The first headphones from Daisy Sound are high-end, superior, and slightly less expensive. – According to Jack Mulroe, the market for high-end headphones is dull. Too preoccupied with black, identical-looking gadgets; too engrossed in “spec wars” to determine which headset is the best. All he wants is for people to relax with his California-inspired headphones.
According to Mulroe, “I just noticed a pattern of there being kind of a dead space in the headphone market where the most recent culturally relevant brand was Beats.” “It seemed a little stale.”
Mulroe is the CEO and creator of Daisy Sound, a new audio company with its headquarters in California. With the goal of upending the already crowded headphone market, it presents itself as “a team of industrial designers from outside the audio industry.” The company’s debut product, the Daisy One headphones, was unveiled on Tuesday.
These vintage-looking headphones are designed to compete with large, high-end noise-canceling devices like Sony’s WH-1000XM6 and Apple’s AirPods Max. These headphones typically cost between $450 and $550 at retail. At $399, the Daisy One somewhat undercuts them. Selling stylish noise-canceling headphones for a little less than the big dogs is the aim.
Mulroe states, “I knew we’d be competing against the bigs: Sony, Bose, Beats, Apple.” “That competition didn’t really bother me.” Everything will work out OK. However, there is intense rivalry in this market across all price points, from expensive cans from Bowers & Wilkins or Grado to London-based Nothing with its eye-catching over-ear headphones to Anker’s Soundcore low-cost choices (one of which passed WIRED’s blind test).
Thanks to Daisy
The Daisy One does look good. Made of aluminum with composite TR90 headstraps, a material commonly utilized by headphone producers, they are designed to be robust and long-lasting. Mulroe extends the headband and says, “You can just yeet it.” At 318 grams, or over three-quarters of a pound, they are slightly heavier than their rivals. Through a magnetic connection, the ear pads snap on and off. In addition to Bluetooth, they feature 3.5-mm auxiliary cable connectors and USB-C. The headphones are available in three different colors: silver, Pacific, a blue hue, and Kelp, a greenish-brown hue.
Since the majority of the designers are from California, the design aims to convey some California chic. A few members of the Daisy team were engineers from Samsung’s audio company, Harman Professional Solutions. Daisy works with a Utah-based business called ((nxc)) systems to design the actual sound system within. Ambient soundscapes captured in California, such as Big Sur’s woodland atmosphere or ocean waves, are stored on the device itself. In order to assist people relax in stressful environments like airports, there is also a guided breathwork practice.
The battery life of the Daisy One headphones is approximately 35 hours when noise cancellation is enabled and 45 hours when it is not. Although these headphones are marketed as long-lasting and dependable, the battery cannot be changed. According to Mulroe, the corporation is working on it for upcoming models. The transparency mode of the headphones, which allows sound to enter so you can hear your surroundings, has drawn criticism from some early testers on TikTok, who claim it leaves much to be desired. The headphones have also received mixed reviews thus far. Mulroe acknowledges the criticism and adds a software patch can be used to improve it in the future.
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