FEBRUARY 2020 MACWORLD 115something to be desired.
The TaoTronics TT-BH046 is
an over-ear headphone with
soft “protein” earpads and
headband. It’s relatively
lightweight at less than eight
ounces. Each earcup holds a
40mm driver that is said to
reproduce a frequency range
from 20Hz to 20kHz (no
tolerance given). The press
release touts “HD sound with
intense bass;” we shall see.
Like most such
headphones, the primary audio input is
Bluetooth—in this case, version 4.2 with
support for the A2DP, AVRCP, SBC, and
AAC profiles. It does not support the aptX
codec. If you want to listen to a non-
Bluetooth source—or the battery is
dead—you can use the supplied 3.5mm
cable that plugs into the bottom of the
right earcup.
As I mentioned earlier, the TT-BH046
provides active noise cancellation (ANC).
In this process, ambient sound is sampled
by one or more built-in microphones,
phase inverted, and mixed with the
unaltered ambient sound, reducing its
perceived level thanks to phase
cancellation. This is generally most
effective in the low frequencies.
TaoTronics calls its version “hybrid”
ANC, which combines feedforward and
feedback techniques. Feedforward ANC
orients the microphone to face away from
the driver, and it can reduce the level of
frequencies as high as 1kHz or so. It has
no way to self-correct, however, because it
does not detect the output of the
headphone driver. Also, it covers a
relatively narrow range of frequencies, so
if it’s tuned to, say, 1kHz, it might not
reduce the level of low frequencies.
By contrast, feedback ANC orients the
mic to pick up sound from the headphone
driver, which allows for self-correction—for
example, if a user wears the headphone in
an odd way that doesn’t completely cover
their ears. Also, works in a wider range of
frequencies than feedforward designs, but
it can’t reduce the level of frequencies as
high as the 1kHz range.
By combining both feedforward andThe TT-BH046 incorporates a 40mm driver in each earcup.