 The first time I got my hands on some planar magnetic headphones from Audeze was when I treated myself to a pair of secondhand LCD 2s. 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 Audeze 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. Uh, Dolby Digital Dongle? No. But is it ludicrous overkill in its own way? Absolutely. Origin PC just introduced multiple Corsair case options for their desktops and new laptops powered by the latest Intel and Nvidia technology. Check them out at originpc.com or at the link below. You know, I thought the fancy case was because this is a reviewer's 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 inspected by- Wow, it's actually- Is that actually signed by something? I think it is. Wait, what? This is just a brochure. This is all their other products. You already- You already got me for the LCD GX. I don't need all this other stuff. Look at how cushy those ear cups are, 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 ear cups to the LCD 2s. Instead of wood though, it's all metal. So you don't have that wood grain finish on the outsides here. About the same size adjustment mechanism that I've never honestly been a huge fan of. It's 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 like 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 I look too big for my head? Yes. Oh, well, I thought you were going to be nice about it. Let's have a look at the cables. Nice. Okay, well, that's nice. So I look ridiculously nice then? Is that what you mean to say? Thanks, Brandon. Show up at the LAN party with one of these. Like sup, serious gamer now. Oh, you have AirPods? 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. And 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, you know, whatever your hi-fi equipment is. We're not going to need that because we're gamers today, folks. We're going to be gaming. The right ear cup plugs in as normal. And the left ear cup has actually got a little attached microphone on it. Again, no fancy features, no, you know, mute when you lift it, or, you know, indication LED on it or anything like that. It's not retractable or anything like that. It's just a pretty basic boom mic. You want to get that right by the corner of your mouth there. Then we've got a simple four pole, three and a half millimeter jack on the other end, which most people, if they're not plugging into a laptop, are probably going to want to plug into this splitter right here. And this is the extra piece that came with the reviewer's 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're 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 got to 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, am I 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? 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-backed, 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 you can hear things going on around you. Now, I daily drive Sennheiser HD 600s for gaming, personally, which are also open-backed 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. Audizzi 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 are, 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. They're actually very reminiscent of the LCD IIs 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, other than to put a red accent girl on the side and a microphone on here. So something that happens, I find, just sitting here gaming at 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. 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 because 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. Man, 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-backed. A bigger issue is that I actually got a lot of complaints about mic quality using the included amp and DAC on my Valorant 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 too complainy though. I don't hate this product. The LCDGXs sound amazing, as I expected, but rather than making me want to switch to them, these ended up making me more curious about Audizy's 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, because, man, once you hear something like this, it's like, gaming headsets? You know what's not eh? My segue to our sponsor, Vessi Footwear. Vessi Footwear is made of 100% waterproof material using a knit material that's got like this coating on it that helps it repel water, snow, mud, and slush, and all kinds of great stuff. Their DymaTex material regulates the temperature of your feet, helping you keep cool on hot days, and warm on cold days, and it's flexible and stretchy, almost like a second pair of socks. Vessi Footwear is some of the lightest in the world, weighing just 175 grams for one of their sneakers. That's about the weight of an iPhone, and their herringbone tread pattern is designed to grip anything you walk on. Great for hikes. Antimicrobial insoles keep your feet smelling fresh, and they're available in both women's and men's styles in a variety of styles and colors. So check them out at vessifootwear.com slash Linus Tech Tips. We're gonna have them linked below. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out my streaming setup upgrade. I recently set up myself with a pretty nice streaming setup, so it's pretty cool, and I wanna check it out.