Firstly, I am coming from a few different headphones. I had a Bowers and Wilkins P5, Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, a Crossfade Vmoda 1 and my ex had an Apple Airpods Max
I bought the Sony's because my Samsung's start giving me ear infections when I push them in my ear for prolonged periods. My Crossfade was a work horse but the battery dies within an hour now.
Anyway, I needed a Bluetooth headphones I can actually use and got these on on black Friday. So my fish impressions of these headphones is that they look a bit unassuming not super high-end by any means but you can tell they're a bit high quality when you look closer.
When I first put them on I didn't have the Sony app I only got at maybe about our two songs in and I will say right out of the box they didn't sound that impressive I actually had demoed the Vmoda crossfade 3 headphones that sounded much much better out of the box. However everyone says use to Sony app with these headphones so I did and wow these headphones are just incredible the the sound is so clear so crisp I've never really appreciated mids and highs so much as I'm a bit of basshead, though I will say the mids are slightly recessed but the mids still sound so clear I'm hearing so many instruments that none of my previous headphones including the Bowers and Wilkins was able to reproduce this clarity. Not even the Apple to my ear. The Apple Airpods always sounded good but never really great.
The Bowers and Wilkins sound amazing in their own way but they're a bit too warm however the XM4000s are just so alive so full sound stage is amazing and the sound quality is incredible.
Now onto the bass. The bass well it's definitely there and the bass really hits you hard sometimes, as a basshead it's some intense riveting shit!
However, the weak part in the bass is that the sub-base is lacking, you won't miss it in lots of songs. I have extensively listened to many songs on my Bowers and Wilkins and I can definitely hear difference in sub bass.
But you do get used to it and I don't miss it like I thought I would.
I also honestly can't believe how good the noise cancelling sorry is on these headphones.
I love the adaptive noise cancelling it's really awesome to know that when I'm walking on the streets noise canceling is reduced so I can hear like sirens or whatever I need to hear it's just a really cool feature and it adapts so quickly it's not like a delayed or laggy.
Roday I was actually walking to work and I heard some construction noises and within a second or two noise cancelling kicked in and reduced it significantly that is something futuristic really cool s*** on these headphones.
So all in all I will say these headphones are outstanding and I don't get the bad rep that many of us many of you audiophiles give it. I think they're amazing and with the bass turned up slightly from the default settings as well as maybe the the highs a bit (I have sort of have a v-shaped equalizer) they just sound incredible.