Extraordinary price, extraordinary performance
Bluetooth headphones | £1200 | whf.cm/SolitaireT
The Solitaire T may be as modern in the headphone world as streaming is in the music one, with their Bluetooth, active noise cancellation and plush, practical, portable design giving them as many convenience points as style ones, but T+A insists they were first and foremost developed as passive designs (ie not digital; without electronics).
The company would also tell you that, with the Solitaire T, it has prioritised acoustic construction, with all the cost and complexity involved, as opposed to relying on digital-processing corrections.
That acoustic construction revolves around a 42mm transducer made of a wood-fibre plastic mixture, aided by a pressure chamber system with sound guides and filters that work to linearise the frequency response and facilitate clean, powerful bass reproduction.
Active or passive
With that passive design principle in mind, it’s perhaps not surprising that the Solitaire T can be used strictly passively, wired via their 2.5mm jack socket and supplied audio cable, bypassing any electronics and processing. Of course, those things are needed to make use of wireless or digital connectivity and ANC – all part of these over-ears’ Active mode, in which Class A/B power amplifiers feed the drivers.
A third mode – ‘HQ’ (High Quality) – has been designed to squeeze as much performance out of the Solitaires in active operation as possible. It sends the digital signals to a Sabre ESS DAC, which, post-conversion, routes them through a high-current power amplifier. This mode halves the Solitaire T’s battery life – albeit to a still very competitive 35 hours. That’s right; these puppies ordinarily have a 70-hour battery life.
The T+A Solitaire companion app for iOS or Android offers sound presets and individual equalisers, three modes of ANC and a firmware update function.
These headphones weigh in at only 325g, aiding comfort tremendously. We wore them on a long-haul flight for five to six hour
