[majnu]

Since people are posting pics, I'll post the ones from EGX London where a gamer friend attended and I asked him some simple questions.

1) What movie and game was demo'd?
I only deno'ed the game side which was on titan fall 2, the movie looked like some war film which I will see if I can demo today.

2) Have you experienced 3D audio before?
First time for me experiencing 3d audio.

3) What impression did you get from the audio? Was there a clear separation of sounds so you could judge things like distance, location of sounds across the plane inc vertically?
The audio was impressive where you could clearly identify each sound, weather that be voices or gunfire. As for distance it was pretty hard to tell with all the explosions going on but on a vertical plane I could easily identify when enemies where above or below. Footsteps/ voices.

3.1) Did you feel the 3d audio gave a echo/reverb effect which plagues some 3d audio technologies and makes the sound thin?
No echo or reverb with the 3d audio and the sound was consistently full and immersive.

4) Did Audeze explain the headtracking stuff and what benefit did you find it brought?
Yeah they explained is pretty well , essentially one you sit down and put the headset on you press a button on the underside which centers the sound to where you are facing. This refreshes 1000 times a second so I didn't notice any real delay. Unfortunately do to the linear play of the game there was no real opportunity to take advantage of the system, everything was nfront. But by turning my head the sounds did rotate around my head so to speak. I feel this will be especially good in VR games but with the standard fps shooter I see no reason for you to look away from your screen to identify where a sound is coming from, unless you want to hold an angle while identifying where a sound is coming from.

 

[Drivenby]

Uhm as far as I know Titanfall 2 doesn't have cues for height (only supports plain old 5.1/7.1) , so I'm not sure how he was able to tell something was 'above' or 'below' In that demo.

It does have room occlusion for changing the sound when somebody is inside a building vs outside.

 

[raband]

Was wondering the same.

5.1/7.1 doesn't do height does it?

Decent report from your mate, appreciate his take.

Is he a headphone gamer, or usually speakers?

 

[mashuto]

Uhm as far as I know Titanfall 2 doesn't have cues for height (only supports plain old 5.1/7.1) , so I'm not sure how he was able to tell something was 'above' or 'below' In that demo.

It does have room occlusion for changing the sound when somebody is inside a building vs outside.

I know that often when gaming using virtual surround, just looking at a scene can trigger directional and height cues. So its entirely possible that he something above or below that triggered it, or by standing at ground level hearing something "distant" but without any real direction might cause your brain to interpret that as up.

Also the big about not needing it for fps where you dont look away from your screen... Heard that argument before, and sure you arent constantly turning your head, but as had been mentioned, everyones head is moving all the time, if just slightly, and hopefully having the sounds fixed in a virtual space instead of floating with your head will just assist quite a bit with those positional cues. By that same argument, you would never need a 5.1 or 7.1 speaker system since you are never turning your head.

 

[majnu]

Was wondering the same.

5.1/7.1 doesn't do height does it?

Decent report from your mate, appreciate his take.

Is he a headphone gamer, or usually speakers?

He has headphones. Also PUBG posted detailed info about their hidden update to HRTF.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/578080/announcements/detail/1651012249539060705

It will be interesting if playing that game will be better with the Mobius.

 

[VSENSES]

He has headphones. Also PUBG posted detailed info about their hidden update to HRTF.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/578080/announcements/detail/1651012249539060705

It will be interesting if playing that game will be better with the Mobius.

Better sound wont perform that miracle...

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

New doesn't sound better to me, while before it has this odd exaggerates stereo sound (lack of center channel imaging) that changes too much depending on direction you're looking at, the new sounds too muffled and the positional cues aren't clear at all and sounds like the soundfield got more intimate. The positioning was even slightly better before despite the exaggered stereo sound. If I was forced to pick I'd pick "Before".

 

[RMA192AK]

Don’t mind a delay or two if that means a polished product, expectations for Mobius are high. My baseline is the Sine. If the incredible planar bass, detailed mids, smooth treble, precise imaging, and nicely-separated soundstage matches or exceeds that headphone which is the best Audeze headphone I’ve heard (haven’t heard any LCD-class headphone) then it will wow at its price and feature set. If it’s not at the same level, then I will admittedly be disappointed but Bluetooth is still a big draw and I’m sure I’ll watch some 7.1 movies to test the head-tracking.

It should well exceed the Sine, it has the much large 100mm driver out of the EL-8 vs the Sines 80x70mm driver. I have the Sine, LCD-2, LCD-2C and iSINE-20. Honesty the Sine is the one Audeze headphones that I really don't like, it's much brighter to me than any of their other headphones that I have and severely lacks in the sub-bass area, nowhere in the same league as an LCD series. The LCD’s are amazing for gaming because of their bass, they really make you feel like your there in the action; however, they just are very heavy, the LCD-2 with the old headband I could only last 20 minutes gaming with before becoming nauseous and feeling sick for an hour because of the pressure the headband put on the top of my head. The new suspension headband on the LCD-2C resolved this issue entirely though and are my go to for gaming along with the iSINE-20’s.

I’m not too worried about delays, the only reason I could see a delay is due to certification issues, otherwise I don’t think there is a very high probability of production issues, they stopped manufacturing the EL-8 series after their Black Friday sale, they haven’t been in stock on their website since then, so they have been clearing stocking up on the drivers for the Mobius since then. I think they were quite prepared for mass production and considering they didn’t sell out on the Indiegogo campaign and immediately put up a preorder page on their website, they were probably prepared for a lot more orders than they got. But we will see June is right around the corner, not too much longer!

 

[Lunar Eclipse]

The mobius is not the same driver as el-8 according to Audeze.

It should well exceed the Sine, it has the much large 100mm driver out of the EL-8 vs the Sines 80x70mm driver. I have the Sine, LCD-2, LCD-2C and iSINE-20. Honesty the Sine is the one Audeze headphones that I really don't like, it's much brighter to me than any of their other headphones that I have and severely lacks in the sub-bass area, nowhere in the same league as an LCD series. The LCD’s are amazing for gaming because of their bass, they really make you feel like your there in the action; however, they just are very heavy, the LCD-2 with the old headband I could only last 20 minutes gaming with before becoming nauseous and feeling sick for an hour because of the pressure the headband put on the top of my head. The new suspension headband on the LCD-2C resolved this issue entirely though and are my go to for gaming along with the iSINE-20’s.

I’m not too worried about delays, the only reason I could see a delay is due to certification issues, otherwise I don’t think there is a very high probability of production issues, they stopped manufacturing the EL-8 series after their Black Friday sale, they haven’t been in stock on their website since then, so they have been clearing stocking up on the drivers for the Mobius since then. I think they were quite prepared for mass production and considering they didn’t sell out on the Indiegogo campaign and immediately put up a preorder page on their website, they were probably prepared for a lot more orders than they got. But we will see June is right around the corner, not too much longer!

 

[evernessince]

The mobius is not the same driver as el-8 according to Audeze.

I think he was talking size wise only. The Mobius's driver has been improved for it's use case.

 

[Lunar Eclipse]

For clarity

These are entirely new drivers with a different magnetic structure to the El8 and Sine. We designed it from the ground up for 3D audio. The Sound is tuned (active DSP) to be similar to LCD series.

I think he was talking size wise only. The Mobius's driver has been improved for it's use case.

 

[MICHAELSD]

It should well exceed the Sine, it has the much large 100mm driver out of the EL-8 vs the Sines 80x70mm driver. I have the Sine, LCD-2, LCD-2C and iSINE-20. Honesty the Sine is the one Audeze headphones that I really don't like, it's much brighter to me than any of their other headphones that I have and severely lacks in the sub-bass area, nowhere in the same league as an LCD series. The LCD’s are amazing for gaming because of their bass, they really make you feel like your there in the action; however, they just are very heavy, the LCD-2 with the old headband I could only last 20 minutes gaming with before becoming nauseous and feeling sick for an hour because of the pressure the headband put on the top of my head. The new suspension headband on the LCD-2C resolved this issue entirely though and are my go to for gaming along with the iSINE-20’s.

I’m not too worried about delays, the only reason I could see a delay is due to certification issues, otherwise I don’t think there is a very high probability of production issues, they stopped manufacturing the EL-8 series after their Black Friday sale, they haven’t been in stock on their website since then, so they have been clearing stocking up on the drivers for the Mobius since then. I think they were quite prepared for mass production and considering they didn’t sell out on the Indiegogo campaign and immediately put up a preorder page on their website, they were probably prepared for a lot more orders than they got. But we will see June is right around the corner, not too much longer!

I do have to admit, the EL-8 Titanium is quite disappointing when used with lossy music. If listening to lossless, the transparency and detail will take my breath away at times. Otherwise after spending more time with it I do sympathize with all of the negative reviews for the EL-8 since the tuning alone is not good enough (the incredible transparency is where it shines) and I find EQ’ing it to be disappointing. So I do have some concerns since that headphone’s signature IMO is not up to par with the Sine which is excellent and deserves its 5-star praise but I have heard that Mobius has brand new 100mm drivers. Still a huge fan of the brand, I just let the beautiful design, original $799 price, and packaging experience cloud my judgement so I was blown away by the EL-8 initially. I doubt whether the EL-8 is better than the Momentum 2.0 but I can say the Sine is. So I hope Mobius has that same forgiving fun transparent signature of the Sine and bass slam of the LCD line. I am optimistic that it will be improved upon both the Sine and EL-8 and potentially even be among Audeze’s best headphones.

 

[MICHAELSD]

That’s not to say the EL-8 Titanium is at all bad, it’s probably the most transparent headphone I have and the negative reviews were a bit overblown. I just wish bass performance matched the size of the drivers and the sound was more open. I felt the imaging and overall signature was better on the Sine. LCD tuning on Mobius is very promising.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

I hope we get some update soon on Mobius from Audeze, I feel there's very little info or coverage around it for how much hype it's gathered so far and how close to shipping point it is. It feels like I'd take any info you have to offer at this point to try satisfy my waiting anxiety haha. Found the interview Tyll made with one of the product designers very interesting and it sounds like this is the sort of product line that is here to stay from Audeze so yea and I'm happy that gaming got some more players in this field as there's an excess amount of cheap "gaming" headsets around there. Sennheiser has a "decent" one but I couldn't stand the absolutely horrifying design (mic arm especially). The Mobius seems to have gotten all aspects right what it looks like and for a first product it seems very very promissing.

 

[divasson]

If Audeze wants to give some feedback, here are a couple of ideas
- Release a draft of the manual. This would probably end up in some additional sales.
- Release the set up software for self-measuring for best performance.

If software not 100% finished, a possible "easy to implement" feature is to bee able to create user profiles in your PC, to keep organized the different HRTF of the users in a family or group of users. I have found that with standard binaural recordings, it doesn't work for me: sound does not appear in front but above my head, and the soundfield is not fully envolving. If I set the Mobius for me, it probably won't sound good for my children and viceversa.

Anyway, as I said it before, it is neither surround or head-tracking what drives me to the Mobius, but to get a good-sounding audiophile headset with mic, a planar headphone with a matched balanced amp and equalization built in. No need for DACs or dongles - also no problems with impedance mismatch or cable rolling! Somehow to get off the audiophile merry-go-round?