At this price one would expect something really outstanding. Unfortunately these headphones whilst very good, still fall short .
The Sennheiser RS130 cordless headphones come complete out of the box with a stylish (albeit large) transmission dock and AAA NiMh rechargeable batteries. The transmission dock includes the charging cradle so charging the headphones is a simple matter of putting them on the chrome cradle. Unfortunately this is not always easy to do particularly if you have adjusted the headphones making one side longer than the other. Make sure the charging light is red once you dock the headphones, otherwise they will not charge.
Inserting the batteries was easy enough and after leaving the headphones to charge for the initial 16 hour period we plugged them into our Pioneer D6 audiophile SACD player for some serious testing.
Unlike some of the cheaper cordless headphones, the RS130 transmission dock comes with stereo RCA connectors which should give better stereo separation with less crosstalk than the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Adaptors are provided in the box if you do want to plug the unit into either a 6mm or 3.5mm stereo headphone socket.
The headphones are comfortable to wear and feature large circumaural pads which totally cover the ears to provide the best quality sound possible. Whilst these headphones do not provide noise cancelling, the pads and design are such that most background noise (eg. telephones) will not disturb your listening pleasure.
On the headphones is a power switch (with automatic power off if no signal for 3 minutes), volume control and tune button. The headphones let you know the status of reception by a series of beeps with 6 beeps if you are out of range, 2 beeps if the batteries are flat and a series of beeps to let you know what transmission channel you are on.
The headphones use FM analogue transmission which, unlike infrared, means that you do not have to be in line of sight of the transmission dock. However being analogue, the signal is prone to interference and noise and this is the main downfall of these headphones.
With the volume turned down low and a strong input signal you would not generally notice the constant background hiss, however if you turn up the volume or are listening to particularly quiet parts of the music or a movie, background hiss is definitely audible.
We tested the headphones using a SACD recording and found that for wireless headphones, the sound was very well balanced. The headphones have good bass reproduction without being boomy (unlike cheaper headphones which compensate for quality with volume). Mid range response was excellent and whilst the treble was clear and undistorted, it sounded flat especially when compared to our reference Anthony Gallos speakers.
Sennheiser claim a transmission range of up to 100m and whilst there were no problems listening in the room we found that after about 10m from the transmitter, noise started becoming a problem and after about 30m the signal became unusable. The headphones feature an auto transmitter search facility so we were able to change broadcast channel but this would only help if there was interference from another signal.
The headphones feature SRS to provide simulated surround sound and to enhance bass response and whilst this does improve the stereo field it is no substitute for a real 5.1 or 7.1 surround system.
Overall the headphones are good and whilst no wireless system is perfect, FM is one of the better analogue methods. Additional headphone are available so that several people can listen simultaneously and since the headphones can work on various frequencies you can have more than one transmitter in the house and not interfere with others.
At $349, one would expect the Sennheiser RS130 cordless headphones to have been outstanding, considering that you can pick up a reasonable pair of cordless headphones for less than half the price of these ones. Whilst these headphones are very good, in our view they nevertheless fall short of the outstanding category especially compared with a good set of speakers or cord headphones.