Hi!
Welcome to Lachlan Likes A Thing, a show where I take a thing and see whether or not I like
it.
Now the thing we're going to be looking at today is the Sony XBA-1 balanced armature
earphones.
Now what's a balanced armature?
It's a really cool piece of technology that you may not have heard of.
Now with most earphones, speakers and headphones, they use what's called a dynamic driver to
make sound.
And what a dynamic driver is, is basically this unit here.
It's a speaker diaphragm that is pushed back and forward by a set of magnets.
A balanced armature works on a different principle.
A balanced armature suspends a piece of metal, an armature, between two magnets, and the
change in magnetic field is what causes that piece of metal to oscillate, and that produces
the sound.
Now it used to be that you would only find balanced armatures in much more expensive
earphones, and they would put several balanced armatures in the same earphone.
And the reason for this is as follows: a balanced armature driver, because it uses such a small
moving element, is able to really accurately and precisely reproduce the soundwave, but
because the armature is so small it's not able to really convincingly move enough air
to produce low frequency notes.
So what they would generally do is that they would get several armature drivers and they
would get a crossover to send the high frequency sounds, the treble, to one driver, and the
bass frequency sounds, the low frequency, to another driver, or they would even add
more drivers onto that.
Sony has come along and said that they've designed their balanced armatures from the
ground up for high end audio and not for hearing aid applications which is what a lot of balanced
armature drivers were originally designed for and so they say that they are able to
get around a lot of the limitations and make one balanced armature produce a really wide
range of sound.
The Sony XBA-1 sits at the bottom of Sony's XBA lineup with one single full range balanced
armature driver.
There are XBA-2s, XBA-3s and XBA-4s which add more balanced armatures to the bottom
and the top just to fill in that extra space but Sony says that the full range driver in
the XBA-1 carries through the entire range and it's the foundation of their sound.
Now this is a pretty big claim for Sony who has just started making balanced armature
drivers.
They've traditionally been associated with making really good dynamic driver earphones.
The 7550 and the EX1000 are personal favourites of mine, but the balanced arnature line does
appear to be Sony's plan going forward with their in-ear earphones.
So it's worth a look to see whether their claim of being able to produce a good sound
out of a single balanced armature driver is true.
Now taking a closer look you can see that the XBA-1 is a very small earphone.
You get Sony's really nice silicone hybrid tips, they're really soft and comfortable.
The great thing is that they come in many sizes in the package and they're colour coded,
so that because all Sony's earphones use these hybrid tips you're able to know what's your
size in a Sony earphone basically.
We have here a plastic body, it's pretty well built, but not as nice as some of the other
earphones I've seen in this price point which use full metal construction.
That said, they're very light and comfortable.
They have this elliptical cable, it's not quite flat, it's not quite round, it's like
linguini.
It's pretty good, it doesn't tangle very easily and then you just have this 90 degree plug
here which is cool, nice and simple, they're pretty well built.
One thing to note is that there isn't a great deal of strain relief at the earpiece side
of the cable, so that's a bit worrying I guess.
The other thing to note is that the version without the microphone uses a J Type cable
which means that one side of the cable is shorter than the other side.
Now some people hate J Type cables, I personally quite like them, it means you can wrap the
earphone around the back of your neck and you can wear them like that which is really
nice.
But the problem with J Type cables is that they are slightly more heavy on one side than
they are on the other and that means you get a slightly uneven amount of pressure on your
ears, and that can be irritating for some people.
Now the XBA-1's, the question is, how do they sound?
Well they sound pretty good.
They're able to do what Sony claims, they're able to produce a pretty wide range of frequencies
out of a single balanced armature driver.
There's still a lot of information missing in the bass that doesn't give it that punch,
that visceral response, there's still quite a lot of sparkle and air missing in the highs,
but overall they're warmish, they are very relaxing to listen to, and their nice.
The main problem with their sound is that they have this kind of fuzziness, and this
haze, which means that they really lack clarity.
They're not able to produce a tremendously accurate soundstage as a result.
Compared to a lot of dynamic driver earphones around the price point they're not the greatest
in terms of clarity.
Sony's advantage with the XBA-1 is that it's a light, comfortable, easy to live with earphone
and because they're a big name it's very easy to find the XBA-1 all over the place.
I like the XBA-1s, I keep them in my bag as spare backup earphones just in case I've forgotten
to bring out my other pairs, but they're not my main listening earphones and I don't consider
them anything special for their price point.
If you want something special I suggest you look at the new HIFIMAN RE-400 or the JVC
FXD80.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed this video, thanks for watching, thanks to everyone who's liked
my other videos and subscribed to my channel, and enjoy the rest of your week!