Sonic Lamb Wireless Headphones Review: Wolf in sheep's clothing…in a good way

Pros:
- Impressive and immersive sound output
- Multiple sound profiles on the go
- Support for aptX HD codecs
- Comfortable to wear for long
- Good call quality with the bundled mic
- Decent battery backup in Hear and Feel modes.
- User-replaceable ear-pads
- Conceptualised and made in India

Cons:
- No ANC, below-par passive noise isolation
- Beast mode can be jarring; needs better tuning
- Placement and build quality of buttons could have been better
- Companion app is still a work-in-progress

Price: Rs 16,999
Rating: 3.8/5

Rapture Innovations Labs, an Indian startup, has come up with a pair of wireless headphones that promises to deliver, not just good sound, but sound that you can feel – literally. The features list looks a tad scant as compared to the competition for a product priced upwards of Rs 15,000, but the company is focused on one thing that matters most - the sound quality. We have been hearing about the Sonic Lamb headphones for a few months and finally got a chance to actually hear them, or experience them rather. It’s time to share the experience.

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Sonic Lamb - Build, design and comfort: 8/10
These on-the-ear headphones look decent with an understated two-tone design, especially the Obsidian Black variant that we got for review. The other two colour options are a bit more flashy in case you prefer it that way. They are largely made of plastic with just the right weight and clamping force. The height adjustment is smooth and the ear-cups as well as the headband are nicely padded. Speaking of ear pads, they are user-replaceable, and the company plans to make the replacements available on their website.

The on-ear fit is just right and you can wear the Sonic Lamb for a couple of hours without any discomfort. Things tend to get a bit sweaty after an hour or so but not sore. Anyway, it is never a bad idea to give your ears a break every hour. Coming back to the build quality, it is largely fine, except for the physical buttons which feel a little feeble to press. They are located on the right ear-cup but their placement seems non-intuitive; I found myself searching for them more often than not to execute a particular function.

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The buttons allow you to play/pause the audio, skip tracks, change the volume, power these headphones on or off and get them into pairing mode. A USB-C charging port, a connector for a boom mic and a multimode wheel (which I will talk about shortly) are also present on the right earcup, along with a status indicator LED at its back. The earcups can be turned and flattened and stored into a neat looking carry case that the company provides.

Sonic Lamb - Key features: 7/10
The codec support on these Bluetooth 5.1 on-the-ear headphones is quite good. They are not only compliant with SBC and AAC but also with Qualcomm’s aptX and aptX HD codecs. Multi-point support is also available and the Sonic Lamb can be paired with two devices simultaneously, which is always handy. There is no active noise cancellation (ANC) available on these headphones. The company has also skipped wear detection sensors that automatically pause the audio when you take the headphones off.

Though a traditional 3.5 mm headphone jack is absent, you can use these as wired headphones using the bundled USB-C cable. Coming to the drivers, things get quite interesting here with the use of hybrid drivers. In addition to two microphones for calling and noise suppression, each earcup hosts a dynamic driver and an Impulse driver. While the former serves as a traditional driver that reproduces multiple frequency ranges, especially mids and highs, the latter serves as a subwoofer of sorts for producing powerful bass.

The proprietary Impulse driver not just produces bass you can hear but a physical sensation of the sound that you can actually feel using conduction technology. While I will talk about the performance in a bit, this is certainly unique and it actually works. You get the aforementioned multimode wheel to choose between four varying degrees of bass that the company likes to call Hear, Feel, Immerse and Beast modes. Further sound customisations are available through the Sonic Lamb app, but it is still a work in progress and feels undercooked at the moment.

Sonic Lamb - Performance: 8.5/10
Now let’s get down to business, which is the sound quality of this product. And since we do not have ANC here, there’s nothing else to talk about in the performance section other than the sound itself. But there’s something I would like to mention before we head there. No ANC is not as big an issue as the below-par passive noise isolation on these headphones. Though the earpads are comfortable, they barely eliminate ambient noise. You can even hear the fan in the room after putting them on before playing the audio.

These headphones are practically unusable in noisy areas or in public transport. Like I generally do with most earphones and headphones we test, I thought of taking the Sonic Lamb for a ride on a local train. By the end of the second song, I aborted the idea as I could hear the chorus of fellow passengers in every track. There is no ingress protection on these headphones, so it isn’t a wise idea to take them along for a jog and risk sweat damage.

Moving on to the sound quality, the default sound signature is closer to neutral in the Hear mode with excellent balance between the three major frequency ranges. The bass is tight, the mids have a very good presence with clear vocals and impressive instrument separation and the highs are tempered just right with ample sparkle without being sibilant. The detail in sound is impressive for the segment and the soundstage is fairly broad. However, if you find the bass slightly inadequate, just turn the wheel and switch to Feel mode.

This is where the Impulse driver starts to demonstrate its presence by lending the audio a wonderful warmth with that extra thump in the bass while keeping it tight enough to not impact the mids too much. I quite enjoyed this mode as I like my music slightly on the warmer side. Turning the wheel further to Immerse mode is when you will start to ‘feel’ the bass, but it feels a bit too much, especially in music. This mode is better suited for watching action films and web series or gaming, where you can actually get an immersive feel of the action.

The final stop for the wheel is the Beast mode, which is best avoided unless you are a bass freak and not just a bass head. More often than not, the output is jarring in this mode with almost uncontrolled bass that leads to listener fatigue rather quickly. Even the earpads vibrate a bit too much and distort the audio. The sound engineers need to relook at this mode and tune it much better than what you get right now. In terms of loudness, the Sonic Lamb is perfectly audible from the 50 per cent mark onwards. No complaints about the wireless range or latency either.

Sonic Lamb - Call quality: 8/10
The microphone quality is pretty decent on these headphones, and even better, you can plug in the bundled boom mic to improve it further for calling as well as gaming. Your voice is transmitted with good clarity to the person on the line, and the other person is audible too with good clarity. The wind noise and ambient noise are kept in check when using the boom mic, but the noise suppression softens the voices when outdoors. However, as I mentioned earlier, the Sonic Lamb is better suited for indoor use, and call quality won’t be an issue there.

Sonic Lamb - Battery life: (7/10)
The battery backup greatly depends on the sound mode you use. The lesser the Impulse drivers are engaged, the longer the battery lasts, and the variance is massive. The headphones can go on for close to 24 hours if you stick to the Hear mode and the figure drops under 5 hours in Beast mode. Using a mix of Hear and Feel modes during the course of testing, I got close to 20 hours out of these headphones or a week’s worth of playtime at less than 3 hours of daily listening.

These headphones take close to 2 hours to charge fully using any standard USB-C charger, which is acceptable. However, there is no mention of fast charging or a quick top-up option with a few minutes of charging; something the company should consider going ahead. Also, strangely, you cannot see the battery level in the Bluetooth settings of the phone; I tried this on two different Android phones. It can only be seen in the companion app.

Sonic Lamb - Price and verdict
The Sonic Lamb is priced at Rs 16,999 in India with a one-year warranty. Yes, you have products from popular premium brands like Sony and Sennheiser in this price range, but I wouldn’t term either of them as a direct competitor for these headphones. In some ways, the Audio-Technica ATH-M50xBT2 can be considered an alternative, but yet the Sonic Lamb is a different animal (pun unintended) that is a lot more fun to listen to and feel.

The product certainly has a few minor flaws but some of them can be overlooked considering this is a debut product from a startup brand. The very fact that I had to remind myself that it is a new entrant in the market and that we are comparing it to legacy brands like Sony, Sennheiser and Audio-Technica itself is a big compliment for Rapture Innovations Labs. Yes, it narrowly missed out on a 4-star rating but can easily get there just through a fully functional app and a couple of firmware updates.

All said and done, this is an impressive debut for an Indian brand in the audio space. We would certainly like to keep an eye on this Lamb’s journey and its coming of age as it continues to bleat, growl and snarl at the competition while it perfects the beast within.