This is a review and detailed measurements of the Audeze Mobius wired and wireless gaming headphone. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $399.
At this price, I was surprised to see the entire thing feeling like it is made out of plastic:
There are mechanical controls for microphone and headphone volume. Sadly they both feel the same and next to each other which can make it difficult to adjust by feel. One should have been on the other side or something. There is support for Bluetooth but I suspect all gamers will use the wired interface which mates with 3.5mm cable. I limited my testing to this scenario. Note that the wired interface is active and will NOT work without the unit being turned on. As such, I expect it to apply any EQ it wants even to wired interface (most of the time not the case with noise cancelling headphones).
It has a bunch of features which I did not mess with. I did turn on the "3D" mode which instantly added a ton of "room" reverb which I did not care for and shut it off for my testing.
On the comfort side, I found them very poor in this regard. The headband is super progressive and almost instantly gets stiff. Combined with small cups, I could not wear them for more than 15 to 20 minutes. Weight due to inclusion of batteries is kind of high for such a small looking headphone:
I did not mind that however. Inside cup dimensions are 70x56x24 mm (height, width, depth).
Note: The measurements you are about to see are made using a standardized Gras 45C. Headphone measurements by definition are approximate and variable so don't be surprised if other measurements even if performed with the same fixtures as mine, differ in end results. Protocols vary such as headband pressure and averaging (which I don't do). As you will see, I confirm the approximate accuracy of the measurements using Equalization and listening tests. Ultimately headphone measurements are less exact than speakers mostly in bass and above a few kilohertz so keep that in mind as you read these tests. If you think you have an exact idea of a headphone performance, you are likely wrong!
Fitment on the fixture was challenging due to small size of the cups. I optimized them after fair bit of trying but not optimal.
Audeze Mobius Measurements
As usual we start with our frequency response measurements relative to our desired target:
I am relieved to see plenty of bass but we will need to pull fair bit of it down with equalization. Compliance is then good from 500 Hz to 3 kHz (but with some roughness). Post that, we have a couple of ditches which we again have to fill with EQ. Here is our relative response for development of EQ:
Notice that we are high by about 5 dB near 200 Hz and down whopping 13 dB around 6 kHz.
Distortion measurements were disappointing:
We can ignore the 114 dBSPL due to internal amplifier clipping (I could easily see it in the waveform) but the rest is still bad seeing how they peak where our hearing is most sensitive.
Group delay was surprisingly clean but does show fair amount of pipeline delay:
I am surprised how high this is given the focus on gamers as the target audience with their obsession with respect to latency. Note that actual latency may be a bit lower as the above is the full roundtrip pipeline in my measurement system.
I did not run sensitive test and impedance test given the active nature of this headphone.
Audeze Mobius Listening Tests
First impression was not bad. If I had not measured it first, one would thing it is good. Then I pulled out the EQ tool and went after the bass and midrange hump:
Ah, what a relief that brought. Performing AB tests quickly showed the headphone being "lighter on its feet" with much more open sound and less closed sound. That got amplified more once I added another filter to fill the notch around 6 kHz. Once there, the spatial qualities came forward significantly providing a very pleasant effect. Overall sound signature was a bit bright though (unrelated to my boosting the 6 kHz). I did not try to cure that and hypothesized to be due to distortion increasing high frequency spectrum (frequency response errors did not provide an explanation).
With both filters in place, I enjoyed listening to Mobius until my left ear started to complain with pain at which point I had to take them off for some relief.
Conclusions
$400 is a lot of money for a gaming headset. Does the Mobius deliver? Without EQ, not at all. With equalization, it does sound very good which I would not mind listening to, if it were more comfortable.
As is, I can't recommend the Audeze Mobius. If you add EQ, the sound becomes nice but the comfort for me remained horrid. If that is not a concern for you and you can apply EQ, then it is a decent choice.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
At this price, I was surprised to see the entire thing feeling like it is made out of plastic:
There are mechanical controls for microphone and headphone volume. Sadly they both feel the same and next to each other which can make it difficult to adjust by feel. One should have been on the other side or something. There is support for Bluetooth but I suspect all gamers will use the wired interface which mates with 3.5mm cable. I limited my testing to this scenario. Note that the wired interface is active and will NOT work without the unit being turned on. As such, I expect it to apply any EQ it wants even to wired interface (most of the time not the case with noise cancelling headphones).
It has a bunch of features which I did not mess with. I did turn on the "3D" mode which instantly added a ton of "room" reverb which I did not care for and shut it off for my testing.
On the comfort side, I found them very poor in this regard. The headband is super progressive and almost instantly gets stiff. Combined with small cups, I could not wear them for more than 15 to 20 minutes. Weight due to inclusion of batteries is kind of high for such a small looking headphone:
I did not mind that however. Inside cup dimensions are 70x56x24 mm (height, width, depth).
Note: The measurements you are about to see are made using a standardized Gras 45C. Headphone measurements by definition are approximate and variable so don't be surprised if other measurements even if performed with the same fixtures as mine, differ in end results. Protocols vary such as headband pressure and averaging (which I don't do). As you will see, I confirm the approximate accuracy of the measurements using Equalization and listening tests. Ultimately headphone measurements are less exact than speakers mostly in bass and above a few kilohertz so keep that in mind as you read these tests. If you think you have an exact idea of a headphone performance, you are likely wrong!
Fitment on the fixture was challenging due to small size of the cups. I optimized them after fair bit of trying but not optimal.
Audeze Mobius Measurements
As usual we start with our frequency response measurements relative to our desired target:
I am relieved to see plenty of bass but we will need to pull fair bit of it down with equalization. Compliance is then good from 500 Hz to 3 kHz (but with some roughness). Post that, we have a couple of ditches which we again have to fill with EQ. Here is our relative response for development of EQ:
Notice that we are high by about 5 dB near 200 Hz and down whopping 13 dB around 6 kHz.
Distortion measurements were disappointing:
We can ignore the 114 dBSPL due to internal amplifier clipping (I could easily see it in the waveform) but the rest is still bad seeing how they peak where our hearing is most sensitive.
Group delay was surprisingly clean but does show fair amount of pipeline delay:
I am surprised how high this is given the focus on gamers as the target audience with their obsession with respect to latency. Note that actual latency may be a bit lower as the above is the full roundtrip pipeline in my measurement system.
I did not run sensitive test and impedance test given the active nature of this headphone.
Audeze Mobius Listening Tests
First impression was not bad. If I had not measured it first, one would thing it is good. Then I pulled out the EQ tool and went after the bass and midrange hump:
Ah, what a relief that brought. Performing AB tests quickly showed the headphone being "lighter on its feet" with much more open sound and less closed sound. That got amplified more once I added another filter to fill the notch around 6 kHz. Once there, the spatial qualities came forward significantly providing a very pleasant effect. Overall sound signature was a bit bright though (unrelated to my boosting the 6 kHz). I did not try to cure that and hypothesized to be due to distortion increasing high frequency spectrum (frequency response errors did not provide an explanation).
With both filters in place, I enjoyed listening to Mobius until my left ear started to complain with pain at which point I had to take them off for some relief.
Conclusions
$400 is a lot of money for a gaming headset. Does the Mobius deliver? Without EQ, not at all. With equalization, it does sound very good which I would not mind listening to, if it were more comfortable.
As is, I can't recommend the Audeze Mobius. If you add EQ, the sound becomes nice but the comfort for me remained horrid. If that is not a concern for you and you can apply EQ, then it is a decent choice.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
