[CT007]

I can answer that without even having them yet.
They are closed.
They use faux leather.
They seal well.
They will get hot.

Well, seeing as they have amps in the cups, I would assume they are hotter than avg, actually! Even if you are real cool-headed, like myself.

 

[kenyee]

next version of this headset should be accompanied by a nice cross-platform mobile app that will house all of these features/settings

Hard to do if they want to support platforms beyond Android/iOS. Android by itself is a mess for bluetooth support with older versions being quirky and it wasn't really close to iOS level support until Android 6. If you mean USB, it's a different mess because iOS doesn't really have USB support and Android's USB support is also a bit of a mess until recent versions
Maybe Audeze maybe should consider documenting the API or protocol. I'd be game for trying to write an Android/iOS version using Flutter to see whether that cross-platform framework is as disappointing as others

 

[MICHAELSD]

I'm not taking anyone's word that 3d isn't going to work well with 2.0 music! I'll see when I get mine. Speakers are my go to when given the choice. I suspect a lot of people here are just more used to headphones than speakers.

It works well, but the head tracking for music is not practical. It’s not like panning through a soundstage, it’s more like having two speakers around you and not being dead center means you don’t get the optimal sound. Some people will prefer this. 3D does open up the soundstage and provide a more speaker-like presentation. I’m going to echo others that 3D with head-tracking disabled would probably be the ideal setting for music.

@MICHAELSD First of all, it's clear you're loving your headphones, I'm so pleased. Not just because we are all in this funny little club and will also love ours, but because you have been such a stalwart in this thread, you deserve to really enjoy them

3D Music question/request - there are some Jazz albums which are clearly mixed for speaker output - the separation is just to distinct between left and right for truly enjoyable headphone listening. Do you have any albums/tracks where you've noticed the same wide panning? If so, could you try them in 3D Music presentation to see if they benefit from the processing?

This would be an example of what I'm talking about (although I do listen to it frequently on headphones!!) -


(edited to deal with formatting)

Mobius manages to meet expectations and I think you will all be pleased if you don’t expect too much out of them. I feel it’s only fair to give them praise and criticism where it’s deserved . To set everybody’s expectations correctly, it’s important to remember that Mobius is a gaming headset and it serves that purpose extremely well. That’s not to say it doesn’t have the planar sound signature as it does and it compares well to the EL-8 at half the price with more features. In fact for a closed-back headphone I would be willing to bet it compares well to the LCD-2 Closed and LCD-XC for the money.

I will be happy to give that a listen with Mobius after. I can’t say I’ve noticed any particularly stunning panning relative to other quality headphones I’ve tested. I feel 3D opens up the soundstage but they do still sound like headphones at the end of the day, which is a good thing. I don’t feel the separation between left and right channels is distinctive in a distracting way as you still get a wide soundstage that has objects centered as they should be. The imaging quality of the drivers is really what makes panning stunning for music.

True, aptX goes back to the 1980s, really, but it is widely adopted, far more than AAC and LDAC, and will continue to have more usage by far than either for a few years at least, so I wouldn't dismiss it as irrelavant by any means. There are more current model headphones out there that support aptX HD, for example, than LDAC, although thanks to Oreo's adoption of it, I'm sure that will change over time, although with how slowly Android users adopt new OS's...

I think they made the right choice forgoing aptX. Mobius is a forward-thinking headphone. AAC and LDAC is better than the alternative. aptX HD may have been an option but they went in the right direction with LDAC instead. As I have said in the past, standard aptX isn’t enough of an improvement over SBC to worry about it. It’s overhyped and cheap. Plus with their decision they were able to fit a Bluetooth 5.0 chip in it, and be one of the first headphones to support it.

 

[Sonic Defender]

@MICHAELSD I don't think in blind listening tests anybody could distinguish aptX from LDAC, I really don't. I conducted a 7 subject, multiple trial per subject blind listening test comparing a 320mp3 file from the lossless master it was made from and not one of the 7 people after 5 trials could do better than 50% detection rate, not one. aptX already can do better than a 320 sample rate so I would have to ask why higher sample rates as provided by LDAC would matter? I'm not trying to corner you, or start a big debate, but I don't think I have heard any real evidence that LDAC is superior. For the record I have not compared them so I can't say one way or the other, but going simply by sample rate differences I am not at this point convinced that it is a slam dunk that LDAC sounds better. There may be other aspects of implementing LDAC that make it a better choice, that is also possible, again, I have no way of knowing. I did have LDAC once with a Sony DAP and Sony headphone, but it was for a rather short time and I didn't notice anything particularly better as compared with my memory of aptX Bluetooth, personally.

 

[RamSpencer]

It works well, but the head tracking for music is not practical. It’s not like panning through a soundstage, it’s more like having two speakers around you and not being dead center means you don’t get the optimal sound. Some people will prefer this. 3D does open up the soundstage and provide a more speaker-like presentation. I’m going to echo others that 3D with head-tracking disabled would probably be the ideal setting for music.

Have you tried adjusting the room size? When I'm just sitting listening to speakers in not moving my head back and forth much. I think it's the tiny little natural movements that it's probably useful for. But I'll tell you when I get them.

 

[Drivenby]

@MICHAELSD I don't think in blind listening tests anybody could distinguish aptX from LDAC, I really don't. I conducted a 7 subject, multiple trial per subject blind listening test comparing a 320mp3 file from the lossless master it was made from and not one of the 7 people after 5 trials could do better than 50% detection rate, not one. aptX already can do better than a 320 sample rate so I would have to ask why higher sample rates as provided by LDAC would matter? I'm not trying to corner you, or start a big debate, but I don't think I have heard any real evidence that LDAC is superior. For the record I have not compared them so I can't say one way or the other, but going simply by sample rate differences I am not at this point convinced that it is a slam dunk that LDAC sounds better. There may be other aspects of implementing LDAC that make it a better choice, that is also possible, again, I have no way of knowing. I did have LDAC once with a Sony DAP and Sony headphone, but it was for a rather short time and I didn't notice anything particularly better as compared with my memory of aptX Bluetooth, personally.

Who were the "subjects" of your blind test? .

Not that I've ever listen to LDAC myself to say whether or not they are in fact superior, but on paper they are for sure.

The average music listener, heck the average Head fi member probably can't tell apart from 30usd cheap Chinese IEMs vs 500usd IEM from Shure . That does not mean there is no difference, only that your tools (subjects) were not sensitive enough to pick up the difference.

 

[Sonic Defender]

Who were the "subjects" of your blind test? .

Not that I've ever listen to LDAC myself to say whether or not they are in fact superior, but on paper they are for sure.

The average music listener, heck the average Head fi member probably can't tell apart from 30usd cheap Chinese IEMs vs 500usd IEM from Shure . That does not mean there is no difference, only that your tools (subjects) were not sensitive enough to pick up the difference.

Really? The subjects were people, young head-fi members, almost all of them in their 20s, there was one man in his 40s. Yes, you can have a measureable difference, but who cares, if we can't hear it, we can't hear it. If there are Golden Ears out there, which is possible; however, as with most statistical outliers, they are quite rare. That is the oldest argument in the book when people don't hear what they are told they should hear, suddenly the listener isn't sensitive enough. I am quite confident that my 7 head-fi members who acted as subjects were all quite up to the task. Anyway, this should stop before it gets into a Sound Science debate. Cheers.

Edit: And for what it is worth, I am university educated in experimental psychology practices so I do well understand the various aspects that can confound experiments.

 

[MICHAELSD]

@MICHAELSD I don't think in blind listening tests anybody could distinguish aptX from LDAC, I really don't. I conducted a 7 subject, multiple trial per subject blind listening test comparing a 320mp3 file from the lossless master it was made from and not one of the 7 people after 5 trials could do better than 50% detection rate, not one. aptX already can do better than a 320 sample rate so I would have to ask why higher sample rates as provided by LDAC would matter? I'm not trying to corner you, or start a big debate, but I don't think I have heard any real evidence that LDAC is superior. For the record I have not compared them so I can't say one way or the other, but going simply by sample rate differences I am not at this point convinced that it is a slam dunk that LDAC sounds better. There may be other aspects of implementing LDAC that make it a better choice, that is also possible, again, I have no way of knowing. I did have LDAC once with a Sony DAP and Sony headphone, but it was for a rather short time and I didn't notice anything particularly better as compared with my memory of aptX Bluetooth, personally.

LDAC is simply higher bitrate. Honestly I’m not sure most people could tell a difference between 320kbps MP3 and a lossless file in blind testing but I can pick out details in a lossless source on Audeze headphones I’ve tested that I can’t hear in compressed versions of the song. LDAC is technically superior to aptX just as AAC is also technically superior to aptX.

LDAC > AAC > aptX from a compression standpoint. (Not looking to get into a debate or get a bunch of PM’s looking for sources, I’ve had this debate many times already. It’s objective information.)

 

[Sonic Defender]

LDAC is simply higher bitrate. Honestly I’m not sure most people could tell a difference between 320kbps MP3 and a lossless file in blind testing but I can pick out details in a lossless source on Audeze headphones I’ve tested that I can’t hear in compressed versions of the song. LDAC is technically superior to aptX just as AAC is also technically superior to aptX.

LDAC > AAC > aptX from a compression standpoint. (Not looking to get into a debate or get a bunch of PM’s looking for sources, I’ve had this debate many times already. It’s objective information.)

Yes, I don't want a debate either, I agree. And I should have said bitrate, not sample rate, my bad.

 

[neddoge]

LDAC and AAC are both rather easily separated from aptX in my limited tests.

 

[RamSpencer]

LDAC is simply higher bitrate. Honestly I’m not sure most people could tell a difference between 320kbps MP3 and a lossless file in blind testing but I can pick out details in a lossless source on Audeze headphones I’ve tested that I can’t hear in compressed versions of the song. LDAC is technically superior to aptX just as AAC is also technically superior to aptX.

LDAC > AAC > aptX from a compression standpoint. (Not looking to get into a debate or get a bunch of PM’s looking for sources, I’ve had this debate many times already. It’s objective information.)

A whole group of us were able to pick rightly between 320 mp3's and CD quality on a really high quality speaker system. It was pretty close, but the difference was there. Go higher bitrate than that and it gets more dicy. It's more like a feeling then, than actual audio sound.

 

[MICHAELSD]

A whole group of us were able to pick rightly between 320 mp3's and CD quality on a really high quality speaker system. It was pretty close, but the difference was there. Go higher bitrate than that and it gets more dicy. It's more like a feeling then, than actual audio sound.

I agree. It’s more of a feeling than a discernible difference. Though I can tell there is a deeper bass, better separation, more detail in mids, better-extended treble on a quality pair of headphones. 320kbps MP3 is good but not reference quality. AAC is a better codec.

 

[MICHAELSD]

I look forward to the day all music is reference quality, even via Bluetooth.

 

[raband]

Mobius manages to meet expectations and I think you will all be pleased if you don’t expect too much out of them.

To set everybody’s expectations correctly, it’s important to remember that Mobius is a gaming headset

Ouch.

Faint praise indeed from the man who'd been pushing the Mobius as their end game, 2nd coming pair of headphones.

All good here - what you mention is exactly what I've been expecting all along, so am sure they'll live up to my expectations when they arrive.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

I think they made the right choice forgoing aptX. Mobius is a forward-thinking headphone. AAC and LDAC is better than the alternative. aptX HD may have been an option but they went in the right direction with LDAC instead. As I have said in the past, standard aptX isn’t enough of an improvement over SBC to worry about it. It’s overhyped and cheap. Plus with their decision they were able to fit a Bluetooth 5.0 chip in it, and be one of the first headphones to support it.

Point is this is first and foremost and gaming headset. Why would they then SKIP AptX which is absolutely, undeniably the faster codecs in terms of latency that Audeze could've used?

Yes, have the high quality codecs for the critical listener, but ALSO should've had lower latency codecs. It's just common sense to me. If this were a strict music headphone, then I understand foregoing speed for quality. But it's not just a music headphone.

Right now, this makes a great usb gaming headset. But for wireless gaming? You're gonna have some noticeable delay that may make it unplayable. ESPECIALLY if you're limited to SBC. That is VERY bad delay. Having AptX, or better, AptX LL, would've been VERY good for wireless gamers.

I lucked out that my Avantree transmitter has a proprietary fast codec "Fast Stream" that my Portapro wireless can take. Having an... ok sounding fast codec for gaming is way better than a perfect codec that doesn't sync with game audio on screen.

People really need to remember that this was marketed as a gaming headset. You WILL have people undoubtedly trying to use the Bluetooth function for gaming and will be a little disappointed.

This is coming from me, someone who is in love with this product in general.

I sincerely hope in the future, Audeze considers having fast codec in their repertoire for gamers, with future products.