I started a thread asking for advice about wireless cans in the studio and ended up with these. Wanted to give a quick review, which I’ll update if I feel any different later.
I think these are just transformatively amazing. The main thing that sets them apart, for me, from other wireless headphones with a transmitter, is that they come with a little stand/charger/transmitter unit, and you never have to remember to charge them or hold down or even press any button to pair them. You just pick them up and put them on, and a few seconds later a recoded voice tells you they’re paired. After that they are functionally indistinguishable from wired headphones. When you are finished, put them down. They take up less desk space than I expected, too.
Latency is supposed to be 4ms and that has been borne out in my testing. There is no discernable latency to my ears. When I first set them up I powered the transmitter with a USB-C cable attached to my USB hub (Caldigit TS4) and this caused a faint but ever-present ground hum. When I used the included power supply, though, plugged into my UPS, the headphones were silent. I have the audio input connected to the headphone output of my Mackie mixer, and this gives me a more than strong enough signal.
The headphones sound good. Bass is a little hyped for my taste, but I’m accustomed to AKG open-backed cans. These are supposed to be “semi-open-back” but they just feel like regular closed-back cans to me. Also, specific only to me, these fit flawlessly right out of the box. I have kind of a problem with most headphones in that my ears are kinda high on my head, so even though I have a decent sized noggin I can’t get many headphones adjusted small enough. I didn’t even have to adjust these and the cups are very comfortable. You can also attach them with a cable if you want.
Ultimately I did not need these to sound great, I only needed them to be reliable and low-latency for tracking and other musical and professional tasks. (And playing videogames, natch.) And I will use my wired phones for mixing. So, the fact that I more or less like the sound is a bonus. I don’t have super discerning ears though so YMMV.
I don’t know why there aren’t more products like this. Again, not the low-latency transmitter part, but the charging/transmitting stand. It seems like a small thing but for me it’s the killer feature…you can pick them up and put them on just like wired cans, period. You never, ever have to manually pair them or remember to charge them. They seem like a miracle.
I think they debuted at $560 but are now $350.
