- Oh wow, my Venus, my fire, my desire.
no, we're not unboxing a waifu
but there is a beautiful waifu on the front of it.
We're unboxing Moondrop's Venus,
their planar magnetic headphones from- (beep)
From Moondrop, the lauded in ear monitor producing company
that came onto the scene in 2015 and has continually been
shaking up the IEM world at pretty much every price point
by releasing lots of really, really cool headphones
at really, really cheap prices.
Like their $20 Moondrop CHUs, which are like, okay,
they're fine but they're still $20 for what you get.
It's pretty good deal.
Or their Blessing2, which was a huge
huge price proposition being at $330
and was competing with like $600, $700 IEMs.
But now they're trying to make their transition
into headphones, which is not a transition
that many companies have been the most successful at.
You think that it should be pretty easy.
If you can make a good earbud then you can probably
make a good headphone, but that's not the case.
Look at Sennheiser.
Sennheiser is famous for making some of the best headphones
of all time and they have like one good in ear monitor.
What's the deal?
Well, it turns out that they're actually a lot
more different than they are the same.
But that didn't scare Moondrop at all
because Moondrop's actually releasing three
different headphones.
They're releasing their lower end Moondrop Void
a dynamic driver headphone.
They're also gonna be releasing their high-end
Moondrop Zero a electrostatic headphone
and they're releasing the Venus,
a planar magnetic headphone.
But the question is, are these ones good today?
We didn't even look at the box
we didn't look at the outside of the box.
Let me don't look here.
Stop looking.
I don't know
if you can like buy these in a storefront release.
So the box design's kind of interesting 'cause usually
if you're gonna be shopping
for expensive headphones you'll see the models
out on the floor as opposed to like in their boxes.
But they do always go above and beyond when it comes
to putting a girl on the box.
On the back, there's this cool breakdown
of the actual structure of the drivers.
You can see there's a diaphragm, there's frames,
the staters for the magnets as well
as a frequency response graph that isn't really
the most easy to read or detailed, but it's cool
that they're actually reporting what they've measured it
on as well as their response and then they just say Target
and we don't know what they're actually targeting.
They could have just been like, hey
this is a target that'll make our headphone look good.
But it's fairly harm and shaped.
The inputs to the headphones are 3.5 millimeters.
I really appreciate that because that means it's easy
to replace cables.
The plug.
So the other end of it, they have a 3.5 millimeter
single-ended plug and a 4.4 millimeter balanced plug.
Six hertz to 80 kilohertz.
What they really mean is 20 kilohertz to 20 kilohertz
and even then they probably don't go all the way down
to 20 hertz.
Impedance is 18 oms, which isn't the easiest
to drive, but you should be fine
with pretty much any audio player.
You might not be able to drive them at their full volume.
But I didn't have any issues driving these with basically
any computer I plugged them into.
I plugged them into two different computers like a laptop.
I plugged them into my desktop at work.
I didn't plug them into an iPhone.
I think that the iPhone adapter should be able to cover
18 oms, it's not too bad.
And then sensitivity one decibel.
It's cool.
Let's get it outta here and let's get this in.
Now the Venus is competing with some fancy headphones
so I'm expecting a decent unboxing experience.
Not terrible.
They got like some foam and some velvety material.
We got QC005.
I don't know if that means that we got the fifth ones.
We probably didn't, we're not that special to them.
For such a big box, yeah, there's nothing else
in here which is a bit disappointing.
I would've liked to see like maybe a carrying case
or something.
Maybe even just like a bag.
Maybe this does this come out and makes a bag?
Yo, it's the Tesla logo.
Whoa, no, this just comes out I guess.
Before we talk about this, what's in this?
Inside we have, is it is like a tiny postcard?
We got a manual, in here we have our,
ooh, a nice braided,
oh and they even have the the little twisties.
This is very much a IEM thing, the twisty cable.
I like it.
I think it looks nice.
So we got our...
We have our 3.5 millimeter adapter
and then we have our balanced output.
It's also doing that braided cable thing
that I think looks really nice.
There's a split right here
in the middle to go to the two inputs.
I kind of worry about the stress relief here.
There's not much in terms
of strain relief kind of just goes into the plastic.
I would've liked to see more rubber coming
out or more silicone coming out to actually
I don't know, relieve the stress.
While the connector is quite large
on the three and a half millimeter
the stress leaf seems a little bit better
especially on this end and as long
as they don't introduce too much sound
which we can check, they should be just fine.
And let's look at these things.
First off, holy cow, are these things ever heavy?
It's a hundred percent solid metal.
There is, the headband here is metal.
The entire side of the ear cup is metal
and this texture's actually like it's sharp.
I run my fingers along it
and I'm worried I'm gonna get like a paper cut
or I guess just a normal cut when it's metal
but it looks really, really cool.
Also, look at the size of the ear cups on these.
Look inside, look at how much space you have in there.
You could live in there.
You'd have to pay rent
if you wanted this much space in Vancouver.
Roomy, this is a fake leather for sure.
This isn't real leather.
Same with on the headband.
It's two different, it's different textures on the headband
though, they go for elastic instead of a cushion.
I find that this works pretty well for me.
I know that some people have complaints about this style
of a headband because if you're somebody who wiggles
around a lot or you have a smaller head
what it can do is that if it's too tight
it kind of starts slowly like kind of moving up your head
and then it's gonna be bothering the bottom of your ears.
I know Jake Tie has complained to me about that before.
Even here we got like six hex screws
like these are built like a fricking tank,
six on each side just for this headband.
I guess if you really wanted, you could probably
just replace the headband on these 'cause there's no wires
or anything going through the top.
I do feel like this kind of disrupts the look of them.
It's just like, it's a beautiful circle and dun.
Oh they also have like you can see
on the inside of this ear cup, there's like a,
some breathing holes for that ear breath.
These are open back, so don't expect any sort of isolation.
You can basically see through them at this point.
The ear cups, they are, hey look at that.
They're removable.
So funny story, I had these a little bit earlier
and I dropped them and that's how I found
out that you can do this, you can just take them out.
I was very worried when I dropped these
because this whole thing fell out and I thought
that I had broken them for good, but then I realized
that this is all the electronics you need.
This is just a headband.
You can see the diaphragm
the metal that just goes all the way around.
So here's the thing
this is a 100 millimeter driver.
This whole thing is the driver.
That's the cool thing about planar magnetics is
that unlike a dynamic driver where you have a coil
that you have a small coil that's surrounded
by a magnet that then pushes a large diaphragm
with planar magnetics, you have magnets that go
along the entire plane of your diaphragm
and then when an electric charge is put on each side of it
it wiggles the diaphragm and that produces a sound.
So instead of having the sound focused
kind of from the center of the woofer
at the back you have this whole thing producing sound.
So it's like that as opposed to like a cone.
And part of that is what gives
like their unique kind of sound.
Like people often talk about like the speed
or the precision of the base response in planar magnetics.
It's not, and that's because you're not trying
to have one small magnet move a big diaphragm.
You have all of this diaphragm, all
of these magnets working together to move a lot more air.
On the other hand that does tend to make these more
expensive to manufacture than a typical dynamic driver.
Also, they're just not as popular.
So there's less people focusing
on making really cheap planar magnetics
but it's getting better and better these days.
If you're interested in trying out the planar magnetic sound
but don't think it's like gonna change your life
it's not like, wow
I've never heard my music like this before.
It's like it's minute differences but I think it's,
I'm partial to planar magnetics myself.
Other than that, there's nothing on these.
There's just the three and a half millimeter inputs
no buttons or any of that other fluff.
This is pure audio.
Let's weigh them.
572 grams.
I think they actually go over, I think they reported to
be 600.
Yeah, maybe with the cable you're right though
it could be 30 grams.
So if I go like 615, yeah, so I mean this part's not
gonna be carrying too much weight, but that's a lot.
That's half a kilogram.
That's like a jar of peanut butter putting on your head.
It's a weird reference point, but if you know
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This is our FIO M15.
This is a dedicated audio player plus Dak amp combo.
I'm only using it just 'cause it's audio file.
No as I said, these are open back headphones.
There's something about planar magnetics that makes them
particularly bad is open back headphones
because it takes very little to make them very audible.
I don't know, can you guys hear it?
Yeah, it's surprisingly not loud, but the thing
about these planet magnetics is that they leak so much
of those really high end frequencies that it
makes it very noticeable for anyone around you.
This is not an office headphone.
Also, when you don't have music playing
you can basically hear the whole world.
What that does do is it provides 'em
with a little bit of a better sound stage.
Though I'm not amazed by this headphones sound stage
I find that it is adequate.
I find that these headphones sound tend to sound very clear.
They're a little brighter.
I don't find it to be an issue
but you could argue that they're on the brighter side
like when listening to Scatman's World
by Scatman John, you really do hear those
like high pitched high hats,
(sings) Scatman, and they can be a little peaky.
I found that listening to Aja by Steely Dan
you can really hear this like kind of bell,
or, it's not a triangle, I don't know what it is.
I don't know percussion instruments all that well
but there's like a really
really high pitched like ding that is just so noticeable
on these headphones.
But in terms of timbre, these things sound awesome
especially with like string instruments.
I find that like acoustic guitar violins all sound really
really lifelike.
Like Tamacun by Rodrigo y Gabriela,
it sounds so good on here.
It's immaculate.
It's like you
I could like see the guitar strings vibrating even
though I'm just listening, in terms
of base response, at the very, very low end.
It's a little bit lacking.
There's a little bit of a roll off
but you still have that kind of precision that you get
from a planar magnetic headphones that makes things
like double kicks and metal sound really, really
really punchy and precise and tracks
like Born in Winter or From the Sky by Gojira.
The base kicks feel powerful but also like not muddied
they're not ruined.
It's really, really great.
This is a funny enough, this solid metal headphone
is a solid metal headphone. (boo sound effect)
But we got labs to measure them so we can take a more
objective look at what they actually sound like
on our fancy new head.
Here we go.
In a previous video about the Focal Bathys, we talked
about frequency response.
One thing to note is that that graph in that video is not
gonna be comparable to the one that we have here today
because it's measured on a different system.
It was measured
in a different location and we're measuring on our brand
new BNK 528.
It's the kind of the gold standard, but it means
that things like the Harmon target are less relevant
because the Harmon target was researched
on different equipment and so it's not directly applicable.
We're working
on developing our own target that will be used as a simple
very low level guide as to is this headphone generally good?
So use the measurement for the Venus in the green.
That's the measurement of this headphone.
The dotted line is our target.
It's not finalized or anything.
It could change in the future, but as you can see
the base response, especially the very low base
below 40 kilohertz is a little bit lacking.
It's a about seven or eight decibels lower
than where our target is, the mids
it follows the line pretty well.
It's pretty close and we can see a pretty steady bump
over in the upper mids in the treble.
But here's where you can see kind of some of the peaks
like look at that peak way
at the top right around the 14 kilohertz region.
That's where stuff like really high sibilance, so stuff
like Ss and Ts can get a little bit out of hand.
I found it only
in very specific scenarios to be a little too much.
Other than that, it's not a terribly bright headphones.
So if you're somebody who doesn't like really bright
detailed sound, you're not gonna be overwhelmed by these.
Now we can compare them to say the HD 800S's.
You can see that this has more base presence
than the HD 800S's and it tends to be less bright.
In the five to eight kilohertz region,
the HD 800S tend to be a lot more louder
so there's a little bit more brightness to them.
Some people find it a little fatiguing.
It tends to be a little bit less peaky.
You can see that there's fewer lows
and highs and it's more kind of control and a steady curve.
But that's also a headphone that is literally
triple the price of these.
And that's where these are really interesting is
that this is a $600 headphone, which puts it
in an interesting place in terms of headphone pricing.
There's a weird chasm
between the enthusiast headphones where you see stuff
like Sennheiser, HD 600s, the like flagship
where you see like $1,800 headphones, like the HD 800S's.
These are kind of going somewhere
in the middle there for better or for worse.
That's a good thing because in a lot of ways
especially when it comes to like build quality
these things are built like a tank.
But then you have to think about like what can you get
for a better price that has a very similar performance.
And while these are I think, great sounding headphones
there's a lot of competition even within the planar
magnetic space.
You have the Hifiman Sundara, which are
planar magnetics and have rightfully earned their place
as a great enthusiast planar headphone.
They're like half the price and they also sound pretty
dang good.
I don't think they look as good.
I found that when I listened to these, when
I spent some time with these, the weight didn't bother me.
But it is something you really have to consider
if you're just gonna be sensitive to heavy headphones.
These are very heavy.
Personally, I had no issue, because it's a circle
and it's not a crazy, crazy size.
It leaves you open to options
of getting custom ear pads or replacement ear pads,
which can change the sound drastically.
Especially if you go for something that's more open
you can lose the base
or if you go for something that's thicker
you can really enhance the base response on these.
It's a admirable entry and I think a really
really good first attempt, which makes me very
excited to see where Moondrop takes their headphone line
up from here.
If somebody decided to purchase these headphones
they would be absolutely happy with them.
I think it's a great product, so well done.
They're a great product just to be aware that
there's other options that exist for slightly cheaper.
You can do that with them
and you can subscribe to Short Circuit.
If you like this video, why don't you watch my video
about the Focal Bathys, another really great pair
of headphones that are, you know, within striking distance
of the same price, but they're wireless.