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What if I told you your headphones could be tuned by a wizard? No, that does

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nothing for you? The good folks over at Noble have sponsored us to talk about their

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flagship wireless IEMs, the Focus

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Mystique. Noble does crazy stuff like taking custom molds of your ear and

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producing bespoke IEMs that are just for you. And they also have like a ton of

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like crazy cool designs and I'm also looking at these just on the front right

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now and I'm very excited to see what the design looks like. You may have heard

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about some of their flagship headphones like the Ronan. These are something that

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you're going to actually be able to buy, which is nice. You know, I love that.

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There is a ton of competition in the

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wireless earphone space. Now, I find when audiophile companies try to do

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wireless headphones, they kind of tend to stumble in one place or another where

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it's like established brands that have been doing it in the wireless space for

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a long time don't. What I'm hoping to see today is that Noble has dodged all

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those possible pitfalls and given us a really, really solid product. Let's look

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at the features on the box. On the front, headphones, case, wizard,

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Qualcomm aptX Adaptive and Bluetooth 5.2. That's great to see. Now that

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Bluetooth 5.2 is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Yes, they could be 5.3.

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Whatever, 5.2's pretty good and we're seeing more and more headphones coming out with the 5.2 standard. One thing

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that's interesting about these is that they have a triple driver arrangement.

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So, one dynamic driver, which is the usual kind of speaker cone that you're

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familiar with, and then two balanced armatures. Balanced armatures kind of

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like a speaker, but it's like a wiggly instead of a wiggly cone. That's a

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really in-depth. If you want to learn more about balanced armatures, we've

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done a video on TechWiki about it. Multi-driver wireless headphones are not

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totally brand new to the space, but they do tend to be more complex to

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manufacture and that can introduce a whole host of difficulties. But why

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would you want more than one driver in your headphone when there's lots of good

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headphones out there that just use a single driver? Well, think about it like a speaker. You see a lot of speakers

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that you buy for your desktop or whatever will have multiple drivers.

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You'll often have like a woofer and then a tweeter. What that does is it allows

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for better sound reproduction across a wider spectrum. You can apply the same

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kind of idea to a earphone by using a

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multiple dynamic drivers or in this case balanced armatures. So, you can let that

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big dynamic driver that's in your headphone push all of those low bass

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notes with a lot of clarity and then let the balanced armatures handle some of

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the higher notes. Now, this introduces extra complexity in the

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form of instead of tuning one driver, you now have to tune three drivers. You

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have to make sure that they're in sync. They're You have to make sure that they're in phase. You have to make sure

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that they're not overpowering one another, which makes EQing more complex

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as well as making it requiring more complex circuitry to balance out all of

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the signals that are being sent. But when done properly, the results can be

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very, very good. These have a 3D printed semi-custom housing with comfortable fit

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and a Noble art faceplate. Sweet. So, we're going to get one of those cool designs that Noble's known for.

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We have a metal charging case. Ooh, metal. They use a Qualcomm chipset,

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which gives you a lot of nice features including aptX Adaptive for low latency,

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high quality audio as well as true wireless mirroring technology and their

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cVc noise canceling for when you're talking on the phone with people. Touch controls and a wizard tuned sound

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signature. Yes. Wizards. They say 20 Hz to 20 kHz. That's good.

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That's the whole hearing range and that's kind of covers what's on the box.

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Let's take a look at what's inside.

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Yep, it's a manual. Before the money shot, we're going to get to the box. In

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here we have one pouch, a charging cable, one piece is

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and ear tips, three pairs.

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A pouch seems a little redundant. I'm not going to lie. I already have the

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charging case, but I guess if you want a pouch for a case for your case, then

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you're in luck. Um whoa.

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It's plastic. Okay, that's more than three pairs. They

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lied to me. Like in a good way though. You heard it here first. When Noble

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lies, they only undersell it. There's a small, medium, and large by the looks of

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it of the double flange and of the normal of the normal types of ear tips.

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I really love double flange ear tips and not enough companies include them in the

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box. They just for me, they just allow me to get a really great and really

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consistent seal that I can't get from a lot of other headphones. So, it reduces

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the amount of times that I'm like fidgeting or adjusting them to make sure that they sound exactly right, which is

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awesome because this is an audio-focused headphone. And if it's not going to

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sound right all the time, then I don't want none of it. And a cable, we got a

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USB A to a USB-C and it's a very short

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cable. I don't know how I feel about short

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cables. I've never once been like, "Oh, yes. Thank thank God it's only 6 in."

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Let's take a look at these headphones. So, this is the resin. They're very

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sparkly and it doesn't look like the top down's catching it.

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They seem like one solid piece. Like it's not like it's a glued layer. Like

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there's no seam here or anything. These are really, really well

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constructed. I'm not sure if the resin is like actually printed into the

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housing or not. It must be. I can't see any sort of

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seam. You can tell that it's actually resin and not like just like

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some sort of printing on the outside because they're not the exact same.

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There's slight differences in their like wispiness. Man, these are gorgeous. This

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is the kind of designs that you see in the IEM space for like audiophiles and

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stuff. Like you see stuff from like Moondrop, like the blessings and stuff

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like that where they have like these really cool designs on them. A lot of the times things look pretty boring in

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the wireless headphone space, but these are absolutely stunning. This is a metal

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case, that's for sure. Um it doesn't really feel

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like it's not it's not like ridiculously heavy despite the fact that it's metal.

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It's clear that they're using a metal outer shell.

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And then there's a plastic in inlay. It's relatively compact, but as you can

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see, these are also relatively bulky. Like look at the depth of those. That's

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a I don't know what the exact measurements are, but those are going to stick out. We'll put them in my ears in

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a second to see. Um the case we have four LEDs

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to show the charging. I don't know if they actually do

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anything else other than be charging. I'm not sure if there's like another Ooh. Inside

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here, there's a pairing button right there. You press that and they go into a

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pairing mode. You can tell by the blinking lights that they're looking to pair. And also

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we'll get a fit test, fit impressions. I'm using the small double flange tips

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personally. They fit in my ears the best. I mean like look at the size of

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the the grill or sound filters. That's pretty big. If you're somebody who

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struggles with even small ear tips, these just might not really be for you

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just cuz of the size of that. Just something to note if you're a smaller human, these could very well not fit.

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But as with any expensive audio gear, you should always be trying before you

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buy. And Noble has a return window, I hope.

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What do you think of that hinge? Oh, yeah, the hinge. You can hear it

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grinding.

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Okay. It's got a good but the action's just not there, you know? It's just a

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little grainy. We're not about fidgeting with these. We're about listening. The

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only fidget I want to be doing is when I'm listening to tunes and I'm going to

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be do do, you know? Okay? That's what I want. Let's get her in there.

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Yeah, these are kind of chunkus. Um

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if you're somebody who wants to sleep with headphones in, these are not going to be for you.

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Oh my god. It's very loud

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when it gives you the ambient listening on. It's like full tilt. I'm sure that

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they can fix that, but oh my god. So, let's listen to some good songs.

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Um first impressions is that boy, do these have bass. Like these have

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bass in a good way. A lot of times when headphones try to do like really bass

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heavy stuff, they end up sounding bloated and it overpowers the mids and

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it just sounds like a mess. These are providing a ton of bass, but it's like

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clean and calculated. It sounds really good and it doesn't subtract from how

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much fun it is to have all of that extra bass. And also I'm surprised by the

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sound stage here. Actually, a lot of the times that's the biggest weakness of

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earbuds is that they just can't produce a wide feeling sound stage. The main

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melody of the guitar in Doritos and Fritos by 100 gecs is basically like all

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of the screw up noises from Guitar Hero and the way that they're placed around

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the mix is like super, super noticeable and makes it really, really fun to

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listen to. And then like the bass is just like

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They also tend to be actually surprisingly detailed in the high end,

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too, which is great. But not in a way that makes it like really harsh. Like

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on the new JPEG Mafia and Danny Brown album, everything's like mixed like just

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like full tilt, like max wall of sound kind

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of stuff and it makes these like and it can be kind of overbearing. Things are a

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little shouty in the higher end and even kind of shrill cuz there's a ton of

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distortion and glitches in these beats. And that really helps them succeed in their focus of being like an audiophile

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earbud more than a lifestyle earbud. And they mean by that? Well, these aren't

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the most feature rich. These don't have any active noise canceling. They do

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still have a microphone. They do take calls. You can do all that stuff and

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they have an app, which we'll take a look at in just a moment. And with those

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microphones, they allow you to have an ambient mode so you can listen through. So, even though you're getting a really,

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really solid seal and blocking out a lot of the world, you can still always just

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switch these on for convenience, which is great if you're like a commuter or

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you're in an airport waiting for announcements or you just want to talk to somebody without having to like be

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like "Buh." But I do wish that it didn't take 3 seconds for the transparency mode

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to activate, but I think we can edit that in the app. Only one way to find

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out. Um so, here's the Noble Focus app.

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Ambient mode is on. Oh, it's sweet. So, you get if you're if you're in the app

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already, I guess you can turn it on and off pretty quick. In the app we have an EQ. We have a bunch of presets. Classic,

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pop, jazz, rap, folk, and default.

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Listening to them right now, they kind of do what you'd expect. Pop adds a little bit more oomph and sizzle to the

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top to the high end and a little bit more bass.

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Um but they're all pretty subtle. And the other thing is that you

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can do a personalized EQ. So, what they do is they play beeps at various

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different frequencies and you say whether or not you could hear them and

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how many of them that you had heard. And then they'll adjust the levels in the

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10-band EQ accordingly based on your performance in this listening test.

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Um but if you think you know better than that, and you might, I've never had the

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best experience with these kind of sound tests, they're never quite there. You do

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have access to a full 10-band EQ, which is nice. Actually, this app is pretty

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slick. There's everything that I need, not a whole lot of what I don't. Oh, and

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there we go. We can adjust the controls for our right and left headphones. Just

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the triple and double click. So, that means that we can't adjust for our voice

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assistant, which is one of the holds, nor can we adjust the ambient mode,

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which is a little disappointing. I just really wish that um every app would just

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allow me to customize every function. Like I don't know why not. At some

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point, they had to program it, so just let me do it as well. These are just

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in-app settings. And then you can also up I like that, too. They made it simple

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and obvious to update the firmware. It's just right there. You don't have to like

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go through like a settings app. It's not hidden because like if they have

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improvements to give to to the functionality, you should be able to get them really easily. That's definitely

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one of the better apps that I have used. It's funny when you see other brands

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that are a lot bigger than Noble making substantially worse apps. So, those are

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my sound impressions, but we have Labs data, too. So, we put this in a fancy

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little head and we took some measurements, and as you can see,

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there's a lot of bass. Um a solid like 10 dB boost across basically all the way

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up to uh 300 Hz, where I guess it gets down more to like 2 or 3 dB.

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That's a lot of bass. But, it's just so consistent across the

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whole spectrum and it sounds so good and it's so fun. You might find that if

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you're not like a huge basshead, you'd want to dial it back. Luckily, you can do that with their EQ. And then you can

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see throughout the mids, it's very close to the target. So, you shouldn't expect

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this headphone to come across as like shouty or overbearing. Um and then in

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the treble, there's no considerable worrisome peaks, so nothing's going to be super shrill.

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However, if you do want to adjust these to be closer to our target, we actually

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have some settings for you in the EQ that uh are going to help it better

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match the target that we have. Why would you want it to match the target that we

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have? Well, basically, the idea of the headphone target is that it's what most

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people are going to find agreeable and what they will like. Everyone's ears are

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different. Everyone's preferences are different, so it's worth trying to customize and spending a little bit of

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time in the EQ to make sure that these nice headphones sound exactly the way

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that you want them. You spent the money on them. Make them work for you. This is

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a mic test of the Noble Focus Mystique.

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We're in the office right now. You can hear some typing in the background maybe, some AC.

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How's it sound? One thing I noticed was that I don't think that these actually

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support multi-point connection, which is really disappointing because they

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support Bluetooth 5.2. What's the deal with that? Oh, we forgot

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to talk about battery life and charging with it. Um so, you get 7 and 1/2 hours

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with these headphones by themselves and an additional four charges in the case,

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which means that you get a total of 37 hours between both the headphones and

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the case. Also, if you were hoping for like any sort of IP rating, they don't

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have that, but they do they do say that you can use it for exercising, though

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they don't recommend submerging it. I never recommend submerging headphones,

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even if they are IP rated. That just seems silly. So, they have Qualcomm

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adaptive, which means that they have lower latency, but they don't have

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Qualcomm adaptive low latency. So, don't

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expect these to be ideal for playing like music games on the go. You'll still

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have to like maybe make some adjustments in the settings for delaying stuff, but

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man, the music sounds so good on them. How much will these set you back? Um

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well, about $359, which puts them on the pricier end of the spectrum. But, audio

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quality is important to you, wireless convenience.

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Hey, that's only $60 per driver. That's pretty good, right? Now, this is a

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sponsored ShortCircuit, so I can't give you a purchase recommendation, but I can

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recommend that you go check these out in the link below if you are interested in learning more about them. Thanks to

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Noble Audio for sponsoring this and for making a a fair just a gorgeous a just a

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gorgeous pair of headphones. Look at that. They're so pretty.