We're not sure what Philips has done to FullSound to turn it into v2.0 but whatever it is its slightly over egged the pudding by putting just a little bit too much brightness back into the music for our taste and making everything sound rather too forward. On the plus side the definition and clarity that FullSound brings out is very impressive.
If you’re unsure what FullSound does, perhaps this graph will help – or perhaps not
Switch FullSound off and the Muse produces a smooth, balanced and composed sound that, to our ears, sounds more natural. Yet, what really separates the Muse from the herd are its bundled active noise cancelling headphones, which generate an audio signal to cancel out ambient background noise.
Put the Muse in an environment with a lot of low frequency background hum and those earphones come into their own. We had occasion to try the Muse on an airliner and an underground train and, in both circumstances, the amount of background clutter elimination was pretty impressive and definitely made for a more enjoyable listening experience.
The degree to which the sound cancellation works can be altered to suit your surroundings without any overt impact of the quality of playback. If, for any reason, you don't want to use the system, you can simply switch it off or use a pair of regular earphones.
Of course, the Muse will only remove low frequency noises. Listen to Tristan and Isolde on the Central Line and you are still going to be left wondering why Wagner put the short aria “Mind The Gap” in it quite so often.
Noise-cancelling earphones as standard
The Philips earphones produce a more than decent sound and are pretty comfortable and you can live with them without major compromise. In fact, their only real failing is the way the connecting cables hang forward when worn. This means the cables tend to flit in and out of the wearer's peripheral vision. One word of caution - the 3.5mm earphones jack has a small lug on it that needs to be lined up with the housing in the player, so don't try to just ram it in any old way.
COMMENTS
Re: Controls on the right eh?
Why? Don't you have a right hand? If not, I'm sorry. Otherwise, stop whining. You don't speak for all us lefties. I'm perfectly fine using either hand, thanks.
Really?
Steve Davies 3 and By gerryg... Really?
You can't use your other hand? So I assume you don't play games consoles. They require your bad hand to do all sorts. I'm a right hander and have to use a d-pad (very might like the controls on this device) with my "bad" hand. Why piss off 90% of the population?
@Steve Davies 3
No worries. Darwinian law will take care of this. In the future the ladies will only pick the guys who can handle cool gadgets without holding them upside-down, leaving more and more lefties without partners, eventually eliminating all.
Jos
josv@flashnetworks.com
ahhrrr crap. Fell for the male-chauvinist trap. Ofcourse I meant that all -fill in gender--s will select partners who can handle gadgets without holding them upside-down, thus eliminating lefties, etc. Stop flame, there, fixed.Even added the appropriate icon.
Jos
@Steve Davies 3
You beat me to it.
However as someone so left handed I've never successfully used the numeric keypad, I have a keen interest in the statistics. According to an Economist article a couple of years ago, the proportion of left-handers in the population is rising to about 1in 6.
If we were any other kind of minority group we'd have a Government Minister (so there are some upsides) but yes I choose products that don't discriminate against left-handers and no there would be no point using this device.
It wouldn't even be difficult as everything is in software to reflect the operation of this device so it could have a left-handed option
It even happens. As soon as I click the "wrong" button on my mouse both openSUSE (installation) or KDE (use) ASK me if I'm left-handed.
Mine's the one with the left-handed chequebook in the pocket
