- The first time I got my hands
on some planar magnetic headphones from Odyssey
was when I treated myself to a pair of secondhand LCD twos.
Now, I never made a video about those
because my reason for buying them was so that
I would have something to use as a reference
for what truly high end sounded like.
Giving me the context that I needed
for the consumer headphones and the gaming headsets
that I was evaluating.
Fast forward a few years and Odyssey has brought
a lot of that same technology into a gaming headset.
This is the LCD GX.
Does it have built in vibration motors?
No.
RGB?
Also no.
Dolby Digital dongle?
No.
But is it ludicrous overkill in its own way?
Absolutely.
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(tecno music)
You know I thought the fancy case was because
this is a reviewers kit but as it turns out
it's only slightly modified from the retail one.
Look at this thing, it's ridiculous.
User guide and driver downloads and then
a certificate of authenticity inspect about
wow, that actually is signed by something
yeah I think it is.
Like what this is just a brochure
this is all their other products you already got me
for the LCD GX, I don't need all this other stuff.
Look at how cushy your cups are, Brandon.
- [Brandon] They haven't changed
their design language, really.
- No, they really haven't, have they?
They look just about identical other than
the red gamery accents on the air cups to the LCD twos.
Instead of wood though, it's all metal.
So you don't have that that woodgrain finish
on the outsides here.
About the same size adjustment mechanism
that I've never honestly been a huge fan of
kind of rudimentary feeling.
That's the funny thing about these
high end headphone brands, though, right?
Is that on the one hand,
they are mass producing these things,
but on the other, some of their manufacturing techniques
seem to be carryovers from when they were
hand making dozens of them at a time.
That is a gigantic ear cup.
That is already such a large ear cutout
that I don't touch it on any side.
Curiously, unlike a lot of the headphones,
they don't have a non-leather vegan option
for the gaming skew.
But this feels so nice.
You can really tell when an audio product
is designed to be disposable versus when it's designed
to be used for many, many years.
So these ear cups are wait a minute.
Yeah, I don't think these are removable, strictly speaking,
you could definitely replace them
by taking these off and gluing new ones on there.
But yep, curiously, even though they've got
a leather strap up here that kind of looks like
a suspension style headphone strap,
it comes up right against the metal headband,
so you can feel it through the top.
Do I look ridiculous?
Do they look too big for my head?
- [Brandon] Yes.
- Oh, well, I thought you were gonna be nice about it.
Let's have a look at the cables.
- [Brandon] They look nice.
- Okay well, that's nice.
So I look ridiculously nice then?
Is that what you mean to say?
- [Brandon] Yes.
- Thanks, Brandon show up at the LAN party
with one of these.
Like sup, serious gamer now.
- [Brandon] Aw, You have AirPods?
(laughs)
- Oh, that's adorable.
Now, let's sort through our cable situation.
You don't actually need all of these.
So on the bottom of each ear cup is a mini XLR.
In that way you can replace the cables
that come with it, with whatever cables you want
or you can swap out between the two that it does include.
So this one right here, uses a quarter inch jack
and is meant to plug into whatever your PiFi equipment is.
We're not gonna need that 'cause we're gamers today folks.
We're gonna be gaming.
The right ear cup plugs in it as normal,
and the left ear cup has actually got
a little attached microphone on it.
Again, no fancy features no mute when you lift it
or indication LED on it or anything like that
it's not retractable or anything like that.
It's just a pretty basic boom mic
wanna get that right by the corner of your mouth there.
Then we've got a simple four pole three and 1/2 millimeter
jack on the other end, which most people,
if they're not plugging into a laptop are probably going to
wanna plug into this splitter right here
and this is the extra piece
that came with the reviewers kit.
So this is a shit hell.
I know I don't make the rules,
that's what the product is called.
It's a shit audio hell and you plug in your two micro USBs
and this is a USB Amp and DAC that also has
an input which is kind of nice that you can hook up
to your gaming laptop, or desktop, or whatever.
And then you plug in your brand new fancy pants headphones
at the front like that and you are ready for some gaming.
All right, so you think you're a gamer
but here's the thing.
I lied to you guys a little bit
this isn't my first time opening these up
I took them for a test drive the other night.
And the problem is that immediately after throwing them on,
I was like, okay, well, I gotta set up OBS
for my new audio device.
But why don't I throw on a playlist
and I'll listen to some music on them, before I go live.
25, 35 minutes later, I'm kind of sitting there going
yeah, I'm not that much of a gamer.
Do I really need to go live right now?
Or should I just jam out to some tunes?
Can you hear this through the microphone right now?
- [Brandon] Yes.
- Oh, okay,
sorry about that.
Also, I guess I've probably been yelling.
Thing is the benefits of planar magnetic drivers
are several they are enormous, which means
that they can move a lot of air
which is what generates sound.
And additionally, they're extremely light,
like nano-layer light.
So what that means is that they're incredibly responsive
so whether it's deep, thunderous bass,
I mean the kind of thing that you feel rather than just hear
or whether it's very high end details that you need.
And whether it's when you're listening to music
or as a gamer like listening for footsteps,
the reproduction is incredible.
They do have some drawbacks.
They are open back which as you can see,
even listening to music at what I would consider to be
a high but still reasonable level anyone around you
can hear exactly what you've got going on.
It also means that (snaps fingers)
you can hear things going on around you.
Now, I daily drive Sennheiser HD six hundreds
for gaming, personally, which are also
open back headphones and I'm happy with that
but I would still hesitate to recommend
a gaming headset that isn't closed back.
Obviously from a stereo imaging and accuracy standpoint,
there's no drawback the ears are designed
to hear bleed over in your left ear
from what is playing to your right ear.
That's how sound works in the world around you.
And a set of planar magnetic drivers
right next to your ear holes is about as close
to great quality speakers in the room
as you can get.
Odyssey rightly has a spectacular reputation
in the audiophile community for their wide soundstage,
and their lifelike audio.
The issue is that it does make a big difference
to immersion to hear things around you
unless you happen to be one of those lucky souls
who doesn't have to deal with any ambient noise.
Let's fire up a game.
You know what?
Sure, let's go completely tasteless
and play some Duke Nukem Forever.
The next thing I gotta talk about is comfort.
The LCD Gxs I mean, there's really no way to describe them
other than pretty heavy and they don't have
a lot of clamping pressure.
It's funny because you can see
they kind of snap right together like this.
And it seems like they would have
a lot of force but, they don't.
They're kind of loose and they're actually
very reminiscent of the LCD twos
that even though I treated myself to them,
I never ended up switching to for daily use
because of comfort issues.
They're fine for a bit
If I was just sitting here doing this video off the cuff,
I would say these are very comfortable,
like those super cushiony ear cups, great.
But my problem with them is that they're clearly designed
to be worn while sitting, upright or reclined backwards,
maybe while listening to music for a little while.
And I don't see what if anything,
they've adapted about these to make the design for gamers
of the vendor put a red accent girl on the side
and microphone on here.
So something that happens I find just sitting here gaming
on a laptop, and oh look at that.
And when I was using them the other night,
and I went to grab something on my floor,
is that they will just fall right off of my head.
And it's always a balance
between clamping pressure and strap weight.
You can make up for that with a great strap.
But unfortunately, the theory of a hammock like
strap up here, just doesn't hold up in the real world
and it feels more strap like and less hammock like
and that's 'cause I can really feel the metal through it.
Wearing them for two hours in a row on the first night,
the pressure points were a little bit
from the foam in the ear cups being almost too stiff,
but mostly from the flat strap right across
the top of my head.
Flat surface, round object, never a great idea
and I don't know why headphone ergonomics are so hard.
You need a combination of the two
to really make it feel like it's floating on your head
like some gaming headsets do so well.
Man when you got great headphones,
the bad voice acting sounds even worse.
All right, time to punch some dudes.
The audio sounds so clean though,
you start to hear the characters talking a little bit less,
and the voice actors in the booth talking a little bit
like it's almost too much.
I don't mean it as a criticism.
It's just something to be aware of
something it does get right is the temperature
even though it's a leather type ear cup,
I never really felt any excessive warmth.
I guess it does help a little bit to be open back.
A bigger issue is that
I actually got a lot of complaints
about mic quality using the included Amp and DAC
on my (murmurs) stream the other night.
Now, I don't think that's the end of the world,
I have a separate mic and USB XLR interface for it.
And honestly, so would anybody
spending this kind of money on their gaming audio.
But I guess the issue is that that kind of raises
the question of if this microphone
isn't designed to be good enough for the customer
who would buy this product,
why bother including it in the first place?
Why not just say, "Hey, if you like our products,
"just buy a pair of headphones
"and get a separate microphone."
I don't wanna come across to complainy though.
I don't hate this product.
The LCD GXs sound amazing, as I expected.
But rather than making me want to switch to them,
these ended up making me more curious
about Odysseys lower tier Mobius,
which seemed to compromise on their classic
hangs off your head ergonomics
in order to cater better to gamers.
Someone from the team, maybe James maybe me,
I'm not sure yet is planning to take those for a test drive,
At $400 my expectations are still really high,
but hopefully a lot of the cost savings is
the more plastic construction rather than the sound quality.
'Cause man once you hear something like this,
it's like gaming headsets, eh.
You know what's not eh.
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
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