Engineering
The rig, and what comes off it
We publish the curve before the copy. This page is the method behind that: which fixture, which smoothing, how many units, and where to download the raw file so you can disagree with us properly.
How a measurement is taken
- The fixture
- Every headset is measured on one IEC 60318-4 ear simulator with a flat plate coupler, in the same room, at 94dB SPL. It has not been replaced since 2019, so a 2019 curve and a 2026 curve are directly comparable.
- The smoothing
- Curves are published at 1/12 octave. Most brands publish at 1/3, which flattens a 6dB resonance into a gentle rise. We show the resonance. Some of ours are not flattering.
- The sample
- Five units off the production line, not the golden sample. The published trace is the median and the shaded band around it is the spread — if the spread is wide, that is a manufacturing problem and you should be able to see it.
- The raw file
- Every measurement is downloadable as a CSV from the product page. Load it into anything you like and check our arithmetic.
A number nobody can reproduce is an advertisement with a decimal point in it.
Designed to be opened
Nothing structural on this site is glued. Ear pads pull off by hand, cups come apart with a T6, keyboard switches are hot-swap on both the Field 65 and the Onyx 75, and the battery in every wireless product is a cell you can order with the rest of the catalogue.
The exploded diagram ships in the box. Not a QR code to a support portal — a printed sheet, because the portal will be gone in ten years and the headset will not be.
We hold parts for ten years from the last unit sold. That is the entire warranty philosophy. Not a longer guarantee, which mostly buys you a longer argument, but the continued ability to fix the thing yourself.
Three revisions, and the third has to sound like the first one promised.
A product goes to tooling on the third revision or it does not go at all. Revision one is the acoustic target, revision two is what manufacturing says is actually possible, and revision three is the argument between them. If the third one has drifted from the target we start again rather than adjust the target, which is why the Mote Pro took two years.
We have cancelled four products at revision three. None of them were bad. They were simply not the thing we had written down at the start, and shipping them would have meant rewriting the specification to match the outcome.
- 1/12Octave smoothing
- 5Units measured per model
- 10 yrParts held after the last unit
- 1Screwdriver to open anything
What we will not do
No tuning by firmware update
The sound signature you measured on day one is the one it keeps. Firmware fixes bugs and adds codecs; it does not quietly move the bass shelf.
No account to use a product
Nothing here needs a login, a cloud service or an app to work at full function. The app is optional and the product outlives it.
No proprietary screws
T6, T8 and PH1 throughout the range. If you own a driver set you can open anything we sell.
No paid reviews
We send review units and we do not ask for the copy back. Two of the linked reviews on this site are unfavourable and they stay up.