[-HaVoC-Tzu-]

I was fortunate enough to sample the THx Panda last night in San Francisco.
Here is my review:

 

[AlwaysForward]

Correct, there's no audio over USB-C, so the connection to your phone/laptop is BT.

Given the headphone measures the same THD + FR in active and passive mode (only HP on Earth with the same THD) you're not losing anything by switching to Bluetooth provided the chipset in your laptop can manage aptxHD.

As an Apple user, this is such a huge miss for me. All of the advantages of this system and it's completely bypassed if an apple user wants to go lossless. I don't imagine this is a thing that can be activated like DSP. This device seems like it was created to provide a "full system" experience on the go. But not being able to access lossless with the inbuilt full-system via an apple device is very much a disappointing set of design decisions.

Too bad. They do sound pretty good.

 

[PopZeus]

See, my take on lossless via iOS is really an Apple issue. They barely support lossless on their platform, certainly less than Android does. And they don't make it convenient either, when they most definitely could with a minimal development effort. For all we know, Apple might make it even harder in the future because the vast majority of Apple users don't care about lossless and they love to close gates in the name of convenience.

 

[AlwaysForward]

See, my take on lossless via iOS is really an Apple issue. They barely support lossless on their platform, certainly less than Android does. And they don't make it convenient either, when they most definitely could with a minimal development effort. For all we know, Apple might make it even harder in the future because the vast majority of Apple users don't care about lossless and they love to close gates in the name of convenience.

This also includes macs, not just phones. Sure, we can split hairs on how sound is handled on each platform but android has its own long dirty list of flaws. I’ll skip it for this discussion but let’s just say it’s a push at best.

it’s funny, the Drop office has all the typical Silicon Valley swag and they must know that plugging into a computer directly is a huge use case.

I have to believe this is either a huge oversight or a deliberate design decision. Having a fancy Thx amp that only works wireless and has no usb option? How the heck did that make it through the product design meetings without being addressed? Either it was talked about and the decision was to leave it out because it could compromise the sale of THX-AAA Amps or they have a design team who is just not forward thinking with their user stories.

 

[WillBright]

@AlwaysForward

Yep, the points you raise were discussed by our team, but ultimately our decisions are based on discussion analysis, not user stories or what we personally like. Personally, I think it's a reasonable use-case, but in all the posts across head-fi, drop, reddit, etc, only about 5% of the community expressed any sentiment (positive or negative, so we're not even talking about the people for it, talking about the people who care in either direction) around using BT headphones (or heapdhones in general) over USB. Everyone in the community (90%+) highly valued charging speed and battery hygene, which aligns with the wireless focus we observed, so these combine to say passive input is sufficient. Totally understand if it's a deal-breaker for you, but hopefully this provides some interesting context for our process.

Digressions:

Much to our CFO's dismay, we've never reduced the scope of new product to maintain sales on other products (re: theory that we didn't add USB because we want to sell standalone amps).

It's a shame that Apple won't support anything better than AAC. My guess is that they'll release an LDAC equivalent codec and make it only available on Beats and Apple headphones, but I'm sure there's a better thread for theory crafting around Apple's audio play.

 

[AlwaysForward]

Ok so mad respect for the transparency:

I do feel the counter argument is lacking. Yes, the data shows that users care for battery hygiene but does that relegate USB-Audio as mutually exclusive? I have to wager “no”

Napkin math; let’s say the typical Lithium Ion Battery has 300-500 charge cycles. And that charging from over 50% to max capacity results in less than 1 cycle: by leaving my theoretically USB capable headphones plugged into my laptop while I’m at work, I’m using less than 1 cycle per day.

Net net, it’s the same or potentially better to plug in via usb for hygiene/longevity. The other two use cases which are implemented:
-Wireless: poorer sound, more battery use
-Wired: minimal drain yet must bring traditional rig in bag/backpack. Advantages = negated. Battery use vs USB = push (vs possible USB advantages by keeping battery topped off)

So an audiophile headphone was made that only realizes its “full system on the go” with Android/Windows users.

This was clearly developed with a special intent. An innovative one. One that I absolutely crave.

However, this product is half baked by having it’s onboard system hamstrung, imho.

The designers made sure to include every single codec to the chipset and completely forgot that users just don’t want to buy/carry DAP/Dongles and missed the opportunity to actually solve the problem and maximize the performance of the included platform.

This platform had so much potential. Am extremely disappointed in the execution here. There should be a hard look at product management.

A great product manager would have seen this potential and innovated in a way that changed what people value. Don’t just follow. Set the tone for the conversation.

 

[WillBright]

Ok so mad respect for the transparency:

I do feel the counter argument is lacking. Yes, the data shows that users care for battery hygiene but does that relegate USB-Audio as mutually exclusive? I have to wager “no”

Napkin math; let’s say the typical Lithium Ion Battery has 300-500 charge cycles. And that charging from over 50% to max capacity results in less than 1 cycle: by leaving my theoretically USB capable headphones plugged into my laptop while I’m at work, I’m using less than 1 cycle per day.

Net net, it’s the same or potentially better to plug in via usb for hygiene/longevity. The other two use cases which are implemented:
-Wireless: poorer sound, more battery use
-Wired: minimal drain yet must bring traditional rig in bag/backpack. Advantages = negated. Battery use vs USB = push (vs possible USB advantages by keeping battery topped off)

So an audiophile headphone was made that only realizes its “full system on the go” with Android/Windows users.

This was clearly developed with a special intent. An innovative one. One that I absolutely crave.

However, this product is half baked by having it’s onboard system hamstrung, imho.

The designers made sure to include every single codec to the chipset and completely forgot that users just don’t want to buy/carry DAP/Dongles and missed the opportunity to actually solve the problem and maximize the performance of the included platform.

This platform had so much potential. Am extremely disappointed in the execution here. There should be a hard look at product management.

A great product manager would have seen this potential and innovated in a way that changed what people value. Don’t just follow. Set the tone for the conversation.

Thanks for your response! You hit on some fun topics that I don't often get to discuss with the community.

It's the standard approach for product managers, to think real hard and guess what the community wants. People don't know what they want until you show them right? Unfortunately for traditional product managers, that's not true in most cases. This is why most new products fail. Think about all the BT headphones to release in the last five years, 1000s, how many have staying power as a community recommendation? ~10.

People know what they want, they're just bad at telling you. To really understand what people want, you have to listen.

DROP's approach, Community-Centered Design, is about listening to what a section (usually a big one for us because we're a business) of the community wants in terms of experience (wireless audiophile sound), developing a hypothesis (we could combine high bandwidth codecs, AAA, and PM tech, to create this system), refining that hypothesis with validation groups composed of representative community members (their activity indicates alignment with the broader community value system), and finally, releasing a product that delivers an experience which is aligned with the community value system.

Your desire to use Panda's chipset over USB, as a replacement for the on-board electronics in your laptop/device is noted, and given that's not the experience we built Panda to deliver, I don't think you should buy a Panda, it's not what you want. Sounds like you want a Helm Audio DB12 Cable to use with your headphone of choice.

To answer "but you could have...", sadly no. Beyond the issues described above, we'd have to add an entire USB DAC section to Panda, which would make the housing non-trivially larger and would increase the retail price to a point where it's interesting to a much smaller audience.

 

[Sonic Defender]

Adding to the sample I have no interest in using a BT headphone via USB (although I acknowledge that for some it may be useful) and I have to agree with Will. The tradeoffs would be significant for very little value. I suspect we will start to see if it isn't already happening that laptops start to come with decent Bluetooth chips and implementations so that you can simply stream to the headphone directly. I also know that many people add good quality Bluetooth dongles when the built-in BT is lacking.

 

[Lunar Eclipse]

What about utilising the onboard thx amp with analog 3.5mm jack? Is that implemented?

Thanks for your response! You hit on some fun topics that I don't often get to discuss with the community.

It's the standard approach for product managers, to think real hard and guess what the community wants. People don't know what they want until you show them right? Unfortunately for traditional product managers, that's not true in most cases. This is why most new products fail. Think about all the BT headphones to release in the last five years, 1000s, how many have staying power as a community recommendation? ~10.

People know what they want, they're just bad at telling you. To really understand what people want, you have to listen.

DROP's approach, Community-Centered Design, is about listening to what a section (usually a big one for us because we're a business) of the community wants in terms of experience (wireless audiophile sound), developing a hypothesis (we could combine high bandwidth codecs, AAA, and PM tech, to create this system), refining that hypothesis with validation groups composed of representative community members (their activity indicates alignment with the broader community value system), and finally, releasing a product that delivers an experience which is aligned with the community value system.

Your desire to use Panda's chipset over USB, as a replacement for the on-board electronics in your laptop/device is noted, and given that's not the experience we built Panda to deliver, I don't think you should buy a Panda, it's not what you want. Sounds like you want a Helm Audio DB12 Cable to use with your headphone of choice.

To answer "but you could have...", sadly no. Beyond the issues described above, we'd have to add an entire USB DAC section to Panda, which would make the housing non-trivially larger and would increase the retail price to a point where it's interesting to a much smaller audience.

 

[cel4145]

I was fortunate enough to sample the THx Panda last night in San Francisco.
Here is my review:

Got the two sentence summary for those of us who are limited on time?

 

[-HaVoC-Tzu-]

Got the two sentence summary for those of us who are limited on time?

Sure.
If you want the best sounding Bluetooth wireless headphones currently out, it’s probably the Panda.
Although the bass is a little muddy, and there is no ANC, the volume levels get quite high with great isolation.
P.S. 30 hour battery life.

 

[WillBright]

 

[HipHopScribe]

Probably a big mistake for audiophile listeners, who want to be able to push power to a planar. Just lost interest in the Panda.

Speak for yourself, I think a lot of us realize that balanced does not matter for an efficient headphone. This isn't an HE-6

 

[ribosradagast]

That's quite a strange FR for over-ear headphones IMO. I don't recall seeing another graph with that much flatness for that much of the spectrum...
Certainly far and away from the Harmon Target response curve I'd think

Regardless I'm still extremely curious to hear them

 

[metal571]

I'd like to reiterate this again just in case people get the wrong idea because there's very little ear resonance peak. This is a raw, uncompensated graph.