At this year’s CES in Las Vegas, we had the opportunity to interview Sankar Thiagasamudram, the founder and CEO of popular audio brand Audeze. We talked about the company’s new products, as well as its collaboration with other brands in the audio sector.
Mr Thiagasamudram also mentioned if we will see an ANC product from Audeze and much more. You can read a sneak peek of the interview below or watch the whole thing in the video above.
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Q: You’ve announced a couple of new gaming products — LCD-GX and Maxwell. Does this mean Penrose and Mobius are being discontinued?
A: As for Mobius, we will most likely do a new release with the latest chipset. But Penrose will be suspended and Maxwell will take his place.
Part of the reason for this is the supply chain, but there are also new chipsets and technologies coming out that we want to take advantage of. We have just decided to move from older proprietary chipsets to the newer platforms available. And we think Maxwell is a new platform that will include other form factors and headsets in the future. It is a flexible platform that will target not only gaming but also enterprises.
Q: Which of the existing LCD products do you think the LCD-GX is closest to in terms of sound?
A: Well, the LCD-GX is kind of a unique product in the series. The reason we made this headset is because we saw people gaming with our LCD-2 headset and thought we could add some of the gaming functionality to the LCD-GX headset to make it more versatile. We even partnered with Shure microphones for this product.
So the LCD-GX is kind of a cross between products like Maxwell and Mobius.
Q: You moved to Atmos with Maxwell, which is a big step up from what was available on Mobius. But does Maxwell include head tracking?
A: No, it doesn’t. We are limited in the console world as we have no choice of which 3D algorithm to use. This is decided by the companies behind the products. So Windows desktops will have built-in Atmos, Xbox will have Windows Sonic or Atmos, while PlayStation consoles will have Sony 3D audio.
We don’t control any of that, which makes it difficult for us to put our 3D algorithm into our headsets because we have to work with these companies’ existing platforms. So with Maxwell we had no choice because we wanted it to support both PCs and consoles.
Q: We have seen your technology in HyperX products as well as Edifier products. Are you currently pursuing other similar relationships?
Mitya Rutnik / Android Authority
A: We probably have the largest speaker manufacturing facility in the US right now, which is becoming increasingly automated. We don’t want to work with almost anyone. We want to choose our partners based on our goals.
If there is a good opportunity for us, we will certainly take it. We worked with HyperX, who have offices close to ours. We had a nice collaboration where we made a variant of the Mobius product for them and they released it to retail. The collaboration has produced great results for both of us.
Q: I see you brought Maxwell with you today. Is there anything you would like to share with our audience about this product?
Mitya Rutnik / Android Authority
A: These are the best sounding gaming headsets we’ve ever made. There’s USB-C and great built-in microphones, some of which are there to help with noise cancellation. But the best part of the product is the battery life. You can get more than 80 hours of battery life by playing continuously at 80dB. I haven’t charged them since I came to CES. They also support fast charging.
When we made our first gaming headset, the Penrose, people gave us a lot of feedback. So we’ve taken all that feedback and incorporated it into Maxwell, so hopefully people will like it.
Q: Do you have any plans to create ANC products in the near future?
Adamya Sharma / Android Authority
A: Yes, but first we need to make sure everything is working properly. We have an ANC patent with Planar, but we just need to make sure that the technology works properly while providing a good user experience.
So at some point in the future we’ll try to figure it out.
This is just a brief overview of the conversation we had with Audeze’s Sankar Thiagasamudram. If you want to learn more, check out the video at the top of the page.
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