SoundMAGIC P30S Headphone Review

Small, cheap and good - pick two. Or in SoundMAGIC’s case three…

by Ed Selley
Hi-Fi Review

2

Highly Recommended
SoundMAGIC P30S Headphone Review
MSRP: £70.00

What is the SoundMAGIC P30S?

Sometimes your first exposure to a product leaves you in no doubt that it is going to be seriously good. The first time I saw a Pioneer 434 Plasma playing the dull but (for the time) visually astonishing Astra Euro 1080 feed, I knew that it was comfortably the best TV picture I’d ever seen up until that point. Likewise I’ve sat down in front of the visual and engineering insanity that is the Living Voice Vox Olympian horn loudspeaker and even before they played a note, realised that I am unlikely to experience anything as astonishing ever again. Some products - and this isn’t necessarily limited to audio, simply look and feel right before they even do anything of note.

There are other occasions though when a product takes you completely and utterly by surprise with how it performs. In 2011, the magazine I was working for at the time was given a presentation by two enthusiastic guys starting up a headphone company. At the end of it, I was handed a pair of nondescript and it must be said, rather uninspiring looking earphones. I was told they would be selling for £30 and they were ‘a bit good.’ I was unconvinced to be honest. The samples were all black, nothing to look at and laboured under the less than inspired name of SoundMAGIC. Against my better judgement, I left my Shure E310s on the desk and used them for the commute home.

The earphone was the SoundMAGIC E10 and even several years down the line, it is still one of the best budget in-ear headphones on the market. SoundMAGIC haven’t been resting on their laurels either. Having launched the E10, other models have followed and one of the newer arrivals is the P30S over-ear headphone you see here. Once again, the looks are nothing to get excited about and the name is still an awkward mass of capitalisation and lower case but the company has form.

The P30S is an updated version of the P30 and adds larger and softer pads; an improved custom driver; better internal dampening; a replaceable cable with microphone and multi-function button to answer and end calls; a selector switch that adds compatibility with differently wired sockets on some smartphones and tablets; a hard case rather than a soft case; metal plates on the outside of the earcups; a rubberised finish for a better look and feel in the hand; a more rigid headband frame and hinges; and the inclusion of a Skype type adaptor for PC use. At a mere £70 (February 2015) that sounds like a bargain, let's find out.

What are the specs of the P30S?

SoundMAGIC P30S
The P30S is an over-ear closed back headphone that is intended for portable use. As such it is fairly compact and while a closed back design, in that the enclosures only vent towards to the ear, they are sufficiently small that they tend to sit on rather than around the ear which means that they can’t completely isolate you from the outside world. Inside each enclosure is a 40mm neodymium dynamic driver which is a fairly neat piece of packaging in that the enclosures themselves are not much more than 40mm across.

The driver enclosure is a fairly neat piece of packaging in more ways than simply fitting the driver in full stop. It manages to have sufficiently deep padding to set this driver a useful distance back from the ear and ensure that the P30S is comfortable to wear. In addition still more space is taken up by the hinges and mounts for the headband which are recessed into the housing to reduce the size of the P30S as a whole and ensure that there are fewer extremities to snag or catch on anything.
SoundMAGIC P30S
The headband itself is a horseshoe shaped affair with a small amount of padding at the top of the band - which again is flush to the band itself. The limited amount of padding is partly down to the rest of the headband on either side being devoted to the extending sections and hinges to allow the P30S to fold up. The two hinges have roughly 130 degrees of travel to allow the earpad to fold right into the headband space. Having done so you can then fit the PC into the small but impressively sturdy and well thought out carry case that is supplied as standard.

Nothing in the specifications of the P30S is especially remarkable but I have to be honest and say I think that is a good thing. The frequency response of 20Hz-22kHz, impedance and sensitivity figures all point to a competently designed and well thought out pair of headphones that aren’t going to place any unnecessary challenges on smartphones tablets or laptops. Equally, the absence of outlandish figures suggests that some sound engineering is at work rather than sticking stuff together and hoping for the best.

Are there any downsides to the P30S?

SoundMAGIC P30S
A previously mentioned, the SoundMAGIC has commendably small driver housings given that they contain a 40mm driver but something has had to give and in this case it is the female socket for the cable. This is neither captive or a socket on the base of one or both sides - the most common options for this sort of thing - but is instead an umbilical that sticks out of the left hand housing and terminates about five centimetres below the earpad.

From here you can attach a conventional audio cable, one with an inline microphone and finally one that splits headphone and mic connection into two separate connections. I welcome having the choice of cables but the umbilical is a little inelegant as a means of achieving it. One other genuine curiosity is that the microphone lead didn’t work directly into my laptop (while it did into USB DACs) and needed the mic free cord to work - worth remembering if you plan to plug the same pair of headphones in at work.

The P30S is also not the most attractive product on the market. While the E10 has grown some funky colours over the years, the P30S is black with hints of black and a little more black. It isn’t ugly but neither is it the sort of design that stirs the emotions. I would also describe the build as being perfectly adequate for the asking price but nothing more than that. Like many folding designs, the P30S feels good but not great and slightly spindly when extended. All of these comments should be taken in the context of the P30S costing £70 though - I can’t name a competitor at the price which is decisively better.
SoundMAGIC P30S
The absence of outlandish figures suggests that some sound engineering is at work rather than sticking stuff together and hoping for the best.

How was it tested?

The SoundMAGIC has been used with my Moto X 2014, iPad 3, Sony NWZ-ZX1 and Lenovo T530 ThinkPad with and without a Cambridge Audio DacMagic and, as an absolute reference, a Chord Hugo. Testing has occurred domestically and out and about in outdoor and indoor situations. Material used has been the standard selection of lossless and high res FLAC, Tidal, Spotify, Grooveshark, Netflix and on demand material from Sky and the BBC.

What does the P30S sound like with music?

SoundMAGIC P30S
As a brand new pair of headphones, the SoundMAGIC was a little bright out-of-the-box. As such they were connected to my old Nexus 5 and left to run Spotify playlists for a day or two before I returned to them. With some hours on them, the sonic balance of the SoundMAGIC is still ever so slightly on the bright side of neutral but there is little harshness or aggression unless you are listening very loud or to very compressed material.

The payoff is exceptional detail retrieval and a real sense of openness and space for a closed back headphone. For a small and comparatively inexpensive design, the P30S manages to sound big and completely in control even with large scale material. It is also at times startlingly dynamic. With the new Punch Brothers album Phosphorescent Blues, an album with that rarest of rare attributes in 2015, dynamic range - the SoundMAGIC is genuinely excellent. The ability to go loud instantly and without strain is helped by the P30S being usefully sensitive meaning that it places little strain on the source equipment to do so.

As scale is absolutely instrumental to realism this means that the SoundMAGIC is genuinely convincing with a wide variety of music and they have the ability to let you forget you are wearing headphones. This is unusual in closed back headphones and vanishingly rare at £70. Like its E10 stablemate, this is performance that is genuinely unusual at the price. Furthermore, the P30S doesn’t seem fazed by any genre of music I tried on it. It was as happy with Leftfield’s awesome Tourism live set as it was with the minimalism of Tori Amos Me and a gun.

SoundMAGIC P30S
The realism is one thing but the genuine sense of fun that the SoundMAGIC has about its presentation is equally welcome. Pottering about on Tidal, I rediscovered the unbridled eighties joy that is 90125 by Yes. Now it is my firmly held belief that if you don’t nod your head or sing along to Owner of a Lonely Heart, there’s something wrong with you but it is pretty much impossible to avoid doing it with the P30S. The bass response is deep but commendably quick and that smoothness and refinement at the top end coupled with the sensitivity means that you are likely to go loud and stay there.

These abilities are remarkably consistent across bit rates. The SoundMAGIC is forgiving enough that even the very compressed sounds of Grooveshark are generally perfectly listenable and by the time you are using Spotify, to say nothing of Tidal, the P30S is truly in its element. With the all singing all dancing high res wizardry of the Sony ZX1 and high resolution material, the P30S doesn’t give a huge step forward over CD quality but given the requirements that headphones of this type are likely to be concentrating far more on compressed and CD level material, the P30S is pitched at the right level in my opinion.

And given the role that the P30S is likely to undertake, its ability work on the move is also welcome. The lightweight design may not feel completely bombproof but even with the limited padding, never feels uncomfortable on the head but equally it manages to exert enough pressure on the sides of the head to stay put when you are out and about. Furthermore, noise leakage is commendably low which should make you popular with your fellow commuters. I do think that the mic/remote on the supplied cord is too low to make a call without holding it nearer your face but if this encourages you to make less calls in public, it might actually be a bonus.
SoundMAGIC P30S
Realism is one thing but the genuine sense of fun that the SoundMAGIC has about its presentation is equally welcome.

What is the P30S like with video and film material?

Nothing that the P30S does well with music looked likely to prove a problem when you switch to broadcast and film. Indeed, the same refinement, effortless ability to go loud and the impressive detail retrieval means that even some of the Sky Go worst offenders like Elementary that permanently seems to have the dialogue set to ‘under a towel’ mode is intelligible and easy to follow.

As with music, there is a simple and wholly appealing sense of fun to how the the P30S goes about dealing with film and the handling of action sequences is almost always entertaining. In keeping with most headphones, the P30S simply can’t sound as expansive as full size speakers but it is wholly competitive with anything I’ve heard under £100. The SoundMAGIC is more than up to the job of bringing a little escapism to a train journey.

Conclusion

Pros

  • Outstanding sound quality
  • Comfortable
  • Good carry case

Cons

  • Build nothing to get excited about
  • Looks nothing to get excited about
  • Curious cable termination

SoundMAGIC P30S Headphone Review

We have more headphones than we know what to do with at pretty much any price point under £1,000 at the moment and I suspect that the choices at £70 are no less vast than anywhere else. Some of the competition to the SoundMAGIC P30S will be better looking and some will also be better built. This not a beautiful pair of headphones and neither does it have a ‘hewn from a solid lump of granite' feel.

Sonically though, there is very little under £100 that can live with the P30S. Those models that can are generally open backed home headphones that won’t be anything like as travel friendly as the SoundMAGIC. Like the E10, the P30S is not much to look at and the SoundMAGIC branding doesn’t excite much in the way of brand cache. Be under no illusions though, this is a staggeringly good pair of headphones for the very reasonable asking price.

Scores

Build Quality

.
.
.
7

Ease of Use

.
9

Sensitivity

.
9

Design and usability

.
9

Sound Quality

.
9

Value For Money

.
9

Verdict

.
9
9
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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