the first time i got my hands on some planar magnetic headphones from odyssey
was when i treated myself to a pair of secondhand lcd 2s now i never made a
video about those because my reason for buying them was so that i would have
something to use as a reference for what truly high-end sounded like giving me
the context that i needed for the consumer headphones and the gaming
headsets that i was evaluating fast forward a few years and odyssey has
brought a lot of that same technology into a gaming headset
this is the lcd gx
does it have built-in vibration motors
no RGB also no uh dolby digital dongle
no but is it ludicrous overkill in its own way
absolutely origin pc just introduced multiple Corsair case options for their
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you know i thought the fancy case was because this is a reviewer's kit but as
it turns out it's only slightly modified from the
retail one
look at this thing it's ridiculous user guide and driver
downloads and then a certificate of authenticity inspected
by wow it's actually that actually signed by something i
think it is wait what this is just a brochure this is all their other products you already
you already got me for the lcd gx i don't need all this other stuff look at
how cushy those ear cups are brandon they haven't changed their design
language really no they really haven't have they they look
just about identical other than the red
gamery accents on the earcups to the lcd2s instead of wood though it's all
metal so you don't have that that wood grain
finish on the outsides here got the same size adjustment mechanism that i
have never honestly been a huge fan of it's kind of rudimentary feeling that's
the funny thing about these high-end headphone brands though right is that on
the one hand they are mass producing these things but on the other some of
their manufacturing techniques seem to be carryovers from when they were like hand
making dozens of them at a time that is a gigantic ear cup
that is already such a large ear cut out that
i don't touch it on any side curiously
unlike a lot of the headphones they don't have a non-leather vegan option
for the gaming sku but this feels so nice you can really tell when an audio
product is designed to be disposable versus when it's designed to be used for
many many years so these ear cups are
wait a minute yeah i don't think these are removable strictly speaking you
could definitely replace them by taking these off and gluing new ones on there
but uh yep curiously even though they've got a
leather strap up here that kind of looks like a suspension style headphone strap
it comes up right against the metal headband so you can feel it through the
top do i look ridiculous do they look too big for my head yes
oh well i thought you were going to be nice about it let's have a look at the cables nice
okay well that's nice so i look ridiculously nice then is that what you
mean to say yeah thanks brandon show up at the lan party with one of these
likes up serious game right now
oh that's adorable now let's sort through our cable situation you don't
actually need all of these so on the bottom of each ear cup is a mini xlr and
that way you can replace the cables that come with it with whatever cables you
want or you can swap out between the two that it does include so this one right
here uses a quarter inch jack and is meant to
plug into you know whatever your hi-fi equipment is we're not going to need
that because we're gamers today folks we're gonna be gaming the right ear cup
plugs in as normal and the left ear cup has actually got a little attached
microphone on it again no fancy features no you know mute when you lift it or you
know indication led on it or anything like
that it's not retractable or anything like that it's just a pretty basic boom
mic you want to get that right by the corner of your mouth there then we've got a simple 4-pole 3.5 millimeter jack
on the other end which most people if they're not plugging into a laptop are
probably going to want to plug into this splitter right here and
this is the extra piece that came with the
reviewers kit so this is a hell
i know i i don't make the rules that's what the product is called it's a
audio hell and you plug in your two micro usbs and
this is a usb amp and dac that also has
an input which is kind of nice that you can hook up to your gaming laptop or
desktop or whatever and then you plug in
your brand new fancy pants headphones at the front like that
and you are ready for some gaming all right so you think you're a gamer but
here's the thing i lied to you guys a little bit this isn't my first time opening these up i
took them for a test drive the other night and the problem is that immediately after
throwing them on i was like okay well i got to set up obs for my new audio
device why don't i throw on a playlist and i'll listen to some music on them
before i go live 25 35 minutes later i'm
kind of sitting there going yeah am i that much of a gamer do i really need to
go live right now or should i just jam out to some tunes can you hear this
through the microphone right now yes oh okay sorry about that
also i guess i've probably been yelling thing is the benefits of planar magnetic
drivers are several they are enormous which means
that they can move a lot of air is which is what generates sound and additionally
they're extremely light like like like
nano layer light so what that means is
that they're incredibly responsive so whether it's deep thunderous bass i mean
the kind of thing that you that you feel rather than just hear or whether it's
very high-end details that you need and whether it's when you're listening to
music or as a gamer like listening for
uh footsteps the reproduction is
incredible they do have some drawbacks they are open-backed which as you can
see even listening to music at what i would consider to be a
high but still reasonable level anyone around you can hear exactly what you've
got going on it also means that
you can hear things going on around you now
i daily drive sennheiser hd600s for
gaming personally which are also open-backed headphones and i'm i'm happy
with that but i would still hesitate to recommend a gaming headset that isn't
closed back obviously from a stereo imaging and
accuracy standpoint there's no drawback the ears are designed to hear bleed over
in your left ear from what is playing to your right ear that that's how sound
works in the world around you and a set of planar magnetic drivers right next to
your ear holes is about as close to great quality speakers in the room as
you can get odyssey rightly has a spectacular reputation in the audiophile
community for their wide sound stage and their lifelike audio the issue is that
it does make a big difference to immersion to hear things around you
unless you happen to be one of those lucky souls who doesn't have to deal
with any ambient noise let's fire up a game you know what sure
let's go completely tasteless and play some duke nukem forever
the next thing i gotta talk about is comfort the lcd gxs are
i mean there's really no way to describe them other than pretty heavy
and they don't have a lot of clamping pressure it's funny because you can see
they they kind of snap right together like this
and it seems like they would have a lot of force but
but they don't they're kind of loose they're actually very reminiscent of the
lcd twos that even though i treated myself to them i never ended up
switching to for daily use because of comfort issues they're fine
for a bit if i was just sitting here doing this video off the cuff i would
say these are very comfortable like those super cushiony ear cups
great but my problem with them is that they're clearly designed to be worn
while sitting you know upright or reclined backwards maybe while listening
to music for a little while and i don't see what if anything they've adapted
about these to make the design for gamers other than to put a red accent
girl on the side and uh microphone on here so
something that happens i find just sitting here gaming at a laptop and oh
look at that and when i was using them the other night and i went to grab something on my
floor is that they will just fall
right off of my head it's always a balance between clamping pressure and
strap weight you can make up for that with a great strap but unfortunately the
theory of a hammock like strap up here
just doesn't hold up in the real world and it feels more strap-like and less
hammock-like and that's because i can really feel the metal through it wearing
them for two hours in a row on the first night the pressure points were
a little bit from the foam in the ear cups being almost too stiff but mostly from the
flat strap right across the top of my head flat surface round object never a
great idea and i i don't know why headphone ergonomics are so hard you
need a combination of the two to really make it feel like it's floating on your
head like some gaming headsets do so well and when you've got great
headphones the bad voice acting sounds even worse all right time to
punch some dudes
the audio sounds so clean though you start to hear
the characters talking a little bit less and
the voice actors in the booth talking a little bit like it's almost too much i
don't mean it as a criticism it's just something to be aware of something it
does get right is the temperature even though it's a leather type ear cup i
never really felt any excessive warmth i guess it does help a little bit to be
open-backed a bigger issue is that i actually got a lot of complaints about
mic quality using the included amp and dac on my valerian stream the other
night now i don't think that's the end of the world i have a separate mic and
usb xlr interface for it and honestly so
would anybody spending this kind of money on their gaming audio
but i guess the issue is that that kind of
raises the question of if this microphone isn't designed to be good
enough for the customer who would buy this product why bother including it in the first
place why not just say hey if you like our products just
buy a pair of headphones and get a separate microphone i don't want to come
across to complain though i don't hate this product the lcd gx's sound
amazing as i expected but rather than making me
want to switch to them these ended up making me more curious about auditi's
lower tier mobius which seemed to compromise on their classic
hangs off your head ergonomics in order to cater better to gamers someone from
the team maybe james maybe me i'm not sure yet is planning to take those for a
test drive at 400 my expectations are still really
high but hopefully a lot of the cost savings is the more plastic construction
rather than the sound quality because
man once you hear something like this it's like
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