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Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

Most Hi-Fi+ readers are quite passionate about their enjoyment of recorded music and thus are equally passionate about the pursuit of higher and higher levels of sound quality, where possible. In fact, if quizzed I suspect few of us would have things any other way, which means that many of us have accepted the fact that we will invest significant chunks of our disposable income in our sound systems. The only downside of this, of course, is that we run the risk of alienating those who love music every bit as much as we do, but who have not yet discovered the joys our hobby can bring, nor have they in any way accepted the at times daunting costs our hobby can entail.

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

My thought on the matter is that surely there are worthy audio products out there that represent a middle ground of sorts – products that, in a sense, represent ‘The Good Stuff, 101’. I am thinking, here, of components that offer sound quality and user experiences that far exceed expectations, yet sell at moderate prices. One such component, which is the subject of this blog, is the Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphone, which sell for a tick under £175 in the UK, or for a bit under $200 in the US (bearing in mind that UK prices include VAT, where US prices do not).

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

If you are like some high-enders, you probably saw the phrase ‘Bluetooth headphone’ and immediately thought to yourself, “Seriously, how good could these things possibly be?” Perhaps nine times out of ten we might agree with that sentiment, as many of the Bluetooth headphones I have encountered tend to be long on cleverness and convenience, but short (actually, woefully short) on anything even vaguely approaching audiophile grade sound quality. Happily, though, the Pendulumic Stance S1+ proves the exception to the rule.

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

The Stance S1+ is the brainchild of the gifted designer Quentin Quek Chunbeng, who not only serves as Pendulumic’s ‘Chief Creator’ of products, but also is the Design Director for a design consultancy firm called DesignInsight. Interestingly, DesignInsight numbers among its clients a certain world-famous headphone manufacturer named Sennheiser. Thus, even if you’ve never heard of Pendulumic before, rest assured that its technologists A) know exactly what they are about, and B) have the client-list design pedigree to prove it.

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

 

Quek Chunbeng’s goals for the Stance S1+ are easy to describe, but difficult to achieve. In simple terms, the firm wanted to build an attractive, beautifully finished, cleverly full-featured, easy-to-use, and affordable Bluetooth headphone that, first and foremost, would afford its owners a quite large taste of genuine audiophile-grade sound. This doesn’t, of course, mean that anyone is going rush out and trade his or her world-class Stax electrostatic headphones on a pair of Stance S1+ ‘phones, but it does mean that if you placed a collection of competing $200 Bluetooth headphones on a table and invited knowledgeable audiophiles to sample them all, the Pendulumic would likely distinguish itself as the model to beat from a sound-quality standpoint. And this, quite frankly, is exactly what the Pendulumic Stance S1+ manages to do.

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

From a convenience, cleverness, and charm standpoint, the Pendulumic is a clear-cut winner straight out of the box. The headphone ear cups are done up in a very tasteful matte metallic bronze colour, with contrasting black and dark charcoal grey frames, headband pads, trim pieces, and ear pads. The net effective is a suave, tasteful, upscale urban chic look that listeners both young and old immediately seem to favour. The ‘phones ship with a fabric clad semi-hardshell carrying case, plus four simple accessories:

  • An airline adapter plug,
  • A 3.5mm-to-6.35mm adapter plug,
  • A USB charger cable, and
  • A 3.5mm-to-3.5mm signal cable with an inline mic/control module.

But the true cleverness of the Stance S1+ design only fully becomes apparent when one closely studies the switches, jacks, and control displays found on the headphone’s left and right ear cups. On the left ear cup, one finds a bottom-facing USB mini-jack charging port, a set of markings denoting open/close positions for a battery hatch, and an upward facing power switch that—significantly—offers two ‘On’ settings, but just one ‘Off’ setting.

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

Why two different ‘On’ settings? The answer is that, unlike any other Bluetooth headphone I have yet encountered, the Stance S1+ can be powered from its own on-board rechargeable batteries (which offer about 30 hours of playback time) or can be powered by an auxiliary pair of user-replaceable AAA back-up batteries. The concept is that, if the Stance S1+ should run out of battery charge at an inopportune moment (say, in the middle of a trans-Atlantic plane flight), the back-up batteries can be brought into play until such time as it’s possible to re-charge the headphone. This dual battery system seems  a very cool and useful idea, does it not?

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

 

On the right ear cup one finds a downward-facing and mesh-shielded microphone port, a bottom facing headphone jack, a downward-facing mode control switch, and a very distinctive volume/playback/phone control dial that looks much like an oversized winding stem for a high-end chronograph. Basically, the Stance S1+ offers several core modes of operation:

  • Self-powered operation with wireless Bluetooth connectivity (with power supplied either by the main rechargeable battery or the back-up AAA batteries),
  • Self-powered operation with hard-wired connectivity (again via rechargeable or back-up batteries), or
  • Purely passive operation with hard-wired connectivity.

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

The volume/playback/phone control dial has a pleasingly knurled surface and a gently ratchet-indexed rotary control motion, plus a push-to-click control motion that can be used to start or stop playback or to forward to the next track. The same push-to-click motion can also be used to answer or disconnect phone calls, etc.

Obviously, the Stance S1+ addresses all the expected convenience, ease-of-use, and styling tick boxes in a masterful way, but what really sets it apart is its sound. Most of us (myself included) have predetermined notions of what we expect Bluetooth headphones to sound like, but if your experiences are anything like mine then you may find the Stance S1+ recalibrates those notions in a big hurry and very much for the better. And, thanks to its available control settings and cabling options it is easy to do back-and-forth comparisons between the Stance’s sound qualities with Bluetooth vs. hard-wired connections.

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

Based on such comparisons, here is what I found. First, the Stance S1+ offers sound quality that seems quite competitive with the better non-Bluetooth, passive-only headphones in its price class. In short, the Pendulumic offers qualities of natural—and naturally engaging—tonal balance with a just-right touch of organic warmth, plenty of dynamic traction and punch, hearty but not overblown or loose-sounding bass, and a decent measure of treble extension and transparency. Together, these qualities would do many a $200 passive headphone proud. But the neat part is that this isn’t a passive headphone; it’s a Bluetooth 4.0, aptX-enabled headphone that’s truly at its best when used in wireless mode.

 

I think many listeners expect Bluetooth connectivity to throw a figurative blanket over the sound, forcing everything to become a little more vague, diffuse, and foggy-sounding than it should be. But the Stance S1+ is different—very different—because if anything it sounds even better in Bluetooth mode than it does with hard-wired connections. Finally, we have a Bluetooth headphone that imposes no sonic penalties at all for being a wireless device. I had a chance to let a fellow Hi-Fi+ staffer try the Stance S1+ and when I asked his reactions he simply said, “Oh, I think it’s just magic…” I couldn’t have said it any better myself., Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

Given its price and sonic capabilities, the Stance S1+ stands as not only the best sounding Bluetooth headphone I’ve heard at its price, but as a musically satisfying starting point for listeners looking for something better in the way of a versatile and convenient headphone that honours the music without breaking the bank.

Watch for an upcoming Hi-Fi+ review of the Stance S1+. Until then, happy listening.

, Starting Points: Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

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