[fluffernutter]

Funny enough, Logitech’s wireless tech is actually faster than wired in some cases.

To answer your question about the MMW...no. It’s audio, not visual. It’s much more noticeable that your mouse isn’t responsive while playing at high frame rates than it is that your voice is coming out on a <40ms delay.

I’ve personally experimented with aptx-ll for gaming using a FiiO BTR3 to make my headphones wireless and the delay was largely imperceptible in most situations. For a microphone? It’s absolutely not a big deal. Your teammates aren’t processing whatever intel you are trying to share in those lost <40ms anyways.

I see what you mean. Visual is much more noticeable. It's good to be able to quantify it, too, so I appreciate (what I assume is) the estimation.

I assume you are speaking about the Lightspeed(TM) feature on some Logitech products?

 

[GiullianSN]

Funny enough, Logitech’s wireless tech is actually faster than wired in some cases.

To answer your question about the MMW...no. It’s audio, not visual. It’s much more noticeable that your mouse isn’t responsive while playing at high frame rates than it is that your voice is coming out on a <40ms delay.

I’ve personally experimented with aptx-ll for gaming using a FiiO BTR3 to make my headphones wireless and the delay was largely imperceptible in most situations. For a microphone? It’s absolutely not a big deal. Your teammates aren’t processing whatever intel you are trying to share in those lost <40ms anyways.

Bluetooth latency is quite noticeable for me and my squad when playing around. I tried a few options and always come back to wired. Hoping the Wi-Fi on Penrose sorts this problem.

 

[Xero the Banana]

Did you happen to try out Aptx-LL with rhythm games? I do agree on the topic of wireless, especially that gaming mice are very fast within the last few years, although for gaming sometimes those latency differences can be noticeable.

 

[BCM88]

Those mic samples are nice, gotta say even with the slightly obvious compression in the wireless sound, it's still really excellent quality for a set of wireless cans.

Great find @WhiteHartMart !!

 

[zachwagon]

Bluetooth latency is quite noticeable for me and my squad when playing around. I tried a few options and always come back to wired. Hoping the Wi-Fi on Penrose sorts this problem.

Bluetooth and Bluetooth aptx-LL are not the same thing. Unless you went out of your way with hardware choices and windows settings then I can almost guarantee you have never used the aptx-ll codec. The LL stands for low latency and it was designed for gaming and movie watching purposes to minimize delay.

 

[GiullianSN]

Yeah, I got that. I tried different configurations, including aptx-LL on different sources/receives. As you said it "minimize delay", but still noticeable for me.

 

[tokkun]

Because wireless technology is limited by bitrates, and headsets are splitting the limited bandwidth between the headphone audio and the microphone. 2.4ghz is better than Bluetooth, but it still has limits.

2.4 GHz wireless bandwidth isn't the limiting factor. On the extreme end of the spectrum, 802.11n has a maximum bandwidth of 300 Mbps at 2.4 GHz. Something like LDAC only uses up to 1 Mbps maximum, and that supports 24-bit 96 kHz audio. The bitrate limits we see in wireless audio are driven by the desire for energy efficiency and use of small antennae. Which is to say, these are design decisions and not fundamental limitations of 2.4 GHz wireless technology.

Did you happen to try out Aptx-LL with rhythm games? I do agree on the topic of wireless, especially that gaming mice are very fast within the last few years, although for gaming sometimes those latency differences can be noticeable.

aptX LL has a latency of about 40 ms or 2.5 frames at 60 Hz. If you are playing a rhythm game with precise timing, like DDR with Arcade scoring settings, you can notice the difference in that amount of latency. However it's not so large that you can't mentally adapt.

 

[zachwagon]

Did you happen to try out Aptx-LL with rhythm games? I do agree on the topic of wireless, especially that gaming mice are very fast within the last few years, although for gaming sometimes those latency differences can be noticeable.

No, I’ve never played that genre. That’s a genre I suspect you may notice it the most, because the delay can fluctuate in my experience. I mainly play FPS games.

2.4 GHz wireless bandwidth isn't the limiting factor. On the extreme end of the spectrum, 802.11n has a maximum bandwidth of 300 Mbps at 2.4 GHz. Something like LDAC only uses up to 1 Mbps maximum, and that supports 24-bit 96 kHz audio. The bitrate limits we see in wireless audio are driven by the desire for energy efficiency and use of small antennae. Which is to say, these are design decisions and not fundamental limitations of 2.4 GHz wireless technology.

Yes, but the end result is still a bandwidth limitation that has to be shared between the headphone and microphone.

 

[tokkun]

Yes, but the end result is still a bandwidth limitation that has to be shared between the headphone and microphone.

If you are using your own custom 2.4 GHz protocol, you could design your headphones with a high enough bitrate for high-fidelity microphone audio. Or you could make an option between high bitrate and low bitrate mode, so users can choose. That's what I mean when I say it is a design decision from a product standpoint.

However, I would be somewhat surprised if you actually needed a significantly higher bitrate to support better quality microphone audio. Because it is mono and the frequency range of the voice is limited, you can get high-fidelity voice recordings without that high of a bitrate. Even with ancient codecs like CBR mp3, 64 kbps is plenty.

I'd be very curious to hear the thoughts from the designers of these headphones on how they think about these tradeoffs. Microphone quality seems to be one of the most common complaints you see in reviews of wireless headsets, so it seems like there is a market for providing high-fidelity microphone audio.

 

[Dksk8]

Got this email yesterday.

We're also very close to being able to release the non-Microsoft headphones and hope to have specific dates for you within the next week or two. We're looking into the fastest shipping options available to us and will use whichever service is most viable for the speediest of possible deliveries. Thank you again for your continued patience!

 

[timwillhack]

I gotta admit I'm disappointed by the wireless mic sample. The quality compared to wired is immensely lower. Why after talking about how much bandwidth available in 2.4ghz do you send such a low quality audio stream? My mod mic wireless sounds much much better and it uses bluetooth (admittedly it apparently uses the entire bandwidth to its dongle, which is way better than any regular bluetooth headset/mic combo but in the real world no one cares as long as it works for what it is doing). Just search on soundcloud for 'mod mic wireless' for samples and play them after this Audeze wireless sample to hear the difference. I was really hoping I could replace my mod mic with this for streaming but the quality is too low, and now I'm questioning my decision to pre-order due to those samples. I've owned a Mobius and had pealing on the headband, that they admittedly replaced through the warranty but these devices look the same so it would really suck to get it and have the same problems with the pealing and have a low quality mic audio, just because you are trying to save some battery life or something. I want the 'broadcast' quality!! Please at least consider making some sort of setting available to change with a tooltip that says it lowers battery life.

So one of my questions is, is the wireless sample recorded from a bluetooth wireless mode, or is it in the 2.4ghz dongle mode? If its bluetooth to a normal bluetooth host then I understand the limitations but if its through the 2.4ghz wireless connection then I don't understand why its so bad.

 

[LupusWolf]

I was really hoping I could replace my mod mic with this for streaming but the quality is too low, and now I'm questioning my decision to pre-order due to those samples. I've owned a Mobius and had pealing on the headband, that they admittedly replaced through the warranty but these devices look the same so it would really suck to get it and have the same problems with the pealing and have a low quality mic audio, just because you are trying to save some battery life or something. I want the 'broadcast' quality!! Please at least consider making some sort of setting available to change with a tooltip that says it lowers battery life.

I was hoping for the same thing too with my mod-mic wireless. It would've been nice just having one all-inclusive device that was top-notch at both sound and recording. I guess the slight inconvenience of charging the modmic and my bluetooth receiver will still persist. Sad thing is wireless headset or wireless mic samples will usually represent the exact performance of the mic unlike other microphones where the receiving gear plays a big role in it's performance. If for some reason Audeze is holding out on the dongle mic that'd be wild. I'm assuming its the performance for both bluetooth and dongle.

The thing I'm surprised about is that from my current understanding the limitation isn't the 2.4ghz protocol, but the utilization of it? That does sound off though, Antlion explained it as the reason all headset mics suck is the need to share bandwidth, but now I'm hearing that bandwidth isn't an issue? Power is? Honestly, if Audeze just advertised this as the best sounding and best recording headset, but at the cost of some battery life (lets say 10hrs instead of 15hrs) I can see these being much more popular.

 

[timwillhack]

Yeah, I'm glad I'm not the only one... Their explanation to me seems off to be honest. Especially when they talk about having all that bandwidth with their own custom codec instead of being stuck in bluetooth codec land. The strength of the antenna wouldn't limit 2.4ghz to less than 1MB, in the bluetooth world LDAC etc only use 1MB and sounds great (stereo), 2.4ghz is like 300MB or something, our phones connect to wifi with tiny antennas, so I actually don't even buy the explanation of battery life. My Panda Headphones are like 30 hours in aptxhd or ldac mode. I understand that the mic would be another full stream, but in this example that would mean 1.5MB in a theoretical world (1 stereo + 1 mono mic).

I think my biggest problem is saying "lossless low-latency 2.4GHz Dual Wireless connection" Right in the main description of them is misleading and why I pulled the trigger in the first place (broadcast quality microphone + lossless low latency expectations), the difference in the mic samples (wireless vs wired) there is a definitive difference, and the wireless is obviously NOT lossless.

 

[KMann]

Yeah, I'm glad I'm not the only one... Their explanation to me seems off to be honest. Especially when they talk about having all that bandwidth with their own custom codec instead of being stuck in bluetooth codec land. The strength of the antenna wouldn't limit 2.4ghz to less than 1MB, in the bluetooth world LDAC etc only use 1MB and sounds great (stereo), 2.4ghz is like 300MB or something, our phones connect to wifi with tiny antennas, so I actually don't even buy the explanation of battery life. My Panda Headphones are like 30 hours in aptxhd or ldac mode. I understand that the mic would be another full stream, but in this example that would mean 1.5MB in a theoretical world (1 stereo + 1 mono mic).

I think my biggest problem is saying "lossless low-latency 2.4GHz Dual Wireless connection" Right in the main description of them is misleading and why I pulled the trigger in the first place (broadcast quality microphone + lossless low latency expectations), the difference in the mic samples (wireless vs wired) there is a definitive difference, and the wireless is obviously NOT lossless.

2.4Ghz Wireless for audio is not the the same as 'Wi-fi' used in wireless networking, so you do not have the bandwidth typically associated with wi-fi networking. Even Bluetooth operates in the 2.4Ghz band, you could call BT also 2.4Ghz wireless then why is BT lossy? These technologies differ in the underlying protocols used and how the data is encoded and decoded with enough error correction built. Each of these technologies have their own design goals and priorities. BT for example uses a channel hopping protocol but does not guarantee a latency (even in low latency BT) and is lossy as it uses compression. The 2.4Ghz radio we have chosen use a proprietary protocol that guarantees a 16ms latency and also guarantees loss less audio transmission and the lack of compression is also a reason for the low latency. Like BT, the 2.4Ghz audio also has limitations on data bandwidth. However, it is optimized such that the dongle is able to transmit lossless audio to the headset at a very low latency. The microphone audio that is transmitted from the headset back to the dongle has to use the rest of the bandwidth and has to do this at a low latency too. Here too no compression is done except the microphone signal is band limited to make the best use of the audio frequencies for voice.

Audeze does not design or invent wireless protocols, we prefer designing headphones. But we are nimble footed and choose the best technology that is available and incorporate that in our product road map. Penrose uses the best wireless technology that is available in the market (to our knowledge) for audio that would work with the form factor and power requirements for a wireless headset.

 

[Placide]

2.4Ghz Wireless for audio is not the the same as 'Wi-fi' used in wireless networking, so you do not have the bandwidth typically associated with wi-fi networking. Even Bluetooth operates in the 2.4Ghz band, you could call BT also 2.4Ghz wireless then why is BT lossy? These technologies differ in the underlying protocols used and how the data is encoded and decoded with enough error correction built. Each of these technologies have their own design goals and priorities. BT for example uses a channel hopping protocol but does not guarantee a latency (even in low latency BT) and is lossy as it uses compression. The 2.4Ghz radio we have chosen use a proprietary protocol that guarantees a 16ms latency and also guarantees loss less audio transmission and the lack of compression is also a reason for the low latency. Like BT, the 2.4Ghz audio also has limitations on data bandwidth. However, it is optimized such that the dongle is able to transmit lossless audio to the headset at a very ow latency. The microphone audio that is transmitted from the headset back to the dongle has to use the rest of the bandwidth and has to do this at a low latency too. Here too no compression is done except the microphone signal is band limited to make the best use of the audio frequencies for voice.

Audeze does not design or invent wireless protocols, we prefer designing headphones. But we are nimble footed and choose the best technology that is available and incorporate that in our product road map. Penrose uses the best wireless technology that is available in the market (to our knowledge) for audio that would work with the form factor and power requirements for a wireless headset.

Im new to the audiophile world, and wireless headsets in general, but have been a gamer (sometimes competitive) for over 24 years and the samples sound fine to me for the microphone. Granted, I care more about the audio from the game than my microphone nowadays. Cant wait to get my Penrose X. The delay is frustrating - but I realize out of Audeze's hands.