We find ourselves in the midst of a revolution, an audio revolution. Well,
more of a controversy really. So, in light then of the rumors about Apple's
abandonment of the de facto standard 3
and 1/2 mm audio jack in favor of their
proprietary reversible USB implementation. Here is my review of the
Odyssey Sign, one of the first Lightning
headphones on the market. And woven into
my thoughts on this product are going to be my thoughts on the shift towards
lightning and I guess USB type-C for that matter as an audio jack. Because in
some ways, the advantages and drawbacks of this product will be a look into the
future of mobile audio in general.
Tunnel Bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and
enjoy a more open internet. To try Tunnel Bear for free, check out the link
in the video description. All right, so if you've
seen a pair of headphones before, you've seen something that's functionally, you
know, pretty much like this, but probably with less BMW Design Works
influence. Those guys really get around, hey, not that I'm criticizing BMW
group's offshoot industrial design and consultancy houses efforts here. The
signs are a rare audio file headset that
just oozes style. Starting from the top,
the shiny stitched natural leather headband contrasts wonderfully with the
matte aluminum end caps that house the smooth stepless frictional size
adjustment mechanism. I wish it had a bit more padding, but since the strong
clamping pressure of the ear cups is most of what keeps it on your head, I
won't take off any marks here. On that subject though, the same mix of leather
and aluminum is present in the ear cups and makes the signs a little heavier
than your typical out andabout one-ear headphone like the Sennheiser Momentum
Onear. But thanks to the way the load is distributed, I never felt like they were
at risk of falling off. With that said, the clamping force out of the box is
stronger than I'd like, causing my ears to get sore after about an hour of
listening, even with my earrings removed. Okay, then the next big
question is, is it worth it then for these shockingly compact planer magnetic
cans? This is a technology that sacrifices some weight, design
complexity, and sometimes treble performance to deliver a sound with
minimal distortion and rich, smooth,
accurate bass. And that only a few short years ago was basically only found in
expensive, difficult to power products or from obscure brands like, well,
Odyssey. Though I guess the way that they've stormed into the mainstream is a
testament to what they've done with a technology that was introduced to North
America by Yamaha back in the 70s then basically faded into obscurity. The
short answer then is maybe. After some
break-in the ear pressure was much more tolerable for me, although I still don't
prefer onar headphones. And the signs sound great. They don't isolate ambient
noise particularly well, but they image astonishingly well and sound very
natural for a closedback design. It's safe to say these are the best on ears
I've ever heard. And in my opinion, this
is, how do I describe it? It's beats generation sound done right. Listening
to my usual mix of trashy popular songs on Apple Music, the impressions I came
away with are that the highs are detailed enough without being fatiguing
to listen to. A common complaint for me personally with audio file grade
headphones, and bass performance is fantastic as long as you don't mind the
somewhat heavy-handed approach. It's tight, dynamic, and just a blast to
listen to, but without doing anything to obscure the crystal clear mids that let
vocalists, guitar solos, and the like really pop. But why do they sound good?
Is it the planer magnetic drivers, or is
it the fancy lightning connector at the other end? Let's talk about the cipher
cable because on some of the more mainstream sites and blogs that I've
read, there seems to be some confusion about it. For starters, while it's true
that you cannot play back 24-bit 96 kHz
HD audio files, which Apple is allegedly planning to make available shortly on
iTunes, out of the headphone jack on your iPhone today, the mini stereo
connector itself has nothing to do with that limitation. It actually has to do
with the audio processing electronics, the DAC or digital to analog converter,
the DSP or digital sound processor, and to a lesser degree, the amplifier that
are inside the iPhone. That is what's
not able to process files encoded in this manner. Something that isn't
actually the case even with other competing smartphones. So, sorry,
there's no such thing as digital headphones, and the conversion to an
analog signal is still taking place. It's just doing so at a later stage in
the chain with more advanced hardware than Apple pre-installed in their phone.
So, the bump right here that contains the microphone and the inline controls
is what's so special about the cable because it has all of that hardware. So,
then the advantages to this approach are as follows.
One, removing the jack saves some space
inside the chassis of the phone. This image from iFixit shows you about how
much. Two, isolating audio gear from
processors and wireless antennas is widely regarded as a good thing. Three,
functionality like volume control, track skipping, etc. can work more
consistently or even be enhanced in the future. Leading to number four, the
ability to update the firmware or store settings within your headphones
themselves. Something that we're already seeing with the Cipher, including the
ability to set EQ settings with their app. Five, being able to power your
headphones off the phone could mean RGB
lighting, active noise cancellation, or other features without the need for
batteries. And six, back to where we
started, the ability to bypass Apple's
decidedly mediocre audio implementation in favor of something that's hopefully
better. But all of this comes with some disadvantages, too. Number one,
headphones with this functionality will be more complex to design and
manufacture, which contributes directly to the price you can expect to find on
the sticker. Two, the lightning cable combined with the circuitry for audio
processing will make the cable and/or the headphone itself bulkier and
heavier. Three, and this is such a killer for me, you will require an
adapter. Apple is rumored to be providing one in the box if you just
want to use your onboard audio. And
four, you will require a separate, likely more expensive adapter if you
want to charge your iPhone and use your lightning headphones at the same time. A
common occurrence for mobile gamers. I think this commenter on 9to5 Mac
probably put it better than I ever could. Because what this really boils
down to for me, while I understand the
desire to eliminate a potential opening for water, dirt, and pocket lint, unless
Apple and other manufacturers for this matter, because Type-C audio is
functionally similar, though it's a bit more of a quagmire in terms of the spec,
unless Apple uses this opportunity to introduce industry-leading water
resistance to their products or anything else that people are actually asking
them for, They'll have sacrificed functionality
for perceived elegance yet again. Just
like with the 2013 Mac Pro and the 2015 MacBook whose dimminitive size and few
ugly ports look beautiful until you have
to attach an octopus of adapters just to plug in the you need to get anything
done. Back to the conclusion for the sign
headphones, though. With the Cipher Lightning cable and some EQ fine-tuning,
I'm confident anyone would love their sound. And quite frankly, they sound
pretty damn good even without it. Even better with a higher quality source file
and better upstream gear. This is a very solid product as long as your ears
tolerate on your headphones a little better than mine do. Speaking of solid
products, i ifixit.com is not a product, it's a
website, but they sell products. So, to go along with their 19,000 step-by-step
repair guides, they have a huge inventory of replacement parts as well
as tools with lifetime warranties on them so that you can repair your stuff
instead of junking it and replacing it or paying someone, often as much as it
would have cost to get all the parts and tools that you needed in order to do it
for you. The big one that we're featuring today is the ProTek Toolkit,
which includes the new 64-bit driver kit, which has 10 more bits than the
former 54-bit driver kit, as well as
their magnetic casing, their newly designed swivel top precision driver,
their precision ESD safe tweezers, their wider variety of plastic opening tools
and picks, their suction cup for display removal, their ESD safety strap to make
sure you don't destroy your stuff with static shock while you're working on it,
and the best part of it is that it's only
$69.95. And what's even better than that is you guys can save five bucks on any
purchase of $10 or more over at
ifixit.com/inus. We'll have that linked in the video description. So, thanks for watching,
guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get
subscribed, hit that like button, or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon in the video
description. Also linked in the description is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our
community forum, which you should totally join. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably
wondering what to watch next. So, click that little button in the top right corner to check out our latest video
over on Channel Super Fun.