Hey! I wanted to share my experience with the Audeze Maxwell. This headphone gets almost universal praise on all the YouTube channels which mention it. My experience with this headset has not been great, so I thought I would specifically point out 3 of my personal gripes with it, to hopefully help balance the praise it gets online.

For context, I had previously been using the Philips SHP9500 (with a V-Moda BoomPro microphone) for about 7 years for gaming. Outside of gaming, I generally use the Sennheiser HD 600, or the second generation Apple AirPods Pro. I started looking for a replacement for the SHP9500 late last year, because as comfortable as they are, the audio always sounded quite muffled through them, especially when compared directly to the HD 600. I was also quite tired of cables getting in the way constantly, so I hoped to find something wireless.

Long story short, after going through dozens of YouTube videos, I decided to get the Audeze Maxwell. Based on the reviews, I had high expectations. Let me point out some of the potentially misleading statements I heard from (several) reviews, and my personal (subjective) experience regarding these things.

Misleading statement #1: the Maxwell is an excellent headphone for competitive FPS. In reality, I realized extremely quickly that out of all of my headphones, the Maxwell was the absolute worst at detecting where footsteps were coming from. I explicitly tested this shortly after getting them, and found that the SHP9500, HD 600, and even my AirPods were all far better for understanding where enemies were located (tested in Counter-Strike). I don't think it was a matter of getting used to them either, because even now, many months later, I still find it unnecessarily difficult to understand positional audio when using the Maxwell.

Misleading statement #2: the Maxwell is comfortable and can be worn for long gaming sessions. For me, the Maxwell is the most uncomfortable headset I own, and it's not even close. After wearing them for about 30 minutes, I start noticing discomfort. About an hour in, I feel like I need to take off the headphones due to significant heat build-up. During any longer gaming sessions, I am constantly being taken out of the immersion of the game, because I am thinking about how uncomfortable the headset is. After long sessions, I always feel like I need a shower, and I never feel like this with any of my other headphones.

Misleading statement #3: the Maxwell has a high-quality microphone. After switching to the Maxwell (from my old V-Moda BoomPro), I started getting comments on Discord about my microphone suddenly sounding cheap. Audeze has a whole support page about how to tune Discord settings, but despite following their guide exactly, I never managed to get the microphone to sound clear.

Those above three points are all super important to me, so naturally, I have slowly been growing to really dislike this headset. In fact, earlier this week, I decided to stop using it completely.

Of course, I can freely admit that it's not all bad. The Maxwell certainly has a more clear sound overall compared to my SHP 9500. The wireless dongle has also worked extremely well for me. But at this point, I would rather switch back to my SHP9500 for gaming, until I find an actual comfortable replacement. I think it's going to be something from the Sennheiser 600 series, as I love the HD 600 already for non-gaming purposes!

As I said in the beginning, this is of course all subjective, and I understand many people really do love this headset. At the same time, I felt it was important to add my opposite experience here, and hopefully it will be helpful to somebody in the future!

I am looking to buy a new headphone for gaming but also looking for great sound quality and i have been almost only hearing about the audeze maxwell. But all those videos seem to be around 1 year ago and i was wondering if anything has released that could be better than them in sound quality in this price range (wireless).