I thought I'd share my thoughts on my Audeze Mobius. I've owned them for a month now. They replaced a Sennheiser PC 360 that was connected to an Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card. The PC 360 and the Xonar were 9 years old. I replaced them because the pots were getting noisy on the headset, making it difficult to change the volume, and people told me there was background interference on the microphone, which I traced to the sound card. I've also used the PC 360 with a Sound BlasterX G6, which I bought to use with my laptop. I play Lord Of The Rings Online (LOTRO) mostly. I also have a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 noise cancelling headphones, while my wife has a pair of Sony WH-1000XM3 noise cancelling headphones. Our home cinema system is a Yamaha DSP-AX620 AV amplifier, four Monitor Audio Apex A10 speakers, a Monitor Audio Apex A40 centre speaker and a REL Strata III subwoofer.
First, the PC 360. The PC 360, when connected to the Asus Xonar Essence STX, had a similar tonal balance to our home cinema system. The PC 360/Xonar combination sounded every so slightly muddy in comparison to the home cinema system. The positional audio using Dolby Headphone was excellent. It was very easy to forget you were wearing headphones. When connected to the Sound BlasterX G6, the PC 360 sounded cleaner but also brighter and thinner. I didn't think the positional audio was as good with the Sound BlasterX as with the Xonar.
So, to the Audeze Mobius. The Audeze Mobius has a very similar tonal balance to the PC 360/Xonar and the home cinema system. In LOTRO, the positional audio is even better than with the PC 360/Xonar. I really like the head tracking system. With the PC360/Xonar, it felt as if the world was spinning around me when I turned my head. With the Audeze Mobius, it sounds completely natural, as the sounds stay in the same place. It also make it easier to pin-point where noises are coming from, as you can turn your head to confirm the direction. In LOTRO, the sound quality is slightly better with the Audeze Mobius than with the PC 360/Xonar, but I suspect I've reached the limits of the sound quality of the samples used by the game developers. Listening to music, the Audeze sounds a lot better, especially in Hi-Res mode, though it's still a little behind the home cinema system. The Audeze has a very clean, neutral sound with smooth, detailed treble and mid-range. The main difference between the Audeze Mobius and the home cinema system is in the bass. While the Audeze Mobius has excellent bass for a pair of headphones, it lacks nuance in the bass compared to the REL subwoofer. I'm less impressed by the Audeze Mobius for film soundtracks. I can't imagine wanting to listen to a film with the Audeze Mobius. It's a long way behind the film-watching experience on the home cinema system. Finally, I find the Audeze Mobius quite uncomfortable. The PC 360s were extremely light and comfortable, as are the Sony WH-1000XM3s. When I first got the PC 360s, I'd sometimes stand up and start to walk away from the computer because I'd forgotten I was wearing headphones. There's no risk of that with the Audeze Mobius. They're quite heavy. They also have a pronounced clamping effect. I bought the gel-filled ear pads for the Mobius, but I found them even more uncomfortable. They're firmer, making the Audeze Mobius feel even heavier and giving me a headache after about an hour. Audeze seem to acknowledge this is a problem for some. See
https://www.audeze.com/blogs/techno...ut-weight-clamping-force-and-earpad-materials. Personally, I'd be willing to trade some audio quality for comfort. I might have been imagining it, but I thought the positional audio was every so slightly better with the gel-filled ear pads, possibly because they bring the diaphragms a little closer to your ears.
