CES 2015: Wicked Audio – Revolt

Among the various headphones that Wicked Audio had available, the one focus that was brought to my attention was the Revolt. Coming out in spring of 2015, the Revolt is Wicked Audio’s prime object of quality at CES 2015. Lines of people came into the central booth where they could all sample the headphones, and I was given some time to talk to some of the crew to understand what makes the Revolt special.

The design of the Revolt was fairly straightforward and hearkened back to older headset designs, but what I appreciated about the headband was that it was made of steel. (Not aluminum alloy, thankfully.) Wicked understands that if you want to deliver quality and durability, it needs steel in the mix. Extended from that is the cloth cord, which I shared enthusiasm for, as most of my long-lasting peripherals used cloth cords (plastic doesn’t handle well against rogue sharp objects). Then there’s this on and off switch on the side. What’s this?

Teaming with Tony Bongiovi, famous acoustic designer (and yes, he’s related to Jon Bon Jovi), Wicked incorporated Bongiovi’s DPS technology to augment the sound to create studio level acoustics. What was demonstrated to me at the booth was a low quality sound file that sounded pretty dull and awful alone. Turn on the DPS switch (that on and off switch I mentioned earlier) and I was blown away by this studio quality sound. Can an algorithm chip do that? Apparently we have acoustic magic here!

I’m not going to say the sound quality is high-quality commercial soothing; there’s a clarity and crispness to the algorithm which I personally appreciate. I sampled various songs on the Revolt, and even if you tweak the equalizer settings on your audio-source, there’s something original about having a crisp rawness to the audio.

For all this and more, check out their website at: http://wickedaudio.com/