What if I told you your headphones could be tuned by a wizard? No, that does
nothing for you? The good folks over at Noble have sponsored us to talk about their
flagship wireless IEMs, the Focus
Mystique. Noble does crazy stuff like taking custom molds of your ear and
producing bespoke IEMs that are just for you. And they also have like a ton of
like crazy cool designs and I'm also looking at these just on the front right
now and I'm very excited to see what the design looks like. You may have heard
about some of their flagship headphones like the Ronan. These are something that
you're going to actually be able to buy, which is nice. You know, I love that.
There is a ton of competition in the
wireless earphone space. Now, I find when audiophile companies try to do
wireless headphones, they kind of tend to stumble in one place or another where
it's like established brands that have been doing it in the wireless space for
a long time don't. What I'm hoping to see today is that Noble has dodged all
those possible pitfalls and given us a really, really solid product. Let's look
at the features on the box. On the front, headphones, case, wizard,
Qualcomm aptX Adaptive and Bluetooth 5.2. That's great to see. Now that
Bluetooth 5.2 is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Yes, they could be 5.3.
Whatever, 5.2's pretty good and we're seeing more and more headphones coming out with the 5.2 standard. One thing
that's interesting about these is that they have a triple driver arrangement.
So, one dynamic driver, which is the usual kind of speaker cone that you're
familiar with, and then two balanced armatures. Balanced armatures kind of
like a speaker, but it's like a wiggly instead of a wiggly cone. That's a
really in-depth. If you want to learn more about balanced armatures, we've
done a video on TechWiki about it. Multi-driver wireless headphones are not
totally brand new to the space, but they do tend to be more complex to
manufacture and that can introduce a whole host of difficulties. But why
would you want more than one driver in your headphone when there's lots of good
headphones out there that just use a single driver? Well, think about it like a speaker. You see a lot of speakers
that you buy for your desktop or whatever will have multiple drivers.
You'll often have like a woofer and then a tweeter. What that does is it allows
for better sound reproduction across a wider spectrum. You can apply the same
kind of idea to a earphone by using a
multiple dynamic drivers or in this case balanced armatures. So, you can let that
big dynamic driver that's in your headphone push all of those low bass
notes with a lot of clarity and then let the balanced armatures handle some of
the higher notes. Now, this introduces extra complexity in the
form of instead of tuning one driver, you now have to tune three drivers. You
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
that they're not overpowering one another, which makes EQing more complex
as well as making it requiring more complex circuitry to balance out all of
the signals that are being sent. But when done properly, the results can be
very, very good. These have a 3D printed semi-custom housing with comfortable fit
and a Noble art faceplate. Sweet. So, we're going to get one of those cool designs that Noble's known for.
We have a metal charging case. Ooh, metal. They use a Qualcomm chipset,
which gives you a lot of nice features including aptX Adaptive for low latency,
high quality audio as well as true wireless mirroring technology and their
cVc noise canceling for when you're talking on the phone with people. Touch controls and a wizard tuned sound
signature. Yes. Wizards. They say 20 Hz to 20 kHz. That's good.
That's the whole hearing range and that's kind of covers what's on the box.
Let's take a look at what's inside.
Yep, it's a manual. Before the money shot, we're going to get to the box. In
here we have one pouch, a charging cable, one piece is
and ear tips, three pairs.
A pouch seems a little redundant. I'm not going to lie. I already have the
charging case, but I guess if you want a pouch for a case for your case, then
you're in luck. Um whoa.
It's plastic. Okay, that's more than three pairs. They
lied to me. Like in a good way though. You heard it here first. When Noble
lies, they only undersell it. There's a small, medium, and large by the looks of
it of the double flange and of the normal of the normal types of ear tips.
I really love double flange ear tips and not enough companies include them in the
box. They just for me, they just allow me to get a really great and really
consistent seal that I can't get from a lot of other headphones. So, it reduces
the amount of times that I'm like fidgeting or adjusting them to make sure that they sound exactly right, which is
awesome because this is an audio-focused headphone. And if it's not going to
sound right all the time, then I don't want none of it. And a cable, we got a
USB A to a USB-C and it's a very short
cable. I don't know how I feel about short
cables. I've never once been like, "Oh, yes. Thank thank God it's only 6 in."
Let's take a look at these headphones. So, this is the resin. They're very
sparkly and it doesn't look like the top down's catching it.
They seem like one solid piece. Like it's not like it's a glued layer. Like
there's no seam here or anything. These are really, really well
constructed. I'm not sure if the resin is like actually printed into the
housing or not. It must be. I can't see any sort of
seam. You can tell that it's actually resin and not like just like
some sort of printing on the outside because they're not the exact same.
There's slight differences in their like wispiness. Man, these are gorgeous. This
is the kind of designs that you see in the IEM space for like audiophiles and
stuff. Like you see stuff from like Moondrop, like the blessings and stuff
like that where they have like these really cool designs on them. A lot of the times things look pretty boring in
the wireless headphone space, but these are absolutely stunning. This is a metal
case, that's for sure. Um it doesn't really feel
like it's not it's not like ridiculously heavy despite the fact that it's metal.
It's clear that they're using a metal outer shell.
And then there's a plastic in inlay. It's relatively compact, but as you can
see, these are also relatively bulky. Like look at the depth of those. That's
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
a second to see. Um the case we have four LEDs
to show the charging. I don't know if they actually do
anything else other than be charging. I'm not sure if there's like another Ooh. Inside
here, there's a pairing button right there. You press that and they go into a
pairing mode. You can tell by the blinking lights that they're looking to pair. And also
we'll get a fit test, fit impressions. I'm using the small double flange tips
personally. They fit in my ears the best. I mean like look at the size of
the the grill or sound filters. That's pretty big. If you're somebody who
struggles with even small ear tips, these just might not really be for you
just cuz of the size of that. Just something to note if you're a smaller human, these could very well not fit.
But as with any expensive audio gear, you should always be trying before you
buy. And Noble has a return window, I hope.
What do you think of that hinge? Oh, yeah, the hinge. You can hear it
grinding.
Okay. It's got a good but the action's just not there, you know? It's just a
little grainy. We're not about fidgeting with these. We're about listening. The
only fidget I want to be doing is when I'm listening to tunes and I'm going to
be do do, you know? Okay? That's what I want. Let's get her in there.
Yeah, these are kind of chunkus. Um
if you're somebody who wants to sleep with headphones in, these are not going to be for you.
Oh my god. It's very loud
when it gives you the ambient listening on. It's like full tilt. I'm sure that
they can fix that, but oh my god. So, let's listen to some good songs.
Um first impressions is that boy, do these have bass. Like these have
bass in a good way. A lot of times when headphones try to do like really bass
heavy stuff, they end up sounding bloated and it overpowers the mids and
it just sounds like a mess. These are providing a ton of bass, but it's like
clean and calculated. It sounds really good and it doesn't subtract from how
much fun it is to have all of that extra bass. And also I'm surprised by the
sound stage here. Actually, a lot of the times that's the biggest weakness of
earbuds is that they just can't produce a wide feeling sound stage. The main
melody of the guitar in Doritos and Fritos by 100 gecs is basically like all
of the screw up noises from Guitar Hero and the way that they're placed around
the mix is like super, super noticeable and makes it really, really fun to
listen to. And then like the bass is just like
They also tend to be actually surprisingly detailed in the high end,
too, which is great. But not in a way that makes it like really harsh. Like
on the new JPEG Mafia and Danny Brown album, everything's like mixed like just
like full tilt, like max wall of sound kind
of stuff and it makes these like and it can be kind of overbearing. Things are a
little shouty in the higher end and even kind of shrill cuz there's a ton of
distortion and glitches in these beats. And that really helps them succeed in their focus of being like an audiophile
earbud more than a lifestyle earbud. And they mean by that? Well, these aren't
the most feature rich. These don't have any active noise canceling. They do
still have a microphone. They do take calls. You can do all that stuff and
they have an app, which we'll take a look at in just a moment. And with those
microphones, they allow you to have an ambient mode so you can listen through. So, even though you're getting a really,
really solid seal and blocking out a lot of the world, you can still always just
switch these on for convenience, which is great if you're like a commuter or
you're in an airport waiting for announcements or you just want to talk to somebody without having to like be
like "Buh." But I do wish that it didn't take 3 seconds for the transparency mode
to activate, but I think we can edit that in the app. Only one way to find
out. Um so, here's the Noble Focus app.
Ambient mode is on. Oh, it's sweet. So, you get if you're if you're in the app
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,
pop, jazz, rap, folk, and default.
Listening to them right now, they kind of do what you'd expect. Pop adds a little bit more oomph and sizzle to the
top to the high end and a little bit more bass.
Um but they're all pretty subtle. And the other thing is that you
can do a personalized EQ. So, what they do is they play beeps at various
different frequencies and you say whether or not you could hear them and
how many of them that you had heard. And then they'll adjust the levels in the
10-band EQ accordingly based on your performance in this listening test.
Um but if you think you know better than that, and you might, I've never had the
best experience with these kind of sound tests, they're never quite there. You do
have access to a full 10-band EQ, which is nice. Actually, this app is pretty
slick. There's everything that I need, not a whole lot of what I don't. Oh, and
there we go. We can adjust the controls for our right and left headphones. Just
the triple and double click. So, that means that we can't adjust for our voice
assistant, which is one of the holds, nor can we adjust the ambient mode,
which is a little disappointing. I just really wish that um every app would just
allow me to customize every function. Like I don't know why not. At some
point, they had to program it, so just let me do it as well. These are just
in-app settings. And then you can also up I like that, too. They made it simple
and obvious to update the firmware. It's just right there. You don't have to like
go through like a settings app. It's not hidden because like if they have
improvements to give to to the functionality, you should be able to get them really easily. That's definitely
one of the better apps that I have used. It's funny when you see other brands
that are a lot bigger than Noble making substantially worse apps. So, those are
my sound impressions, but we have Labs data, too. So, we put this in a fancy
little head and we took some measurements, and as you can see,
there's a lot of bass. Um a solid like 10 dB boost across basically all the way
up to uh 300 Hz, where I guess it gets down more to like 2 or 3 dB.
That's a lot of bass. But, it's just so consistent across the
whole spectrum and it sounds so good and it's so fun. You might find that if
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
see throughout the mids, it's very close to the target. So, you shouldn't expect
this headphone to come across as like shouty or overbearing. Um and then in
the treble, there's no considerable worrisome peaks, so nothing's going to be super shrill.
However, if you do want to adjust these to be closer to our target, we actually
have some settings for you in the EQ that uh are going to help it better
match the target that we have. Why would you want it to match the target that we
have? Well, basically, the idea of the headphone target is that it's what most
people are going to find agreeable and what they will like. Everyone's ears are
different. Everyone's preferences are different, so it's worth trying to customize and spending a little bit of
time in the EQ to make sure that these nice headphones sound exactly the way
that you want them. You spent the money on them. Make them work for you. This is
a mic test of the Noble Focus Mystique.
We're in the office right now. You can hear some typing in the background maybe, some AC.
How's it sound? One thing I noticed was that I don't think that these actually
support multi-point connection, which is really disappointing because they
support Bluetooth 5.2. What's the deal with that? Oh, we forgot
to talk about battery life and charging with it. Um so, you get 7 and 1/2 hours
with these headphones by themselves and an additional four charges in the case,
which means that you get a total of 37 hours between both the headphones and
the case. Also, if you were hoping for like any sort of IP rating, they don't
have that, but they do they do say that you can use it for exercising, though
they don't recommend submerging it. I never recommend submerging headphones,
even if they are IP rated. That just seems silly. So, they have Qualcomm
adaptive, which means that they have lower latency, but they don't have
Qualcomm adaptive low latency. So, don't
expect these to be ideal for playing like music games on the go. You'll still
have to like maybe make some adjustments in the settings for delaying stuff, but
man, the music sounds so good on them. How much will these set you back? Um
well, about $359, which puts them on the pricier end of the spectrum. But, audio
quality is important to you, wireless convenience.
Hey, that's only $60 per driver. That's pretty good, right? Now, this is a
sponsored ShortCircuit, so I can't give you a purchase recommendation, but I can
recommend that you go check these out in the link below if you are interested in learning more about them. Thanks to
Noble Audio for sponsoring this and for making a a fair just a gorgeous a just a
gorgeous pair of headphones. Look at that. They're so pretty.