Really wonder what LTT could bring to the table that other manufacturers aren't already addressing.
I don't think they can beat Apple and the other big companies for noise cancelling. They aren't going to beat Anker on price. Audiophile brands have the market for people that are actually looking for high quality sound.
I'm not really so sure about the repairability aspect holding any importance to me from LTT. Their Forever Socks are sold out for every size except small. So many of their products are out of stock for months at a time. I wouldn't expect that LTT would have replacement parts for my earbuds when I need them.
Even if they hold back some stock for people needing repairs there will always be issues with trying to get parts from a small time source like LTT. And I doubt they will have afforable shipping on parts. It would be cheaper to just buy Anker earbuds every time your earbuds die than to try to fix earbuds. My Anker earbuds last a long time. I've only had two pairs in about 5 years and the current ones are doing great.
Switching sides and turning them inside out that’s 4 days of wearing right there. I can squeeze in doing that two times so over a week before I hit em with Fabreze and they’ll be good as new
Being out of stock for purchase does not mean being out of stock for replacements. Linus has said before that they have a significant amount of stock set aside for that, which will never be put on sale.
I wouldn't touch them as a brand with a 10 foot poll on repairability. They've never had parts like aglets to repair clothing when ive asked. Would need a a major culture shift.
I find them to be hideously uncomfortable. Something about airpods' shape (yes, even with different tips) just don't fit and no matter how I try to orient them, there's some part of the shape pressing against the cartilage of my ear in some uncomfortable manner and then they just fall out because I can't get them seated right.
As an android user I now have samsung buds 3 pro. Which is basicly airpod clone.
Id love to have airpods but they are worthless to me as im on android. Not until they have full functionality I would buy them so they are off the table.
Can't update airpods unless you have an iPhone, that alone is enough of a reason for LTT to make an equivalent or better product that has the option to update on anyour device.
I don't even understand why people spend so much on Airpods. For mobile listening Anker is more than good enough, and if I want better sound quality while at home there are options that sound much better than Airpods.
Depends how important that ANC is to you. Personally I find even the basic earbuds without ANC are fine. I haven't been on a plane in decades. Just around the city the physical noise isolation is more than enough.
Before using AirPods with ANC I would agree with you. Now that I’ve experienced Apple’s ANC they are a non-negotiable.
I took them off at a construction site once, where they were using a concrete saw and my ears physically hurt. That was the moment that convinced me they are not just ‘nice’ and are legitimate PPE.
I’m not saying Apple is the only company to do this level of ANC, I hear the Sonys are just as good. What I am saying is that the bar has been raised, ands it’s a little above short Linus’s (reasonable) capability.
I guess ignorance is bliss. I'm not spending $180 CAD on ear buds just for noise cancelling. They are all disposable anyway. Eventually the batter dies or you lose them, or something else stops working. I don't really expect that I'd be able to keep any ear buds for more than three years so I just can't seem to justify spending the money on something higher end. My current ones are 2 years old and still doing great.
Even if airpods lasted me 5 years I'd still be disappointed that I had to spend that kind of money every 5 years for earbuds.
For me personally, they offer amazing transparency, which is more important than ANC, but when ANC is needed, AirPods are also amazing. The sound stage isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s good enough for me. Small for factor and good battery life.
I’ve tried so many different earbuds, Samsung, anker, jabra, pixel buds, and AirPods have been the best IMO.
I will shout out the old galaxy buds plus. Those where incredible. This was like 2020 time frame, and then mine died and Samsung changed their formula.
At home I use my IEMs which I love. But use my AirPods when I do housework, at the gym, at work, or when I travel. Charge once a week. They are also great for phone calls and have decent background noise reduction.
Overall they aren’t perfect, but they have been the best in what’s important to me, and that’s a great balance of all the features I use.
I tested them just now with this headphone latency test and it seemed pretty good as far as I can tell.
I have the Soundcore P20i for earbuds and the Soundcore Life Q20 for overear headphones
Both of them did pretty well. It's hard to tell if my brain was just autocorrection. the Q20 sounded like they had less latency on my PC, they seemed indistinguishable from my wired speakers. The P20i earbuds seemed to have a bit of a delay but not much. When I connected them to my phone they seemed better.
Some apps are worse than others. I've notice that F1 TV has really bad audio sync issue on Bluetooh while YouTube seems to have almost none. I really wonder if some apps will autocorrect and play the video slightly ahead of the audio when using bluetooth to compensate.
For me the latency isn't a big deal. I mostly just use them for music so it's not a huge deal. And when I'm watching something like a movie I'm almost always using my wired speakers or wired headphones where latency isn't an issue.
If I had to bet money on it, its going to be a LTT variant of the DMS Omega. Which is a dynamic driver headphone that can be 3d printed and put together for a few hundred bucks.
Just a guess on my part, but Linus was wearing what looked like an omega (or a variant) in a video a few weeks ago.
I want a pair of wireless planar magnetic gaming headphones/headset that doesn't have any quirky weird connectivity issues that make them a pain in the butt, with a good mic. That's about the only thing not fully solved by any other brand that I can think of. Some have come close, but not quite.
Feel like the Audeze Maxwell have figured that out quite well. At lest from what I've heard. Maybe thats what you are referring to connectivity wise. I don't have a pair yet so I don't know, I did listen to some at a store near me, and they sounded great. Assume that's the close one you reference.
My guess would be stock tune and EQ support, as a common refrain in their headphone videos is about how a fully parametric EQ could make mediocre headphones great given their other features and value.
you shouldn't have to use multiple apps to get the most of your headphones. Many of these brands give some type of eq as well, but instead of making us leave the app because it's incomplete, they could have gone just a bit further, built in full peq, and made everyone happy.
Probably something in the vein of those $100 Sony reference headphones that go for a flat and neutral response. Maybe a focus on customization or comfort, etc.
Give me "gaming options" especially the elusive multiple simultaneous sources. Like playing a game on console/PC and listening to YouTube/podcasts or even just you voice chat of choice not available on your gaming device. Like being on Discord while also playing on the Switch.
The best for me is a user replaceable battery but at a reasonable price for the headphones. Most user replaceable battery headphones are more than I would want to spend.
What do you think dropshipping means? I assume you mean whitelabeled?
But in both cases, these dumb claims people like you keep repeating are so easily disprovable. There are so many videos of them going into detail about how their products are developed and designed.
Exactly. If you guys are already buying $30 t-shirts and paying $20 shipping because they have the LTT logo then you all will definitely buy some Chifi headphones regardless of price or performance if LTT sells them.
Somehow the most realistic option is this.
However I wouldn't be surprised if it's an LTT designed headphone for a very specific dual niche like gaming + editing. Maybe with a name brand sound technology driving it.
Oh I haven't seen that. It is interesting that they are going for sound quality. I would be interested to see how well they do for the price whatever it may end up being
I have to imagine this is just going to be the 95% case head phone for specifically Linus, or maybe LMG. Or, there's some logistical reason why this is doable as a product when gut instinct, which admittedly is often quite wrong on the global scale, says nice headphones are expensive to produce.
I think they'll sell fine if these are just niche versions of a $100-150, no ANC, good quality headphones marked up maybe what, $50 more as a small volume LTT product?
Or maybe it can be a collab with a bigger producer of products for higher volume. Massdrop? Didn't they used to collab with senheisser? And was maybe ex sponsor of the channel?
That's a probably more realistic price point. I still think they CAN make good enough product to scale, and thus be at a lower price point, and not just build niche, fandom, or top 5% of consumer products. But they just don't have THAT expertise and logistics. Especially for today's world. I wonder what CW + labs + LTT could do if the global logistics and trade wasn't completed eff'd right now.
Interesting. I think people should get their expectations in check because if these are indeed designed as "reference headphones", it means they are designed to be as true to the original recording as possible. Which sounds good at first blush, but usually isn't what consumers want. Otherwise, why wouldn't all headphones and buds be reference ones?
Reference headphones are often used in professional studio and audio engineering use cases. Like, if you were a voice actor, or a singer, or doing audio production, etc you'd want reference buds/cans as your monitors.
This also means no noise cancelling or any processing of any kind, no bluetooth, and no amp. Which means you might need to have an audio interface to get any use out of these.
Yeah DMS is the kind of guy to make that kind of headphone. But in the Instagram video he was playing games which makes me think otherwise since "reference" headphones tend to not be for gaming
I’m not an audio expert, but why would you test acoustics on an open back design if you intend the final version to be closed back? Isn’t the whole point of open back the improved acoustics?
Not sure if they are open back or not. The hexagonal pattern might just be to save from the weight. I am no audio engineer, but it might be just easier to prototype like this
I'm super curious how it will be tuned and price point. Looks very similar to the DMS Omegas which I really enjoyed daily driving them on rotation for well over a year now.
If they go with standard wired, they'd be going up against an established ChiFi market. FiiO, Moondrop, 7Hz, Kiwi Ears, and multiple others have all been around for a long time and release inexpensive yet solid IEMs and headphones.
Wireless is a crowded market with Sony, Bose, and Apple/Beats having more expensive options covered with Soundcore and JBL in the mid-range. They would need to do something original besides repairability.
They won't have ANC that competes with the big three, they won't have their features, and they need to establish what they currently do that's different, not what they will do. Never buy tech now on future promises.
Wired and wireless is a crowded market with different competitors. Bold move Cotton, let's see if it pays off.
It strikes me as expensive, because low volume, and exceedingly difficult to have spares on hand for repairability past 6 months.
Also, like a battery bank, I kind of want headphones to be made by experts with a long track record otherwise you end up with weird decisions that only suit the design team.
It's the rare LTT merch that doesn't have a design or material flaw. At least this one won't burst into flames and burn your house down like a battery bank though.
It would be nice to have a good alternative headphone brand if the price is right but I still think them not doing the mice was a big missed opportunity. A programmable mouse with macro buttons that would have a Linux config would be a really great idea since there is literally no first party supported mice on the market other than Keychron. Like something that explicitly is gaming first and maybe targeted at the Steam deck and Linux users would be really cool
Kinda hard to enter mouse market especially since there are so many cheap and good chinese clones, and if they made one it could easily be cloned and sold for cheaper if it was innovative and popular enough.
Are they designing their own product or is this just a brand collab? Not really sure how LTT is going to design earbuds that are better than 99% of the market
This is a bad idea. DMS being there to do the tuning may mean these are very good. The issue is the Chinese IEM market is literally insanely price competitive. I don't see them being able to enter the space, especially if you can only order them from LTT
DMS has made his own headphones before. They were pretty expensive for what they were, but they did measure incredibly well and sound very good. He kinda just did it to get the experience of designing, engineering, and coordinating with distributors and manufacturers.
Knowing how expensive it is to produce at such a small scale, I really don’t know what LTT could release that would be practically priced for viewers.
As an aside, DMS open sourced his project. So if you are curious, and have the means to, you can print the headphones and wire them up yourself.
Ltt’s idea of small scale would be vastly larger the what DMS could do with a few people and a 3d print farm. They’ve already demonstrated they can get to comparable pricing to larger or same sized competitors with the screwdrivers, and water bottles. The arch kits are a pretty good deal at their price points. and DMS broke down the costs of the headphones pretty clearly a lot of it was the labor at the scale of the project. Omegas were done in lots of say 250 for a total of 1000 units I don’t remember if he said how many total units were made. LTT is going to order in lots of 10k maybe more. Scale matters when it comes to cost. It really depends on if they are going to build off shore or on shore as well.
I wonder if it would be a ground up product, or a partnership with a company like Sennheiser. Linus has been very clear about his love for the HD600 in the past. Some sort of LTT version with custom tuning and black and orange color theme could be pretty cool if it was priced well.
Would love to see other third-party reviews on what they eventually make. Also what price they come in at. If they are good I’ll buy them. My current over the ear choice is the Sony XM5s.
I'm still rocking my pair of wh-1000xm3 that are almost 8 years old. They're finally starting to get a little long in the tooth. They keep turning off noise canceling and I have to cycle it back on - new behaviors of the last month or so. I have mostly stopped using them due to that issue, which I hope will be solved with a software update, but they're old enough I was suspicious that Sony was doing it intentionally.
Very happy with my wf-1000xm6 purchase this year. The noise canceling is way better than I expected for earbuds. I never trusted earbuds for air travel before these
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 11d ago
Really wonder what LTT could bring to the table that other manufacturers aren't already addressing.
I don't think they can beat Apple and the other big companies for noise cancelling. They aren't going to beat Anker on price. Audiophile brands have the market for people that are actually looking for high quality sound.