Page 3 - Subjective Audio Analysis
There are many challenges when it comes to reviewing headphones, because of how subjective the experience is. It takes experience and time to train your ears to be able to make a proper judgement for an audio review. These challenges force us to take quite some time to listen and compare it to other sound equipment to have the best results and to be able to give it a fair observation. Unfortunately, since different people have different tastes in their headphones and what they should sound like, it is hard to come to a truly objective conclusion. I will also make it clear that I am not a bass head in any sense of the term, but I personally prefer a deep and distinct bass that stays balanced with the rest of the frequencies. As such, the Cooler Master MH703 earphones were put through a series of subjective tests to come to the best conclusion. For portable tests, I used the earphones with my phone, which is a OnePlus 6, and the rest was done with my computer. I attempted to balance out the gaming tests and portability tests, as these earphones are good for either use. The product was also broken in for an extended amount of time to ensure the best listening experience at the time of testing. All tracks were uncompressed CDs, FLAC, or LAME encoded MP3s at 192kbps or higher.
Overall, the sound character was airy and not as full as I expected it to be. It was bright, as the higher frequencies did much better than the lower range. But there was a hint of tinny sound to it all. Throughout the entirety of the tests, the better sound leaned towards the higher frequencies.
Before we jump into the midrange and treble, we will start with the bass. The bass was present and that was mostly about it. Unfortunately, it was light and recessed, but it was round when you do hear it. The bass definitely did not come across as boomy or muffled in any sense, which counted in the MH703's favor. As well, it was smooth. The biggest issue was the bass just was not impactful at all. During the gaming tests, footsteps were light and many of the other sounds were recessed. They sounded distant instead of being right in front of a person.
The midrange had a mixture of some great and not so great sound quality. It is fairly thick. I was able to hear breaths in the vocals, and for the most part, vocals were crisp and natural. The biggest issue was the detail in the midrange. It was lacking, especially when a full range was being played. When an acoustic guitar was on, I noticed the lack of detail the most. It sounded unnatural at times and lacked saturation. Again, same as the bass, it was quite a bit recessed. It was as if the instruments were a bit further away. However, the treble sounded the best by far, similar to the upper midrange. Sound came through clear and bright with some excellent energy. It never came through clashy either, which was very good; neither was it dry.
For such small earphones and for the price, the soundstaging and soundscaping was very good. In a game, where footstep noises were exaggerated, it was easy enough to pinpoint where sounds were coming from. The soundstaging was wide enough given the physical limitations and made it easy enough to pinpoint where specific instruments' sound was coming from. However, when a full range was being played, the greatest issue was a lack of depth. The sound felt distant and all the same in that dimension. The area with the most difficulty is layering. The MH703 lacked detail. This is most evident when listening for frequency separation. For the most part, when the whole range is being played, the sound is muddled and unclear. The sound was not clean nor was it cohesive. Finally, the MH703 also has a microphone that was decent. On the phone or when talking over voice chat, the sound was good enough, but it was raspy and had some distortion in certain test cases.
Overall, the Cooler Master MH703 was a good experience that has room for improvement. The bass was unfortunately a bit light but still fairly round. The midrange has its positives and negatives, namely how thick and most of the time how natural it was. But some instruments lacked detail and saturation. The treble was wet and had excellent energy. Where the MH703 fell short the most is in its lack of detail and frequency separation, especially that was is not cohesive.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Subjective Audio Analysis
4. Conclusion
