CES 2012

We first got a look at speaker maker PSB's new headphone, the M4U 2, at the 2011 CEDIA show, and Brent Butterworth liked what he heard from an early version. The active, noise-canceling M4U 2 (and a passive younger sibling, the M4U 1) are almost ready for release (the M4U 2 should be shipping within the month), and we caught up with Paul Barton of PSB in the company suite at the Venetian, where he was kind enough to walk us through his new headphones.

The M4U 2's active boost (there's an onboard preamp that adds a bit of bass, meant to simulate the effects of room gain) sounded very pleasing during a brief demo; the 4-microphone noise-canceling was quite effective to my ear, and the headphones includes some nice convenience features, including a push-to-hear switch (also seen on some other headphones at the show), passive functionality when the batteries die, and an alternative cable with phone controls. Check out the video below for Paul Barton's own explanation: