[Kikomo9610]

Hi @Audeze can I check if the stocks to Singapore will be delivered to the partners here anytime soon?

 

[Audeze]

Hi @Audeze can I check if the stocks to Singapore will be delivered to the partners here anytime soon?

We have shipped the units. It should arrive soon.

 

[Dryad]

Anyone here encountering Windows system crashes when inserting the USB dongle?

No such issues for me, sounds like you have some other Windows - related issue (hey, who doesn't ^^).
Does it crash every time or only occasionally? Works ok after a reboot?

 

[Dryad]

Didn't see any reply to my question about the mic lute button apparently not doing anything while in wireless mode; is this also a feature or do I have a problem there?

 

[WhiteHartMart]

Here's my experience/feedback with the penrose from the last couple of days.

I've been waiting on these for quite some time. On paper they have the perfect specs for what I'm looking for. I was looking for an audiophile gaming headset and preferably wireless.
Didn't have a planar headphone yet and thought this would be a good introduction. I was using a PC37 before and when I'm not gaming a I use a T1.2. I didn't use any Audeze headphones before this one. I use them solely on PC, I don't have any intention to use them on a console.

Initial impressions were not good unfortunately. High noise floor, muffled microphone, way too loud notification voice, not comfortable... I'm happy that a couple of these issues were solved with a firmware updated. But not everything is fixed...

Comfort:
Coming from the pc37 these are not comfortable headphones when you wear them for hours on end. Not a lot of contact on the top of the had. Clamping force is way too much, to the point where I got a headache after wearing these for a couple of hours. The pads are not for me either, I like velour/fabric way more. I know that leather is better for noise isolation but they just don't feel all that good for leather as well imo and there's no option for other pads. The clamping force can be improved by stretching them out over something but that only fixes it partially.

I'm not sure why they went with this design. The penrose and mobius look different from other Audeze products. Too make them more appealing to gamers? Or because they are wireless? There's a reason almost all sennheisers and beyerdynamics for example look the same. They know what works and they stick to it. When you make a product for people to wear hours on end, ergonomics really need to be more important here. Maybe it's all very personal and they just don't fit me very well? I don't know, they are just not for me I guess. The pc37 is a breath of fresh air when I put it on after having tried the penrose.

Functionality:
This feels like a product that needs some more iteration. Things are just not on point. The scroll wheels for volume don't have enough granularity. They are either too loud or too silent for some games for me. Even by changing the EQ in the app to lower the overall volume, this is still not great. What's wrong with a continuous scroll? Also, does anyone use the scroll wheel for your voice? For me this is something that you find the ideal settings for on the mic, discord etc. and then leave it at that. Never ever have I thought to myself, now I want to increase my microphone sensitivity or lower it on the fly. You have 0 feedback when you change this so there's no way to see if it works correctly unless you look at something like discord and check your voice anyway, so whats the point.

The audeze HQ app is, well... Very basic. Doesn't work unless you connect through USB. Sidetone adds a noticeable (extra) hiss, and changing the mix between game/voice does not seem to work. To update the firmware you have to download a new app version, really? Why can you simply not show a notification in the app if a new one is available. And when you open up the app without connecting anything it shows stuff for the mobius? There's so much more that you could do with the app but it seems like a minimal effort kind of thing they went with.

Also, no way to see battery status, anywhere. Why is this not a thing in the app?

The 2.4Ghz wireless connectivity sucks. Goes out of range in about 5m clear line of sight for me and that's with the front, most accessible USB port. Doesn't matter which USB ports you use btw, I tried them all. Also had a couple of connection drops even though I'm just sitting at my PC with the dongle less than 1m from me. Go past a corner and the connection drops instantly.
Bluetooth on the other hand has great range and I can go anywhere without it dropping. Through walls/ceilings etc. is not an issue and seems to work great.

Sound:
This is the only good thing about this headset. The sound is awesome. It's the first time I've used planars so not sure if it's because of that or this headset specifically. But the detail is great in games. I hear things that I could not hear before in terms of clarity and spatial awareness. The imaging seems just right for locating footsteps and noises in games. And the powerful low end is great for immersion. Best gaming headset I've used so far in terms of sound quality, better than expected.

For music these are great as well. Very clean low end and punchy bass, exactly what I wanted from planars. I still prefer my T1's overall for everyday use but I can imagine this would be a good headset for the audiophile for everyday use in terms of sound quality.

The microphone quality is great after the firmware update. The PC37 I used before is known for it's good/clear microphone but people I play with said the sound is even better with the penrose.

There's 1 big issue imo with the sound, a very noticeable hiss. Even though it got improved with a firmware updated, it's still too much for a headphone at this price point. It does not matter if it's connected through 2.4, BT or aux. It constantly has a hiss that ruins the experience for me. I would have expected a tiny bit of hiss/noise from a wireless headset, but not this much. My girlfriends ATH-M50xBT for example, has some hiss but it's almost not noticeable. With the penrose it's even noticeable when there's audio being played at low volume. I have some mild tinnitus and having white noise constantly present at any volume, especially when there's no sound, makes this headset currently unbearable for me for longer usage. For an audiophile headset I would have expected better in this regard.

Conclusion:
I wanted the audeze penrose to be the perfect gaming headset so bad, it seems to have all the right specs. But in practice it fall short on everything except for the sound quality. It's clear that the drivers are the thing that audeze has put time and effort in (past experience), but I wished that they would have done the same for everything else.

To me it seems like they took 1 good existing thing and tried to make a new product with it, but everything else was basically an afterthought.
Maybe the comfort is something that only I have issues with? I don't see many people complain except for the clamping force.

I want to recommend the penrose to other people and tell everyone it's the best gaming headset there is. But looking at the full picture, it really is not. I hope that audeze gets there eventually, but at the moment I'm thinking of switching them out for something else

A lot of this matches with my experience too (now that the initial honeymoon period is over). I have the PC37x also (and PC38x) and thought day one these clamped as hard - I was wrong, these seem to have started to clamp even harder for me now - wondering if the pads have softened a fraction now - so much so that they seem to literally suck on to my ears and the side of my head - guess that's the nature of comparing closed back to open back.

I've decided to return mine, the range (while ok) still causes me some issues, the all round comfort just isn't for me (unless I only want to wear them for 30 mins or so) and I've spent much more time just using my PC38x and Tygr 300r (which I prefer the audio on for FPS by a fair way) - since I received the Penrose. The Penrose are superb for music though but I bought them as a gaming headset. Perhaps this just confirms closed back isn't for me?

@Audeze - wish you well with the Penrose - if you ever fancy designing an open backed wireless gaming headset (with velour facing pads, better top pad and slightly less clamp) I'll be at the front of the queue!!

 

[WhiteHartMart]

Didn't see any reply to my question about the mic lute button apparently not doing anything while in wireless mode; is this also a feature or do I have a problem there?

My Mic mute button was working fine in wireless mode - keeping sidetone on helps you test a little as the noise floor increases noticeably with sidetone on.

 

[sleepyweasel]

Thank you for your feedback. We understand it falls short of your expectations. Some of it firmware related and fixable. Some choices like headband is not.
But we do plan to adding features and improving it.

This is somewhat surprising – Mobius and Penrose have the same clamping force – and both headbands willstretch over time (or use the “pillow method” proposed by another Head-Fi’er). We’ve sold almost 100K units over the past few years, and we haven’t received any major long-term complaints on this.


With Mobius and also Penrose, we had to add additional items (Batteries, Accelerometer/Gyro incase of Mobius, dual antennas for Penrose) etc. We also had to go with closedback and make sure the weight of the Planar drivers do not make it very heavy. So this was a choice that was influenced by making closed planars as well as making them efficient.



Granularity - We plan to have finer adjustments with firmware upgrades in future. The mic volume is intentional. People use this because somene on the other side says, the volume is too low.


The App doesnt have to be updated to update the firmware. Unless we add new features to the app (which is also planned), you do not need to download the app again. Firmware updates shows up when we update the firmware in the cloud.
Battery status will be in the next version of app.




There are only a couple of chipsets in the market. Almost every company making low latency wireless use the same chipsets. The choice is between lower latency, data rate and range.


The noise floor on Penrose with the current firmware (0.1.5) is very low. With the new firmware it is atleast 18 dB lower. Hae you turned off the side tone ?


As we mentioned earlier, we plan to add / modify a number of features over the next month. Android app to control the Penrose wirelessly is queued for release on the google app store for next week.

Thank you for your response. It's great that you're responding to peoples feedback here, even if it's mostly negative in cases like mine.

- Design/comfort: then I guess it's just not for me unfortunately. I do hope you will keep iterating and improving things for future products.
- Granularity: I'm happy that this will be improved in the future, thank you.
- App: for me the new firmware 0.1.5 didn't show up until I updated the app. But maybe it will in the future? Battery status will be much appreciated.
- Range: I'll probably just check if the BT delay is not too much and might just stick with that then.
- Noise: this is with side tone off yes. With it on, it's even louder. I have no way of measuring sound volume level, but the noise that I'm hearing as I said is noticeable even with low volume music so in my case I would not call it low. I really hope this can be improved still, it's besides the comfort the most important thing that will prevent me from using it or make me switch to something else.

After hearing the sound quality of the penrose, I truly believe you guys have the possibility to create the actual best gaming headset on the market. I feel like the penrose and mobius are just trying to do too much at once?
Create a simple and basic wired gaming headset with the same drivers and microphone and an updated design. Lose all the wireless connectivity and extra 'features'. Have only a mute button and volume button (even optional) and this would hands down be the best on the market. I know you guys have the LCD-GX but that is in a totally different price bracket and also seems like a transition product somewhere in between 2 worlds. I was considering that one first but I'm wary about the (long term) comfort and microphone quality.

All in all I think it's great what you guys are trying to do and I'm just sad it doesn't work out for me. I am still considering getting some other planar headphones cause you definitely made me interested in planars. I guess a pair of audiophile headphones and separate mic will suit me best.

 

[Dryad]

My Mic mute button was working fine in wireless mode - keeping sidetone on helps you test a little as the noise floor increases noticeably with sidetone on.

Hrm ok will test some more. It should be a hardware switch I suppose, disabling mic regardless of how one is connected. I was playing with it in mute position all along, but since they all heard me I never realized until I started looking into the weird repeating sound my teammates were observing.

It seems these have a lot of baby issues, might return them for the time being as well. Definitely will if the mute switch is not functioning.

 

[ramordep]

No such issues for me, sounds like you have some other Windows - related issue (hey, who doesn't ^^).
Does it crash every time or only occasionally? Works ok after a reboot?

Nah, I am using legit Windows
Happened to me twice right after inserting the dongle.

 

[rambutan]

Nah, I am using legit Windows
Happened to me twice right after inserting the dongle.

Do you have a Corsair keyboard or iCue running?

 

[Dryad]

Hrm ok will test some more. It should be a hardware switch I suppose, disabling mic regardless of how one is connected. I was playing with it in mute position all along, but since they all heard me I never realized until I started looking into the weird repeating sound my teammates were observing.

It seems these have a lot of baby issues, might return them for the time being as well. Definitely will if the mute switch is not functioning.

Is there supposed to be a voice feedback when muting/unmuting the microphone using the switch on the side?

 

[MisterShakerNL]

It is actually not 90/10 all the time. It actually varies depending on the use case, devices used etc. For example, if you are playing 2.4 Ghz and Bluetooth audio (not voice call), the balance is different compared to when you are playing n 2.4 Ghz + Bluetooth call. We you are on a phone call, our assumption is the voice call audio is more important, so more emphasis is given.
The decision was made by us just using this at our offices for a few months and testing it with various scenarios (eg - answering a call in the middle of a game). We also found out that when calling from IOS or Android devices makes a difference in voice call volume. So there are a few different settings already baked in.

The problem is that Discord on android (which is probably one of the main use cases with dual connection for gamers), is handled as a phone call and is therefore completely useless in combination with at least the consoles. Removing absolute volume control slightly helps, but since the balance is So extreme, it makes for continuous adjustment (else when u get off the discord server your ears will explode).

 

[XDaddyBearX]

Ordered headphones from drop. Shipped on the 14th December arriving today. I live in the UK. @Audeze When did you guys ship to uk distributors?

Penrose x

 

[Metalingus]

I've purchased HyperX Cloud Orbit, which shares same Audeze drivers but different housing and feature set.

Sound quality was better than anything i've tried in price range. Gaming is cool but i spent hours and hours on tidal. Btw i also own LCD-X. Now i sold my HyperX and placing an order for OG Penrose for PS5.

 

[chargear]

@Audeze since you appear active recently, I'll +1 both of these items and add a few more.

Possibility of allowing users to change the balance between BT audio and 2.4 Ghz audio.

1. For me, this is the single thing standing between 'the headset are works well across my varied uses (PC gaming, PS5 Gaming, Work/Zoom calls on Mac)'; and 'I regret buying this headset for the PS5+Discord, and wish I can justify paying for a different pair'.

Would love if my mic volume scroll wheel would be replaced by a 2.4Ghz/Bluetooth mix volume function instead.
Which funny enough, I now leave at max and never touch - exactly because people on the other side can control their own call/mix volume.

I might have the same problem. I'm using the Penrose with the Apple USB-C/USB-A/HDMI adapter. I have to plug/unplug about 6 times before it will stay connected. I have 2 of these adapters and it happens with both. I have a PC where it connects fine. I've contacted support but not heard back.

2. I too have the same issue on my Macbook Air, using the standalone apple USB-C to A adapter.

It's about 50/50 if it work right away, or if I need to try plugging it in again to stay connected.

Once the connection's stable, it's fine for the rest of the session.


3. Apart from that, multiple 2.4Ghz dongles for different devices and quickswitch would make it close to perfect.
I'd happily pay extra for that if it were possible.

Convenience aside, I'm concerned about the long term damage to the USB dongle slot having to re-plug it in different devices a few times a day.

Anyone else with this worry?


4. Adjustable auto-power off timer would be nice.
I find it switching off way too quick while it's on my head when I get distracted with something, and have nothing playing in the background.

Case in point, I didn't realise it switched off while I was writing this exact reply .

Un-paused the movie I was watching and had no sound, so I came back to edit the post as it happens often enough to be annoying.