Denon AH-MM400 deals      Buy From Amazon

OUR VERDICT

• Great all-round audio experience
• Well-built, well-designed chassis
• Decent price

• The walnut finish will be divisive. 
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• Denon is no industry lightweight when it comes to headphones, but we've spent very little time covering its recent offerings. These Denon AH-MM400 cans, though, have demanded we sit up and start paying attention again.
  Now, your first reaction to seeing that American walnut finish is probably either going to be one of abject horror, or a creeping sense that maybe your ears would look better cocooned in wood.
• In a world where pretty much only black headphones get bought – outside of the Beats ballpark – it's a fairly brave move for Denon to be flirting with such a divisive look for its high-end headphones.
  
  
  But it's also indicative of Denon looking to a more mature audience for these more audiophile-friendly cans than the sort of people who hang on Dre's coat-tails with his red, white and blue Beats.
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• Build quality

  Those walnut earcups are connected to a robust, though impressively lightweight, aluminium frame. There's a lot of movement in the chassis, so they can fit comfortably on different shaped skulls, but there's still a very definite feeling of solidity.
  The headband isn't the most plush or padded you'll ever wear, but the design is comfortable and still manages to hold onto the head without a fatiguing crush around the ears.
  It should be noted, though, that I do have rather diminutive ears, and so I found the circumaural design perfect for me, but if you have larger lobes then you might find the MM400s a little too tight for comfort.
• The MM400s come with a detachable cable as standard, and two different versions in the box. You can have the straight audio cable, or one with an inline microphone and controls to plug into your mobile phone.
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• It's a neat touch, especially coming as standard, and it makes the MM400s a versatile option to fit in with your daily life, as well as for kicking back at home, closing your eyes and really listening to music.
  There's also a 6.35mm adapter to jam into your amp at home.
  The MM400s don't feel like the sort of headphones that are going to fall apart any time soon. The build quality is truly excellent – which is a good job considering these Denon cans cost $319 (£195).
  That's not an entirely unreasonable price tag, but it puts them in direct competition with Sennheiser's Momentum 2.0 headphones.
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• Aural performance

  But the comparison with such a outstanding set is a fair one, considering what Denon has done with the MM400s – and the comparison might even come out slightly in favour the Denons.
• The AH-MM400 headphones have an incredibly broad range to their frequency response. With a range of between 10Hz and 40,000Hz there's a great deal of detail to the audio you can get out of them.
  The consensus is that the human ear is only really capable of processing sound between 20Hz and 20,000Hz – but that doesn't mean the audio we can hear isn't shaped by sound frequencies we might not be able to discern overtly.
  By comparison, the Sennheisers are rocking only a 16Hz-22,000Hz range.
  That breadth of frequency response, as well as the proprietary 40mm dynamic drivers Denon has kitted its MM400s out with, gives them a beautifully rich, deep sound. Even listening to sub-CD quality audio on Spotify gives a great, detailed sound.
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• The clarity at the low end is really impressive. There's no lack of power to the bass, but it's tightly controlled and not overwhelming, and doesn't bleed into or muddy the crispness of the mid-range. It feels natural, not forced, and has a definite warm timbre.
  Listening to strings or woodwind through the MM400s sounds glorious – you can really hear the subtle nuances of the physical instruments. And at the other end of the scale they handle vocals with aplomb; there's no harshness to the high-end notes, and that same aural clarity means you can hear all the tonal inflections in an artist's voice.
  And even though the MM400's are rocking a wood-clad, closed-back design they still manage to recreate an impressively wide soundstage.

• We liked

  From the sound to the build to the overall design, the Denon AH-MM400 headphones just ooze quality, like a bottle of Patron Anejo with a dodgy cork.
  The audio those 40mm drivers produce is as beautifully controlled as it is deep, natural and warm. The MM400s haven't been tuned specifically to cater to any one facet of music in particular, and sound great no matter what you're playing through them.
  And the robust aluminium chassis sits tightly, but never uncomfortably, around your head.
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• We disliked

  This is where things get a mite tricky – finding something we don't actually like about these solidly impressive cans.
  The only reservations we'd have would be on a purely aesthetic basis – that walnut finish is only ever going to be divisive. But when you're listening to them, not looking at them, you'll quickly forget any misgivings you might have about how you look.

• Verdict

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  Denon's AH-MM400 headphones really impress. They're not being aimed at any one demographic in terms of musical preference, able as they are to cope with soaring vocals as well as punchy bass.

  
  

  They do just miss out compared with the more expensive Oppo PM-3 headphones in a straight fight on separation and complete audio detail, but at this rarified end of the audio market the differences are marginal; you'd have to listen hard to discern where the planar magnetic drivers of the Oppos pull ahead of the standard dynamic drivers in the MM400s, but audiophiles will be able to tell.

  But that doesn't stop the MM400s from being a lovely pair of headphones, with great, natural sound and a warmth of tone that easily justifies their price.

Simplicity sold me on my new favorite headphones and made me realize what I had been missing.

It's easy to be distracted by features on headphones right now. Google Assistant, instant pairing, and "dynamic" noise cancellation are fun things to play with, but each of these features sees the price slowly creep up while leaving behind the fundamentals of a good pair of headphones. In my search for what should be considered table stakes for any good $100+ pair of headphones, I came across Modular and its first set of wireless headphones. Dubbed Mod-1, I found them good enough to bring with me everywhere for the last couple of months.

About this review

I have been testing an early production Mod-1 in the Gunmetal color for two months. These headphones were provided by Modular, and have been tested on five phones, two tablets, and multiple computers during my evaluation.

As wireless headphones go, Mod-1 does very little to stand out in the crowd. They look like a dozen other headphones, with ports on the underside of the left cup and a simple button-based navigation system on the right. I quickly found a pair of extension rods on either side of the headband to fit the cups to my ears, with matte and glossy plastic surrounding everything. Extending the rods revealed a rigid metal piece connecting the cups to the headband, and Modular confirmed that metal band extends all the way across the headband. In fact, that metal band is a feature — you are directly encouraged to bend that band to the shape that is most comfortable to your head. One of several things to make this headset "modular" in its design. I found the headset comfortable enough out of the box, but with a few tweaks, the headphone cups hugged my head well.

Connecting the headphones may not be instant, but the NFC pairing on the side of the headphones works well. The positioning of the NFC tag is a bit awkward if you have a large device with its NFC emitter in the center, but for most phones, it's easy to make the connection. Once you have that connection, it works just like any other Bluetooth headset.

The cups for this headset are plenty plushy and feel nice. I prefer a pleather material to foam because it's easier to clean, and the padding around my ears made the headphones comfortable enough to wear for hours. The circular cup isn't quite big enough to really be "over-the-ear" size for my ears, but unlike most on-ear headphones there's no unbalanced pressure to make a part of my ears hurt over time. Best of all, the headphone cups are removable, and Modular plans to make them easy to replace with other options if you so choose. While I find myself using these headphones wireless more often than I do wired due to the dearth of headphone jacks in my mobile accessories, I appreciate the headphone jack and the Micro-USB port resting on the same side of the headphones. It means I'm not tangled up in cables, and because my laptop has its headphone jack on the left side it's a convenience for me. What did catch me by surprise was being able to use the Micro-USB port and the 3.5mm jack at the same time, meaning I could charge my headphones for wireless use later while still using them at my desk. This doesn't work with a surprising number of headphones, and it's nice to see Modular offering me the option here. I find myself using this feature more than I'd like to admit, thanks to forgetting to charge the headphones at night.

In spite of their fairly generic appearance, Mod-1 stands out by being headphones I can comfortably use everywhere. The design allows the headphones to collapse well for travel. I was able to literally bend the headphones into the perfect fit for me, and the cups are not only easy to clean after a workout but designed to be replaced when I inevitably wear out the material covering the cups. I'm not saying a nice electric blue or royal purple would make them more comfortable, but it sure would add a little flash to an otherwise solid design.

Some quick background on me — before I started using these headphones I was splitting my time between the portability-challenged Sennheiser HD 598 Cs and the amazingly portable but fairly limited Trekz Titanium bone conduction headphones. I haven't touched either in at least a month, and it's due entirely to how well the Mod-1 headphones have done in replacing the pair for my daily needs. The only caveat there is because it's been so cold here this past month I haven't been running outside much. I'm happy with Mod-1 at the gym, but for outdoor activities, I'd still prefer to hear the cars around me.

Mod-1 delivers a warm sound with lots of bass. In fact, maybe a little too much. I tweaked my equalizer on my phone a little to tone it down a bit and found myself very happy with the results. These sound like nice $100 wired headphones, which is difficult to pull off over Bluetooth even with things like aptX HD and Bluetooth 5.0, neither of which is available on these headphones. The 40mm driver in these headphones is just plain good, especially if you enjoy more than a little bass.

The rest of the sound profile for these headphones isn't warm enough to be muddy at high volumes, but the highs aren't quite as sharp as they are on my Sennheisers and people in spoken word podcasts come through sounding a little deeper-toned than I'm used to hearing elsewhere. I really enjoy the sound, but if accuracy is what you dig, these probably aren't for you.

Starting my day at around 5am, I'm usually wearing headphones for about 9.5 hours of my day. On a busy travel day, I might put headphones on as soon as I get out of the shower and not take them off until I'm climbing into bed that night. I did quite a bit of travel with these headphones during my testing and found myself repeatedly reaching for them the next day. I like how easy it is to travel with these headphones, how easily I can wear them for a full day, and how nice they sound. These are the basics, and it's surprising how many feature-packed headphones sacrifice these things for the latest buzzword.

That having been said, there are a few things I'd like to see these headphones do a little better. The battery in full wireless mode gets me just shy of eight hours on my Pixel 2 XL, and almost a full hour less on my Galaxy S8 and iPhone X. That's not quite "all day" like the marketing promised, but it is very close and considering you can actually charge while using the headphones in wired mode I can overlook that on most days. The same goes for the "noise isolation" promised on the packaging. There's no tech here like you find with noise cancellation, just clever engineering in the way the headphone cups hug your ears  to provide some external dampening. Not a deal-breaker, but a solid suggestion for the next effort.

My only real criticism of these headphones is the microphone. Saying these headphones have a mediocre microphone would be putting it nicely. I rarely had calls go well through the headset because I either sounded distant or garbled because the microphone is placed in an awkward spot away from my mouth and just plain isn't very good.

There's little else about these headphones I would change. I like having physical buttons to press instead of a touch interface, I'm glad they don't light up or flash status lights all over the place, and I enjoy not needing to learn a voice or beep interface to access features. These are great, simple wireless headphones, which for some reason has become difficult to find.

While a lot of the big names are making $150 gadgets that also play music, Modular made headphones that nail the basics and sound like it deserves its price tag. These aren't for audiophiles or people who want every feature ever crammed into a set of headphones. These are for everyone else, especially if you like to fill your ears with bass.

Best of all, Mod-1 has launched these headphones as part of an Indiegogo campaign with Early Bird offerings where you can pick them up for $50. These headphones are great at the normal $150 price tag, but for $50 if you're looking for new headphones you'd be silly to not give these some serious thought.

When it comes to headphones, there's no group as passionate as the forum members over at Head-Fi. If you have a pair of headphones, chances are there's a multi-page thread discussing its every nuance on their board. 

It can be a little intimidating to sift through their threads (believe me), but the knowledge is invaluable. Before any major headphone-related purchase, I always check what the people there have to say. 

In addition to sub-forums dedicated to different headphone styles and brands, Head-Fi also has a headphone buyer's guide. The guide is compiled by people who read through a bunch of different Head-Fi user's reviews and headphones that have become a bit of a hit in that community.

These are 15 pairs of headphones that cost $100 or less that have been given the OK by Head-Fi.

I've read through the reviews and given you the Head-Fi reviewers' thoughts in a nutshell, but it's also worth going to Head-Fi and reading a full review if you want to learn more about each pair.

This pair of earbuds has a slight bass emphasis, but not so much that it muddies the midrange and treble. Overall, these are a neutral pair of earbuds that sound good and are built well for the price.

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