Music can aid your cardio performance massively. Studies have shown that listening to your favourite tunes increases cardiovascular performance by up to 15%. For some, blasting bops makes the difference to breaking that personal record – or just helps get you moving on those days when you don’t quite feel up to it.
Furthermore, a high-tempo beat or mellowed out mix can really aid in the mental health benefits of a jog, regardless of whether a personal best is on your mind.
With music being so important to both your performance and enjoyment, it’s important to invest in a suitable set of cans. Sony are industry leaders for a reason, and their incessant music-tech advances have created some real top-spot contenders. So, let’s break down why the best Sony headphones for running deserve that title.
Running headphones can be assessed on a few key components, with particular importance placed on noise suppression, music quality, comfort, and sweat resistance.
Noise Cancelling
Noise suppression is so useful when out on a run, or at the gym. It means you can drown the world out and focus on your own performance. However, have you ever stopped to think about how it works?
To discuss Sony’s noise suppression, let’s see how noise cancellation itself works. Firstly: all noise is just waves of compressed air molecules.
Sony’s active noise cancelling isn’t just the headphone’s plastic blocking these waves. Instead, the headphones are built with tiny microphones in. These sense the waves of external noise, registering the size and scale of each ‘wave’.
Have you ever seen an oscilloscope? Here, sound is represented as a curvy wiggle, arcing above then below the central ‘0’ line in varying degrees.
The fantastic thing about sound waves is that – if one wave is travelling in your direction, and meets another wave that is its complete opposite, then the two cancel each other out. When the two waves meet, the dips in one flatten out the arcs in another.
Think about it like ripples in a pond, except the onboard electronics of those Sony headphones are constantly monitoring the ambient waves around you, and producing equal anti-waves in real-time.
Sony’s noise cancelling software is one of the best in the industry – it actively recognises and filters 99% of ambient noise, including the relatively random noise waves of speech.
Furthermore, Sony’s software not only automatically senses and hides external noise, but more tech has been loaded onto their new headphones that allow gesture control.
The Quick Attention feature means that – when you cover the right ear of the headphones – noise cancellation is briefly paused. This means you can quickly tune into the world around you, without having to fumble around removing the headphones.
It also makes the experience of running with headphones safer – sometimes, you need to keep an eye on your surroundings, so it’s even better that Sony has implemented such a safe and easy to use feature.
Music Quality
Assessing the quality of headphones is a historically Herculean task. So much of music is subjective, that holding an objective scale of quality is impossible.
However, there are defining characteristics that make the hardware of headphones fantastic. If you’re fond of bass, for example, the Sony WH-1000XM4 develops an incredible bass profile thanks to high-quality over-ear construction.
Bass and low-range sounds are not as dependent on the size of the speaker as you may think: headphone speakers are able to reconstruct the feeling of massive concert-like bass thanks to the small space of your ear canal, and the close, acoustics-friendly cushions of the padding.
A lot of weak, tinny bass is actually the result of a poor acoustic ‘seal’ between the ear and the headphone’s speaker.
The mid-range quality is highly dependent on your headphones’ diaphragm. This drives the sound waves into your ear canals, and the thicker the diaphragm, the richer the sound quality.
Sony recently developed their latest magnesium and Crystal Polymer diaphragm to critical acclaim.
Comfy and Cosy
Unlike earbuds, headphones sit external to your ear canal. Though this gives them greater leeway for sound quality, it does also mean that they have larger surface contact with your head. This means that the construction materials will have a far greater impact on how comfortable those cans are.
The Sony MDR1AM2 is one example of Sony’s incredibly lightweight headphone design – weighing at only 6 lbs. The weight of headphones has historically prevented them from being the first choice for music on the move, but Sony is changing this.
From the weight to the materials, Sony has focused on streamlining over-ear headphones. The earpads’ soft synthetic leather moulds easily to the sides of your head; care and attention has been lavished on their headphones down to the very stitching.
Furthermore, Sony’s great wireless design and Bluetooth compatibility allows you to pop them on and start jogging, instead of fiddling around detangling the cords for half an hour beforehand!
Sweatproof
The final major aspect to a good pair of running headphones is whether they’re sweatproof. I don’t know about you, I certainly rank sweatproof-ness as the most important aspect to my running kit!
There’s nothing worse than worrying about whether a fantastic pair of headphones will be ruined by a sweaty sprints session.
Sony’s headphones run the gamut from full-on, total waterproofing – such as the WS410 Walkman series – to the lighter, water resistant variety.
The difference, here, is that the WS410 can be submerged in water completely, up to a depth of 2 metres. I personally don’t go for runs at the bottom of a pond, so WFC500WCE7’s water-resistance (rated IPX4) is resistant to stay sage, without having to sacrifice sound quality.
As running performance is so dependent on your mood and motivation, music can become an essential component to your training regime. Running for many is a way to push yourself; to strive for better and better, even on days where you don’t really feel like it.
Sony reignites the sheer joy to be found in running. The heady bass and close mid-range allows you to get lost in your own personal moment of self-improvement.
