Focal Bathys & Technics EAH-AZ100 on the move
Continuing Jonathan Gorse’s mission to find the best equipment to enjoy music whilst travelling he focuses on the headphones used with DAPs on his Indian excursion.
Focal Bathys
The Focal Bathys headphones (£699) are impressive wireless Bluetooth cans with the option for cabled connections. I loved their beautiful padded grey transport case which had enough room in it for AirFly Pro 2 wireless dongles. Make no mistake these are beautifully made headphones which have an uncanny ability to feel just right on the ears when you wear them. I’m incredibly fussy about the feel of headphones and hate travel headphones that rest on my ears, these don’t – they perfectly encapsulate the ears so their leatherette earcups rest on your head around the outside of the ears, just like my magnificent Sennheiser HD 800S do.
The Bathys are designed to deliver audiophile sound with portable convenience. At their core is a pair of 40mm aluminium/magnesium M-shaped dome drivers, derived from Focal’s loudspeaker technology. These drivers combine high rigidity (aluminium) with damping (magnesium), enabling low distortion (<0.2% at 1 kHz) and a wide frequency response of 15 Hz–22 kHz for accurate, full-range reproduction.
The headphones support Bluetooth 5.1 with AAC, SBC, aptX, and aptX adaptive codecs, alongside wired 3.5 mm and USB-C connectivity. A key technical feature is the built-in USB-DAC mode, capable of up to 24-bit/192 kHz decoding, which bypasses typical wireless compression and internal device DAC limitations to deliver higher-resolution audio directly from a source.
Active noise cancellation (ANC) is implemented using an array of microphones (eight total) that capture ambient sound and generate inverse waveforms to attenuate external noise. Multiple modes – Silent, Soft, and Transparent – allow adaptive control over isolation versus environmental awareness. In use I found the Bathys delivered superb isolation poolside and on the silent setting it was possible to eliminate the noise of any nearby splashing children. In transparent mode I could still overhear the conversations of passing undercover agents. Crucially they almost totally eliminated the familiar jet whine and rushing air sound at flight level enabling me to enjoy the in flight movie as well as my own music collection from the Astell and Kern or Fiio player.
Power management is optimised for mobility, with a lithium-ion battery delivering approximately 30 hours of wireless playback and fast charging that provides several hours of use in minutes.
Sonically the Bathys deliver a superbly transparent sound, the attack of drums or plucked guitar on for example Dire Straits Telegraph Road was impressively fast and detailed, while the orchestral Bond recordings were absolutely captivating. These headphones are so good they match the quality of similarly priced cans designed for exclusively home use, but you can take them with you across the world. Moneypenny fell in love with these like no other, and she’s used to some pretty high end headphones from Sennheiser, AKG and Beyerdynamic at home. Since we returned from India she has commandeered them and has been using them in her noisy office at the University where she works and I doubt they’ll be going back – they’re that good!
Technics EAH-AZ100
The Technics EAH-AZ100 (£259) are beautifully engineered earbuds supplied in a very high quality hard charging case which looks and feels like aluminium. The case has a USB-C connection for charging and the headphones charge in around 2 hours, while 15 mins of charging provides around 90 mins of music playback. The charging case itself takes around 2.5 hours to charge and the battery life is a claimed 29 hours. Certainly these kept going comfortably for our 8 hour flight to India and then a further 3-4 hours when we caught a domestic flight and still had plenty of juice left. Battery life with noise cancelling is quoted at between 7-10 hours and in my experience they comfortably exceeded this. Of course during transits between flights they were back in the case getting charged.
One nice thing about the Technics is that their shape has absolutely no harsh edges which makes them very enjoyable to use. A range of touch controls are supported although I found the Technics app even easier to use for more complex commands.
Sonically, these are by far the best sounding wireless earbuds I have ever used. Central to their acoustic performance is a newly developed 10mm magnetic fluid driver, which integrates ferrofluid within the voice coil gap to stabilise diaphragm motion and reduce unwanted resonance. This approach enables ultra-low distortion and improved transient response, while the aluminium diaphragm provides high stiffness for accurate mid-to-high frequency reproduction and extended bandwidth up to 40 kHz (with LDAC).
The earbuds support a modern wireless architecture, including Bluetooth with high-resolution codecs such as LDAC and LC3 (via LE Audio), enabling low-latency and high-bitrate transmission. Multipoint connectivity extends to three simultaneous devices, allowing seamless switching between sources such as smartphones, tablets, and PCs, something I found extremely useful as I lay poolside occasionally using my laptop.
Active noise cancellation is implemented through an adaptive system that continuously monitors ambient noise and dynamically adjusts filtering parameters in real time. Three settings are available via the supplied app – maximum, noise cancellation, adaptive and ambient modes. The AZ100 also supports spatial audio including Dolby Atmos although I rarely used it.
I found that I was able to achieve a supremely comfortable fit with the supplied range of rubber tips and getting this right undoubtedly contributes to the frankly incredible levels of noise cancelling. Sipping some Jonny Walker Blue label scotch in my British Airways Club World seat I luxuriated in the fabulous sound quality of the AZ100 on a range of music from Roxy Music’s Avalon to The Housemartins London 0 Hull 4. Jet noise as well as street noise and human conversation is again almost entirely eliminated by the noise cancelling to the extent that it’s a revelation.
These Technics headphones manage to sound like full sized headphones and present music with startling richness. In the past I have sometimes been left feeling short changed by small earbuds that rarely seemed able to convey truly deep and articulate bass. These do, they deliver very wide bandwidth sound that allows the double basses in orchestral or jazz scores to be fully realised. This is never at the expense of other elements though; they’re as fast and impactful as a bullet through a plate glass window. Clarity, transparency, articulation, ambience are all off the scale for an in-ear monitor.
I must confess that I fell totally in love with the AZ100s, they’re simply extraordinary and I have continued to use them everywhere since returning from India. That’s the beauty of something as compact as this, you really do carry them everywhere.
Part three of this series can be seen here