Unboxing: The headphones arrive ready for you to assemble. A key part of AIAIAI’s vision is the modularity of their products. But don’t worry, you don’t even have to pick up a screwdriver to put these together. Everything slides and clicks into place in a matter of seconds. This isn’t some gimmick either, AIAIAI sells each part of the headphones at reasonable prices. Want to upgrade your speaker drivers? No problem. Ear cups starting to fray? AIAIAI’s got you covered, and when you do a price break down it’s not too bad! If we go to AIAIAI’s website and look at their parts you can buy individually we can get an idea of what each part of this package costs. See for yourself! 

H10-X01 Headband + Transmitter: £155
S05 MkII Speaker units (pair): £75
E08 Alcantra Earcups (pair): £45
C02 coiled jack cable: £25
TOTAL: £300

Connectivity + Performance: The flagship feature is, of course, AIAIAI’s Wireless+ tech, and I have to say: it’s incredible. For 95% of the time I’ve used the TMA-2 W+ it’s been using the Wireless+ mode which has fully blown my socks off. I think most of us music producers will be familiar with trying to work on projects using Bluetooth headphones. Even with the latest Bluetooth tech, the latency is just far too much to be comfortable to use. 

Once I paired the transmitter to the headphones, which is as simple as putting them both into pairing mode by holding a button for a few seconds. My first test was to open up a project in Live and record in a synth section to get a feeling for the latency. That first feeling is indescribable it’s amazing!

Obviously, the latency IS there but it’s only 16ms so yeah, while you may still want to quantise your MIDI clips slightly, the freedom Wireless+ provides is pretty game changing.

I don’t want to dwell too much on this but, although the transmitted signal is lossless and low latency, it does introduce a slight noise floor. Now I’ve not noticed it in daily use. However, it is there and AIAIAI’s recommended way around it is to just turn up the sound source’s volume as loud as possible (before clipping) to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. The headphones have their own volume control using the buttons on the headband. So as long as you increase the volume going into the transmitter, you can turn it down on the headphone side. This sounds like far more of an issue than it actually is in regular use as I just leave my headphone gain output set at 12 o’clock on my interface and don’t have to think about this issue.

Anyway! Aside from Wireless+, these headphones also have Bluetooth 5.0 which boasts up to 80 hours of battery life, up from the 30 hours promised with Wireless+. Bluetooth works just as you would expect it to. Sounds good, battery life is decent, pairing is straightforward. Not much to say here but that isn’t a bad thing! You can use the three headband buttons to play, pause, etc. Switching between W+ and Bluetooth is as easy as flicking the switch under the headband.

And don’t fret, each earcup has a 3.5mm jack connection for you to connect using the included coiled cable, and choose which side you want the cable connected to. The only issue I have with this is that it doesn’t automatically shut off the other connection methods when you’re using the jack cable, which is a little annoying but y’know if you’re DJing, maybe turn off Bluetooth?

Battery life is pretty good in my opinion, the transmitter has 30 hours of battery life from a full charge, and the headband has 16 hours in W+. Which doesn’t sound like a lot but I’ve only had to charge it fully twice in roughly 2 weeks, and the H10 headband lasts up to 80 hours in Bluetooth mode.

Sound: Gonna keep this one as short and sweet as possible. The S05 Mk II drivers sound fantastic. The low end frequencies are nice and detailed and there’s a nice amount of weight in the sub-bass for a driver this size, super pleasing! Overall they sound nicely balanced, which is what you want for a studio pair of headphones! These are my main studio headphones now, I’m yet to work on any full mixes with them, but I have no issues with the sound when producing and mixing. I’ve also had the chance to use them DJing and they do the job! Personally I’m used to DJing with neutral-sounding headphones. However there’s always the ability to swap the drivers out for the S02 drivers, for example, which are tuned to focus on the bass.

Final thoughts: I’m a convert now, I don’t want a headphone cable trailing from my interface down my desk when the X01 transmitter can just sit on top of my audio interface and do it’s job. It’s just so convenient to be able to walk around my studio without worrying about cables, or latency. Although these headphones have a couple quirks: noise floor and having to charge a pair of studio headphones, I can’t really fault them as these don’t particularly bother me in regular use. These are perfect for music production, listening sessions, commutes and DJing – of course you can just pop in the provided jack cable and connect to a mixer!