- 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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Check them out at originpc.com

or at the link below.

(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,

maybe check out my

streaming setup upgrade.

I recently set up myself with

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So it's pretty cool.

You might wanna check it out.