I believe that some people have $1,000 ears. To them, a cheaper pair of headphones would be audibly inferior. Conversely, anything more expensive won’t sound any better. Kidding! Taking Tom Petty out of context, when you wear leather jacket with chains that would jingle, the sky becomes the limit. Then there are people with $500 ears who are perfectly happy with certain brands. In other words, some people hear more than others. On the flip side, money doesn’t equal sound quality, something Sonic Lamb from Mangalore-based Rapture Innovation Labs shows.

When you have a sound source that’s better than your ears, you invest — and never waste — your money on certain speakers and headphones. Without beating around the bush, Sonic Lamb is a slam-dunk but there are moments when it misses a couple of easy two-pointers.

Sonic range

Looking at it in simple words, this is a top-notch over-ear headphone with the USP of having a proprietary driver that merges traditional sound wave transmission with impulse driver innovation. The ear pads act as a virtual diaphragm, allowing the user to feel the music, especially when thumping music is played. The bone conduction aspect is more of a googly rather than a gimmick. The question is whether you like it or not. My base instincts at times make me listen to Sir Mix-a-Lot. Songs like Anaconda bring out the caveman in me… more like pushes earwax out. Ew! But the driver does exactly what it promises.

The ear pads feel comfortable even after hours of usage

Much of the feel of the headphone depends on the mode you choose. Most of the time, ‘Hear’ works fantastically well. For a more V-shaped preset, slide into ‘Feel’ mode, which comes with the feel of a subwoofer. That’s not all. ‘Immerse’ if you must choose the dance-side of music. Of course, ‘Beast’ is when you watch films; it adds a layer of immersiveness to your content.

I think that most people who are going to use the headphone for music will prefer the warmer leaning of the sound profile. There’s an interesting property to the vocals when it’s warm and enjoyable; it’s not at all veiled and that’s something really good about this device. Sonic Lamb maintains clarity throughout most of the regions. There is a crystalline quality or something that sounds very clear and unrestricted, which perhaps has to do with the driver resolution.

Be it a Sennheiser or Bose, what I most like about them is how they channel a signature sound profile. Sonic Lamb too has a lot of personality and hits a little bit differently than a lot of people might be expecting from a headphone. In terms of actual listening impressions, this thing has about as much bass as most people would like and I think more bass would kind of throw off the balance that this headphone has.

Be it listening to Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue or David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars or Queen’s A Night At the Opera, Sonic Lamb has a slam to it like one finds on a pair of high-end headphones but it has a great environmental bass to it in the sense that everything sounds large-scale and the bass drives a big chamber sound. This headphone can display that in a way that a lot of other headphones can’t. It doesn’t really have too many characteristics that are really detrimental to the overall listening experience. The overall mid-range experience is smooth, and not sharp or aggressive. I think the general sound quality will tailor to a broader range of people. Overall, it leans on the warmer side of neutral.

Build quality

What I don’t like about the headphone is the design of the microphone. Don’t get me wrong: the mic does a decent job picking up voices and cutting down on background noises. But the microphone is a detachable one, and that too it doesn’t seamlessly blend with the overall aesthetics of the headphone. Chances are you won’t be using the mic at all but if you like to play video games, sure, it does a good job.

These are headphones that are primarily for music listening

Speaking of the build, it has excellent head feel and the ear cushions make for comfortable usage over hours. Further, I think the headband is perfect to accommodate all sizes of heads. Some may say, the headphone itself looks plain but I don’t mind it at all, especially because Rapture Innovation Labs is new to the game and scaling up is not easy.

Should you buy it?

Sonic Lamb is an enormous sounding headphone but, at the same time, is also performs well in terms of frequency adjustments. The difference between sounding very close and intimate, and very far away can be easily felt. There is a satisfactory level of cut through for vocalists while the overall soundstage doesn’t appear forced.

When you use this headphone, you will at once understand the quality of the music that you’re listening to and will be able to suss out negative elements in recordings but also highlight positive traits. When a poor-quality recording is played, the headphone makes it amply clear.

The earcups are not light and have all the controls

This year, I had the opportunity to discover two great audio products. First, Sonodyne Malhar, a speaker that tries to replicate the original recording. Second is Sonic Lamb, which scores with its incredible dynamics. No wonder Rapture Innovation Labs is on a high.

At a glance

Device: Sonic Lamb

Price: Rs 19,999

High notes

 Excellent engineering

 Slightly warmer side of a neutral soundstage

 Each mode feels different

Muffled note

 The microphone could have been designed better