a series of bleeps at different frequencies before you use the headphones.
Hold down a button on your screen when you hear the sounds, and the data received will allow the headphones to optimise the sound for your ears – accounting for the way we naturally lose the ability to hear high-pitched frequencies as we age, for example. You should expect to see this technology featuring in more headphones in future, both in Beyerdynamic’s products and other manufacturers, such as Bragi.
Beyerdynamic has given the Aventho Wirelesses aptx HD Bluetooth-connectivity, which means you can play audio up to a 24-bit/48khz resolution. There is also multi-point support, so you can connect two devices to the headphones at once. However, in testing, we found it difficult to reliably achieve this, as it occasionally refused to connect to the second device.
Battery life is a claimed 30 hours, with the Aventhos giving audio feedback in 20 per cent intervals to let you know how much juice is remaining. Charging the headphones is done through a USBC connection, rather than a micro-usb model.
We run the headphones in for a few days, before pairing them to the Astell & Kern Kann for our first taste of their sound quality. After a few minutes of playing, it's clear that the area in which the Aventho Wirelesses shine the most is their midrange. Playing Step Into My Office, Baby by Belle & Sebastian, the lightweight, floating lyrics are insightful and clear. These headphones do a great job of revealing little details on sibilant sounds and the short, sharp breaths taken before longer lines.
They manage this while keeping a firm grip on the frequency range – everything remains in its own place, but is still suitably cohesive. The tonal balance is even, and the Aventhos resist the urge to overemphasise the bass for a grander sound – nor is there any undue brightness in the treble.
We try a classic track for testing high-end frequencies, AC/DC’S It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll), (using a Macbook and a Tidal Hifi stream) and the clear, forceful bagpipes are handled well.
The headphones manage to keep the cutting edges in check. As the whine of the pipes presses ever higher, they tread a fine line between conveying the blaring, metallic character, without ever being piercing.
Dynamic mastery
However, there are some areas we’d like tightened up. The Aventho Wirelesses don’t have the same mastery over their dynamics as the Bowers & Wilkins PXS. Playing Greater Than by Sharpless, the drums fading into the song halfway through aren’t as potent as we’d like them to be. They could do with being tighter with their timing, and having a clearer sense of how each element of a track is layered on top of one other. Instrumental strands sound a little congested, and don’t have the transparency or the space around them we'd prefer.
The Aventho Wirelesses are a well made pair of headphones with an insightful and unassuming audio performance. We like what the app brings to the table, and it’s nice to see Beyerdynamic ahead of the game. However, not even the personalised fine-tuning can make this a class-leading sound, and the lack of transparency stops them from getting the full five stars.