Adding to the pile here. These headphones are quite resolving once you tame the sub-400Hz bloat (par for the course with virtually any consumer audio product nowadays), but the apparent firmware-locked volume limit may end up being a dealbreaker for me, too. I increased the post-gain in Wavelet to its max (+5 dB), which makes it borderline manageable and fortunately does not introduce the distortion that a wired connection would. (As such, I fail to see why Nothing can’t simply increase the volume limit over Bluetooth if it’s apparently capable of doing so with minimal distortion.) Still, there is almost never any headroom, and some older masters just cap out at an insufficient listening volume.
I’m comparing them to the newly released Cambridge Audio P100 SE, which are arguably the best-sounding wireless over-ears in the $300 price class, if not beyond, and while the P100 SE has somewhat superior detail retrieval and more competent stock tuning, the post-EQ’d comparison has me actually favoring the Headphone (1) in terms of soundstage. Might just be as simple as the cup depth, but a wider soundstage is a wider soundstage. Unfortunately, the P100 SE typically has output volume headroom to spare, whereas I’m maxed out with +5 dB post-gain on the Headphone (1) and still wanting more out of some tracks.
Straight up, if the output volume were similar enough between the two, I’d keep the Headphone (1) and return the P100 SE. Nothing did so many things right with this thing, and it’s a kick-ass accessory among a sea of blah wireless over-ears. I really, really hope they undo this kneecap, which, frustratingly, can literally be addressed at the firmware level.
