Surround Sound Headphones

No, I don't think there's any facility for A/V sync in the plugin. For what it's worth, JRiver has a lip sync feature so that might solve the problem if you were using it with JRiver.

 

My Audeze Mobius "3D" headphones arrived today. Anyone else tried them yet? My verdict after the first few minutes is: this is the stupidest, most useless audio product I have ever wasted my money on. Like the WavesNX plugin, yes, it does provide a sort of outer-space type soundscape but there's no sense of surround sound whatsoever - the headphones fail to produce any sense of sound coming from behind the listener so your soundscape is entirely in front. The way the headphones deal with the rear channels is bizarre - it's like being a room with all five speakers laid out in a row in front of you, so the rear left is now to the left of the front left and the rear right is to the right of the front right. It sounds extremely weird and not at all realistic. They are very uncomfortable to wear and the controls are incredibly fiddly and badly designed - for example, it's impossible to scroll the headphone volume wheel without also accidentally pressing it, which operates a completely different function. I haven't read any other reviews yet - I wonder what other people are making of them?

Oh, I should have mentioned that they include a built-in head tracker which seems to work fairly well, but to me it's just a gimmick and I would never actually use it. At least they work out of the box, unlike the WavesNX plugin. But I think they are useless for 5.1 channel surround sound music unless of course I have them set up all wrong which is always a possibility!

I would be very interested to hear other opinions.

 

I'm supposed to receive mine soon. It will be interesting to compare impressions. I want to use them mostly for games and movies.

 

Unless the headphones have 6 or 8 separate drivers, they are not 5.1 or 7.1.

They are using psychoacoustics to fool the listener.

 

Supposed to receive mine soon too and this review is very disappointing. I already had the Nx app which was licensed to Audeze to create these headphones. The app was sort of OK for providing an enhanced effect although some might say it wasn't exactly 5.1 After several discussions with Audeze tech support I ordered the Mobius headphones which are supposed to be an improvement over the Nx software (at least that was the opinion of Audeze tech support). For a while I had the Nx tracker device which I found impossible to use and returned. If what you say is true I hope Audeze has a return policy! Worst case I thought I would have another interesting flavor of phones (I own B&W and Sony) to add to my collection but your review casts doubt on the functionality and comfort of the Audeze phones too (although I have not heard criticism of the comfort level of other Audeze headphones). Have you contacted Audeze about your impressions? If so, what was their response?

 

My guess is, the response wasn't made to him, rather from Marketing, to Management, and went something like, "This guy doesn't like it. This won't do anything to help us sell more of these!""Maybe we should ignore it, and concentrate on selling them to somebody who will write us a more helpful letter.""Better write him back first; he makes some significant points, so we'll have to make it sound like we're paying attention to him, otherwise he'll be all over the net with it..."

 

Just wanted to chime in this thread again...I have thoroughly enjoyed the Waves Nx app on my Mac in tandem with the Nx Head Tracker. I honestly believe this is the most realistic sounding “surround” experience on headphones I’ve yet heard. I don’t find the effect gimmicky at all - unlike the reports of others, I find the virtual surround imaging to be immersive and highly convincing with 5.1 content - nearly on par with most binaural recordings I’ve heard. When listening to the quad mix of Pink Floyd’s “Us And Them” for example, the repeats of the vocal during the verses (“Us”...”Them”) ping convincingly all around my head. And the effect of having each “speaker” stay in a static position when I turn my head is a game-changer, so much so that I prefer to use the Head Tracker for stereo-only listening as well.

Lest this sound like some blind praise for the product, there are a few issues with the Nx solution that I do struggle with:

- Bluetooth connectivity with the Head Tracker is sometimes a struggle to establish. For whatever reason, the Nx app will randomly not detect the presence of the Tracker. I’ve had to reinstall the Nx app several times to solve this - but it never permanently fixes the problem. Toggling between Camera and Tracker in the app Settings pane solves the problem more often then not.

- The latest version of the Nx app actually has a bug with some Macs where the center channel audio is present in all “five” virtual speakers at once. This kills the entire experience and renders the app useless. I reported this issue to Waves Tech Support months ago, and they acknowledged the issue and promised a fix. In the meantime, they advised me to use the previous version of the Nx app, which I am still using without this issue.

- Due to the heavy DSP and psychoacoustic processing, Nx tends to impact the overall mix EQ. This becomes immediately apparent when switching the app off while playing back a stereo mix. The original “non-processed” version often sounds somewhat cleaner, albeit the imaging is back inside your skull!

- The Nx iOS app is limited to processing audio from your Apple Music library only (or SoundCloud or Spotify). Since I use none of these services for music listening, I have no use for the iOS version of Nx.

One final point - if you want a simple plug-n-play solution, I’d probably discourage the use of Nx at this time. It requires some patience and proper operating system settings for successful 5.1 playback. Despite these issues, I continue to enjoy using Nx on an almost daily basis. YMMV, of course.

 

This is the reason I returned the Head Tracker device. Not a problem using head tracking with my B&W headphones and the app although the response was a bit sluggish with the camera in my display (I have a mid 210 Mac Pro tower).

 

No, I haven't contacted Audeze yet but since posting I've been to the Head-Fi site to look for other people's experiences and I see Audeze follows the Mobius thread there so I may post there later today.

Audeze Mobius review / impressions

I should emphasise that my very specific interest in these headphones is for listening to high quality 5.1 channel (or 5.0, 4.1 or 4.0 channel) surround sound music. I think most people would buy them for other reasons but I'm only talking abut multichannel surround sound and I'm only talking about music.

I think in the Head-Fi thread most people are using the headphones for other purposes such as movies or gaming but even so, I've seen several comments that the headphones don't actually deliver a "surround" sound experience in the sense that there's no illusion of sound from anywhere to the rear. I think anyone who buys these in the hope of emulating the sense of surround sound that you get from a high quality multi-channel music setup in the home will be very disappointed.

The way I would sum them up is that they produce exactly the same effect as the WaveNX plugin but are far simpler to use. So if you like and enjoy the WavesNX plugin, you will love these, but if you want multichannel surround sound and are unimpressed with the WaveNX plugin, you will be wasting your money.

The plus - as with the plugin - is that they produce a larger "out of your head" type of stereo soundscape instead of the "inside your head" experience you get from normal headphones. The downside is that this comes at the expense of very heavy DSP processing such as you get from switching on the enhancement effects in the sound control panel in Windows - even more if the head tracking is switched on as well. A lot of audio enthusiasts try to minimise the amount of processing that the audio signal goes through so, for them, I don't think these headphones are suitable.

The DSP also affects the EQ but I haven't listened enough to form a view of these effects yet. There are multiple EQ settings on the headphones including "flat" but it is never going to sound like surround sound in the home because of the very heavy processing.

I'm a big fan of Audeze's LCD products but clearly the Mobius headphones are aimed at a different market, not at me!

 

Bummer the Mobius not working well for you.

May be an excuse for you to try to demo the Smyth Realiser A16. Smyth Research is based in Northern Ireland. You're in a better location to potentially get a demo of the A16 than I am. The A16 version is still in prototype mode. But they've been doing trade show demos. Worth contacting them to see if you can demo it. Maybe they'll have a demo available in London so you don't have to travel.

I also agree that the heavy digital processing to do this sort of virtual 3D audio on headphones will detract from pure sound quality. Doing virtual 3D processing on headphones is the opposite of pure audiophile listening that strives to minimize processing. The 3D audio processing that wins for audiophiles will be the one that has the least invasive or destructive digital processing.

 

Yes, I'm curious to know whether the Smyth Realiser does a more convincing job and that's a good idea, asking them if there's anywhere I can demo.

 

I got my Audeze Mobius yesterday and could not wait to get back home to try them.

General impression first: They don't look cheap. I got the one with the copper accent and I must admit that I think they look stylish and there is nothing there that screams "hey look at me, I'm a gamer's headphones!". They also seems to be well made and of good material quality, but that is just a superficial first glance opinion.

They don't have large ear cups. I measured the inner distance at about 6.5--7cm which makes them smaller than the 9cm I measured on the HD 380 Pro. The padding is about average: neither pancake thin nor particularly cushy. These are closed earphones with a DAC/DSP unit on the left side and I assume that the battery is on the right all in all it doesn't contribute positively to lightness or cooling. These are definitely earphones you won't forget on your head.



Speaking of the DAC/DSP, it has plenty of control options, too many in fact because every single button or dial is located on the left side and has at least two functions depending on single click, long click, double click, click and dial and it depends whether the headphones are connected by USB or BT or analog cables...you may get the idea here that it is over complicated and daunting to use and you will be right. Luckily there are also Windows & Mac applications to help customize and set up this technological marvel.

Once on your head you can center them pressing the 3D button and from this point it will track the head movements to perform the 3D magic. Personally I found that it works well with multi-channel movie audio tracks (the King Kong opening for example was awesome), with the only caveat that you can't use WASAPI with JRiver with multi-channel audio when connected to USB (or at least I was too stupid to do it right) so I was limited to Direct Sound when watching movies. The feeling of sound localisation when moving the head was very close to the experience with a 5.1 speaker set. Close but not identical because the up/down and width stage is still not as good as what I get with mine.

Gaming experience is awesome. I have no idea if immersive sound really help you score better but it did manage to drag me back to play X-Com 2. BTW, the legacy pack is out and free on STEAM and is worth returning to this excellent strategy game.

So yes, the technology work.

Music is a mixed bag. Some will like it but I'm probably not one of them because even when playing with all the EQ options, disabling the 3D sound and enabling the high definition option, I still found them lacking. Ironically it was the sound stage that I found the most frustrating. I can't really quantify this experience but on my personal scale I would put them 2 rungs above the ATH-50Mx, one above the SONY MX3, basically the same as the Sennheiser HD380 Pro, one rung below the HD600 and 2 below the Focal Elex.

My own conclusion is that I will keep them for movies and gaming but they are not going to be used for relaxing with music or critical listening. They are a lot of fun, though.

 

paint foll

 

Thanks for this review!

I may need to go this route when I move from the house we're in now to what's likely to be an apartment in the city after my youngest son graduates high school. I was reminded during a discussion about this last night at dinner by my son that "the neighbors aren't going to like your loud music." Reality started to sink in and I may be making major cans investments when the time comes. I'm mostly going to need a movie option. This is going on my list of possibles for when that time comes around. It's be a couple of years. Who knows what will happen with surround headphones by that time. But, $400 is within a reasonable range, I think. So, at least there's these!