Or, there’s always the company’s Music app (free for iOS and Android). It also has playback controls, but adds ANC options (hybrid, off, or pass-through) and lets you integrate your favorite streaming services—assuming they’re Deezer, NTS, Qobuz, SoundCloud, Tidal, and/or TuneIn. It includes a very useful five-band EQ, along with Bowers & Wilkins True Sound presets. By today’s standards, it’s a clean, streamlined, and useful app, which is pretty much what anyone should expect.
Performance-wise, the headline here is that Bowers & Wilkins has priced the Pi8s reasonably—and what’s more, the downsides (if any) to owning the Pi8s are mild and not overly focused on their actual sound.
Keep the volume anywhere between “realistic” and “perhaps a little too loud”, and there’s a lot to like about the way the Pi8s perform. They create a wide, well-defined, tightly organized soundstage, meaning every element of even the most complex recordings has plenty of room to spread out and express themselves.
This spaciousness and separation does not affect the uniqueness or unity in how Pi8 presents something like Fela Kuti. Gentleman. No matter how chaotic, the Pi8’s sound remains cohesive, despite the ability to peer so deeply into the mix that any individual instrument is easily isolated and examined.
Photo: Simon Lucas
Avoid audio overlap
The same recording also allowed Bowers & Wilkins to demonstrate their ability with dynamics. There’s plenty of headroom when it comes to simple changes in pitch or volume, but the headphones are also able to identify and contextualize smaller (but no less important) harmonic variations or transient events.
In fact, the level of detail is sky-high at every turn. No aspect of the recording is too transient or too far into the mix to be overlooked by the Pi8. There’s no such thing as “insignificant” with these earbuds.
