I sent an email to Sennheiser few days back regarding some issues with PXC 550 II and the IE80 ( mine is way beyond their 2 years warranty)
Yesterday evening, someone called back from their head office and eventually the call was transferred to a senior engineer.
He was extremely polite, patient and knowledgeable.
He clearly told me that they are having issues with the smart pause sensor and the companion app. But most importantly he explained how exactly do they implement DSP in ANC cans and why their cans do not sound loud compared to Sony ( my guess on the compressor was right)
They don't use any compression in the neutral mode ( 2:1 and very short release time in Club mode etc) Due to this low compression they are not too interested in giving the user manual eqs ( he had a very detailed explanation for this and it was logical)
Another very interesting thing possibly nobody outside Sennheiser knows. They intentionally slow the charging speed drastically from 95-100 percent ( more that 3 hours!!) so that most user charge till 90-95 percent ( the app will show 100 percent, but the last charging light will keep on blinking indicating it's not 100)
This way the battery degrades slowly with time and retains significant capacity after 3 years.
Now the most interesting part, the connector of my left ie80 got damaged during a cable swap. I gave up on it and was expecting some discount on the ie80s. To my surprise, the guy told me that they will ship a new one for free!! ( after I told him I bought ie800 also few years back)
The German manufacturers ( Sennheiser/ Beyerdynamic) are furious with Sony's business strategy with their BTNC cans.
These companies had some agreements couple of years back regarding sending their wireless cans to YouTube reviewers ( all of them were supposed to be returned back) But Sony kind of broke the agreement without informing them ( which ended in April 2020) and gave away hundreds of free samples of XM4s to even small YouTubers ( less than 100k subscribers) for favourable reviews.
I didn't fully understand this part as he was talking in French mostly.
Yesterday evening, someone called back from their head office and eventually the call was transferred to a senior engineer.
He was extremely polite, patient and knowledgeable.
He clearly told me that they are having issues with the smart pause sensor and the companion app. But most importantly he explained how exactly do they implement DSP in ANC cans and why their cans do not sound loud compared to Sony ( my guess on the compressor was right)
They don't use any compression in the neutral mode ( 2:1 and very short release time in Club mode etc) Due to this low compression they are not too interested in giving the user manual eqs ( he had a very detailed explanation for this and it was logical)
Another very interesting thing possibly nobody outside Sennheiser knows. They intentionally slow the charging speed drastically from 95-100 percent ( more that 3 hours!!) so that most user charge till 90-95 percent ( the app will show 100 percent, but the last charging light will keep on blinking indicating it's not 100)
This way the battery degrades slowly with time and retains significant capacity after 3 years.
Now the most interesting part, the connector of my left ie80 got damaged during a cable swap. I gave up on it and was expecting some discount on the ie80s. To my surprise, the guy told me that they will ship a new one for free!! ( after I told him I bought ie800 also few years back)
The German manufacturers ( Sennheiser/ Beyerdynamic) are furious with Sony's business strategy with their BTNC cans.
These companies had some agreements couple of years back regarding sending their wireless cans to YouTube reviewers ( all of them were supposed to be returned back) But Sony kind of broke the agreement without informing them ( which ended in April 2020) and gave away hundreds of free samples of XM4s to even small YouTubers ( less than 100k subscribers) for favourable reviews.
I didn't fully understand this part as he was talking in French mostly.