Zildjian makes a splash – with wireless noise-cancellers

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A 17th-century cymbal maker turns its hand to wireless noise-cancelling headphones

Zildjian Alchem-E headphones
(Image credit: Zildjian/Future (background))
Sound+Image magazine

Sound+Image

(Image credit: Future)

This article is by Sound+Image magazine, Australian sister publication to What Hi-Fi?. Click here for more information on Sound+Image, including digital editions and details on how you can subscribe.

Hardly anyone can confidently pronounce it, but there can be very few music lovers who do not know the name and the logo of Zildjian, just as there are very few brands which are as synonymous with a single type of product as is Zildjian. And for good reason – the US, once Turkish, company has been making cymbals for just a little over 400 years.

So now it has turned its hand to wireless noise-cancelling headphones, we confess we expected a branding exercise, but the Alchem-Es prove to be genuinely different – both protective in offering isolation and noise-cancellation, and corrective in including a technology to test your hearing and correct for deficiencies. They also contain unusual special drummer-specific features.

We had recently published a full review of the Zildjian Alchem-E headphones here on What Hi-Fi's website, but we have now been informed that the headphones we were supplied for this review were pre-production samples. We had been aware that the app we used was pre-release, but we would never review pre-production hardware, as things can change, and we cannot be sure that what we hear will be what you hear; they may be better, they may be worse.

We requested full production samples to be supplied, and the original review ha now been fully updated and can be read here.

Jez Ford
Editor, Sound+Image magazine

Jez is the Editor of Sound+Image magazine, having inhabited that role since 2006, more or less a lustrum after departing his UK homeland to adopt an additional nationality under the more favourable climes and skies of Australia. Prior to his desertion he was Editor of the UK's Stuff magazine, and before that Editor of What Hi-Fi? magazine, and before that of the erstwhile Audiophile magazine and of Electronics Today International. He makes music as well as enjoying it, is alarmingly wedded to the notion that Led Zeppelin remains the highest point of rock'n'roll yet attained, though remains willing to assess modern pretenders. He lives in a modest shack on Sydney's Northern Beaches with his Canadian wife Deanna, a rescue greyhound called Jewels, and an assortment of changing wildlife under care. If you're seeking his articles by clicking this profile, you'll see far more of them by switching to the Australian version of WHF.