<\/p>\n
We review a lot of headphones and earbuds here at , and most of them compete for the low- or mid-range of the earbud market. With price points ranging from $75 through $300 or so, they\u2019re often awfully same-ish. The feature set is not dissimilar. They sound different, yes, but not by so much that you\u2019d feel like your life would be ruined if you\u2019d picked one set over the other. It\u2019s a rare moment, then, that I get a piece of equipment shipped to me that breaks the mold. That\u2019s precisely what happened with Angry Miao\u2018s Cyberblade headphones. The base station (yes, there\u2019s a base station) feels like it was carved out of steel and glass. The whole setup weighs in at a whopping 370 grams \u2014 that\u2019s 13 ounces. It\u2019s also rare that a company refuses to tell me what their price point is.<\/p>\n
Like much of Angry Miao\u2019s line, this is a product that appears to be aimed at gamers \u2014 from the multicolor LED feast for your eyes, to the ludicrously fancy base station, to the carrying case for the device, which includes a rotating volume knob that controls the volume on your computer or phone. There was a whole lot of \u201cWhat the ever-loving heavens is going on here?\u201d in the unboxing and setup process of these earbuds. They cram a stupid amount of tech into it all, as well \u2014 and it\u2019s a refreshing take on the \u201cWhat if we didn\u2019t have to make earphones that are as small and light as possible?\u201d paradigm.<\/p>\n
The company shared with me why it is making earbuds at all. They point out that wireless earbuds have been around for a hot minute but that they are plagued with lag. As such, they\u2019re not great for gaming, and the company claims you can do a lot with the audio-processing chips that already exist in earbuds.<\/p>\n
Angry Miao decided to flip things on its head. It created a base station that includes an audio processing chip. Because it\u2019s designed to be plugged into the computer, it matters a lot less how power-hungry the chip is, which in turn unlocks a lot of additional computing power in the charging base. In fact, when you pair the earbuds to your phone, you don\u2019t actually pair the earbuds themselves; you pair the charger case. That means that the earbuds can be controlled from the case using a private audio stream protocol. It also unlocks a bunch of additional audio processing possibilities. The company maintains that this unlocks the next generation of high-definition audio with all the bells and whistles without sacrificing battery life on the earbuds.<\/p>\n
When the earbuds are plugged into a computer, and with its Active Sound Enhancement (ASE) enabled, the company claims it gives users superfast ultra-low latency audio at approximately 40 ms delay (compared to AirPods Pro\u2019s supposed 200 ms delay, according to Angry Miao). The company claims that this means it can deliver high-quality audio with low latency, as opposed to other low-latency products that sacrifice audio quality for speed. In addition, the company offers the usual battery of active noise cancellation and audio-source-dependent sound optimizations \u2014 for Zoom meetings, for gaming, for music, for movies, you name it.<\/p>\n
Is it fantastically cool? Absolutely. Do the earbuds have notably better audio quality than my Sony LinkBuds S earphones? Not really. Was I able to notice the difference in latency of the sound when I was playing games? Not really, but then, I\u2019m not exactly a pro gamer.<\/p>\n
I spoke to the company\u2019s CEO, Li Nan, in a pretty chaotic interview, but he assures me that lag is a terrible problem for everyone, including people who are not gamers, without really being able to explain why.<\/p>\n
\u201cOld apps like a movie player, have higher latency and use a software trick to fix the latency problem. But in the future, the hardware must step forward,\u201d says Nan. \u201cOur product is fast enough that we do not need any additional work at software level. We all have very good latency. That will make it much harder for other brands.\u201d<\/p>\n
I challenge Nan on why 200 milliseconds \u2014 a fifth of a second \u2014 was a big deal when I\u2019m watching Netflix. Yes, there\u2019s a software adjustment, potentially, to make the audio sync up with the video, but\u2026so what?<\/p>\n
No clear answer was forthcoming, and it still isn\u2019t entirely clear to me why these earphones need to exist, nor what their price is \u2014 the company resolutely refused to tell me, other than that \u201cthey are slightly more expensive than Apple AirPods Pro,\u201d before Nan asked me if I would buy them at that price. I told him I didn\u2019t know what the price was, and he reconfirmed that they were a little bit more expensive than the AirPods Pro.<\/p>\n
Chaos aside \u2014 and honestly, the only reason I\u2019m even writing this article \u2014 these are some of the best-manufactured in-ear headphones I\u2019ve ever seen. I don\u2019t give two craps about the weight, and I don\u2019t need RGB LEDs in my headphones, the base station, or the carrying pouch, but I\u2019ll be damned if these aren\u2019t some of the most overengineered earphones I\u2019ve ever seen. And, in a world where everyone is optimizing for price, they stood out for that reason.<\/p>\n
The company is supposedly doing a round of preorders on Kickstarter starting today, and will then offer the product for sale from its website. Presumably, the price is listed on the Kickstarter page, but if I\u2019m being honest, given the level of secrecy the company has had so far, I wouldn\u2019t bet on it.<\/p>\n
Angry Miao Cyberblade earbuds \u2014 I\u2019m definitely not cool enough for these things. Image Credit<\/strong>; \/ Haje Kamps<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We review a lot of headphones and earbuds here at , and most of them compete for the low- or mid-range of the earbud market. With price points ranging from $75 through $300 or so, they\u2019re often awfully same-ish. The feature set is not dissimilar. They sound different, yes, but not by so much that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1193377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1193375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}