This is a review, detailed measurements and listening tests of Sonic Lamb wired/wireless noise cancelling (?) headphone with built-in "subwoofer." It is a kick-starter type of product which a member kindly drop shipped to me after waiting a year. It is currently on sale for $US 239.
As you see, the style is "applesque" white with very supple but somewhat small ear pads. I got a kick out of the box packaging:
It felt like you were opening a bird's nest!
So while first impressions were positive, it kind of went downhill from there. No manual was included and I could not find one online. An app is available but when I installed it on my Samsung S23 Ultra, its mandatory registration was buggy. I got past that only to be greeted with a gray, blank screen. I believe it allows custom EQ developing using it and if so, that could be great.
There is no charge indication on the unit. I plugged in a USB-C cable and it just showed an orange indicator. There are no voice prompts either. It would make a sound or two at times.
The buttons sans the bass level (see below) were springy with no tactile feedback. The Plus and Minus keys seem to default to transport control (skip back/forward) and did not change the volume as I wanted. I had to use Windows volume control setting to manage that which was not convenient.
The claim to fame is an auxiliary, tactile driver. There is a nice rotary control that steps through four levels of subwoofer drive levels. Strangely, it takes a couple of seconds to take effect, again with no indication. If you could program each setting to a different EQ, it would be a killer feature.
Company shows some measurements while indicating that they could not measure the tactile driver's response with their HATS. Strangely, they go on to show such a measurement. I am not clear if the "Impulse Driver" is truly tactile and hence cannot be measured. See below on my thoughts on this.
The Audio Precision "Chirp" signal testing can act strange when interfacing with digital sources. I had to play with it a lot to get what looked to be reliable measurement. But some doubt remains in my mind as to whether it is working 100% right.
Sonic Lamb Headphone Measurements
Before getting started, I had to play with the wheel to measure its effect:
I am only showing one channel to make the graph clearer. As you see, there are four levels but two seemed to be the same (but maybe i didn't wait long enough for it take effect).
I set the wheel to lowest level (green above) and tested that way from here on:
Response above bass more or less tracks our target. Per intro, I am not sure if the waviness is due to measurement error or is really the response of the headphone.
Seems like they are exaggerating the response below 100 Hz. Response drops substantially below 80 Hz though. Is that a measurement error or actual response? See listening test section for my thoughts on this.
Distortion response is good at 94 dBSPL but there are some resonances:
Here it is in absolute level:
I was pleasantly surprised that I could get the headphone up to 114 dBSPL. Typical wireless headphone struggles to get that loud. Yet, I was there with 4 dB left as far as input level.
Group delay shows 100 millisecond latency which I would imagine would rule it out for gaming contrary to company positioning:
Sonic Lamb Headphone Listening Tests
I listened to the headphone before and after measurements. Initial impression both ways was very good sound above bass level. Bass response was strong if you set it to anything above minimum. The experience is very different than headphones with strong bass response is that you can get that at very low listening levels with Sonic Lamb.
Bass response is surprisingly clean even when you boost it to max. Yes, anything above 2nd notch becomes too much but at the same time, can be quite fun! The knob lets you adjust per track.
Here was the surprise: sub-bass reproduction was quite weak! My reference track for this was quite unsatisfying in that regard with faint response in that region. This tells me that my measurement is correct in that there is not much output below 50 Hz. Bass notes above though would come in with level of authority that was again, quite fun with the right content. Bass string notes for example had a level of impact that was uncanny.
Back to overall response, if you kept the dial at minimum, the sound was good to my ears. I did not attempt to EQ for that reason and the fact that I don't fully trust the measurements.
Note that the company measurements show bass response going all the way down which is in conflict with my measurements and listening tests.
Conclusions
Let's start with the obvious: the software side is clearly unfinished and needs work ASAP. Not having documentation is really poor form, adding to this problem. If the app can let you easily create EQ profiles and assign them to different clicks on the wheel, they would have a winner on their hand as no other headphone I know of lets you select five different settings on demand to match your content/mood.
Overall tonality both measured and listened to, seems alright. The "Impulse Driver" seems to have a narrow response that doesn't extend to sub-bass. This is unfortunate as I expected it to fill in that area. But there is "something" here that could be better optimized in the way it creates good and clean bass at low listening levels.
I am not going to recommend the Sonic Lamb headphone until they deliver a proper, working app. But overall, I admire them trying to innovate and produce a unique product. It is something to try and get to know.
-----------
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/
As you see, the style is "applesque" white with very supple but somewhat small ear pads. I got a kick out of the box packaging:
It felt like you were opening a bird's nest!
So while first impressions were positive, it kind of went downhill from there. No manual was included and I could not find one online. An app is available but when I installed it on my Samsung S23 Ultra, its mandatory registration was buggy. I got past that only to be greeted with a gray, blank screen. I believe it allows custom EQ developing using it and if so, that could be great.
There is no charge indication on the unit. I plugged in a USB-C cable and it just showed an orange indicator. There are no voice prompts either. It would make a sound or two at times.
The buttons sans the bass level (see below) were springy with no tactile feedback. The Plus and Minus keys seem to default to transport control (skip back/forward) and did not change the volume as I wanted. I had to use Windows volume control setting to manage that which was not convenient.
The claim to fame is an auxiliary, tactile driver. There is a nice rotary control that steps through four levels of subwoofer drive levels. Strangely, it takes a couple of seconds to take effect, again with no indication. If you could program each setting to a different EQ, it would be a killer feature.
Company shows some measurements while indicating that they could not measure the tactile driver's response with their HATS. Strangely, they go on to show such a measurement. I am not clear if the "Impulse Driver" is truly tactile and hence cannot be measured. See below on my thoughts on this.
The Audio Precision "Chirp" signal testing can act strange when interfacing with digital sources. I had to play with it a lot to get what looked to be reliable measurement. But some doubt remains in my mind as to whether it is working 100% right.
Sonic Lamb Headphone Measurements
Before getting started, I had to play with the wheel to measure its effect:
I am only showing one channel to make the graph clearer. As you see, there are four levels but two seemed to be the same (but maybe i didn't wait long enough for it take effect).
I set the wheel to lowest level (green above) and tested that way from here on:
Response above bass more or less tracks our target. Per intro, I am not sure if the waviness is due to measurement error or is really the response of the headphone.
Seems like they are exaggerating the response below 100 Hz. Response drops substantially below 80 Hz though. Is that a measurement error or actual response? See listening test section for my thoughts on this.
Distortion response is good at 94 dBSPL but there are some resonances:
Here it is in absolute level:
I was pleasantly surprised that I could get the headphone up to 114 dBSPL. Typical wireless headphone struggles to get that loud. Yet, I was there with 4 dB left as far as input level.
Group delay shows 100 millisecond latency which I would imagine would rule it out for gaming contrary to company positioning:
Sonic Lamb Headphone Listening Tests
I listened to the headphone before and after measurements. Initial impression both ways was very good sound above bass level. Bass response was strong if you set it to anything above minimum. The experience is very different than headphones with strong bass response is that you can get that at very low listening levels with Sonic Lamb.
Bass response is surprisingly clean even when you boost it to max. Yes, anything above 2nd notch becomes too much but at the same time, can be quite fun! The knob lets you adjust per track.
Here was the surprise: sub-bass reproduction was quite weak! My reference track for this was quite unsatisfying in that regard with faint response in that region. This tells me that my measurement is correct in that there is not much output below 50 Hz. Bass notes above though would come in with level of authority that was again, quite fun with the right content. Bass string notes for example had a level of impact that was uncanny.
Back to overall response, if you kept the dial at minimum, the sound was good to my ears. I did not attempt to EQ for that reason and the fact that I don't fully trust the measurements.
Note that the company measurements show bass response going all the way down which is in conflict with my measurements and listening tests.
Conclusions
Let's start with the obvious: the software side is clearly unfinished and needs work ASAP. Not having documentation is really poor form, adding to this problem. If the app can let you easily create EQ profiles and assign them to different clicks on the wheel, they would have a winner on their hand as no other headphone I know of lets you select five different settings on demand to match your content/mood.
Overall tonality both measured and listened to, seems alright. The "Impulse Driver" seems to have a narrow response that doesn't extend to sub-bass. This is unfortunate as I expected it to fill in that area. But there is "something" here that could be better optimized in the way it creates good and clean bass at low listening levels.
I am not going to recommend the Sonic Lamb headphone until they deliver a proper, working app. But overall, I admire them trying to innovate and produce a unique product. It is something to try and get to know.
-----------
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/
