I can’t believe the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC is still missing this important gaming feature

The Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC just launched for $429 for PlayStation and $449 for Xbox, and it finally brings effective noise cancellation to one of the best-sounding gaming headphones on the market. But that’s a $100 premium over the standard Maxwell 2, and for that money, many gamers like me were hoping Audeze would fix the one thing this headset has always lacked: the ability to stream audio from a 2.4GHz wireless dongle and a Bluetooth device simultaneously. To be fair, the new model supports dual audio – but only via wired and Bluetooth connections, not via a low-latency dongle. And that difference is more important than it might sound.

If you haven’t used two sounds at once, that’s why people care about it so much. Your headset stays connected to your PC or console with a low-latency game audio dongle while also pairing with your phone via Bluetooth. That means you can sit in a Discord call, take a call, or keep your music going without affecting your game audio, and both streams merge into your ears. It’s the kind of feature you use once and can’t live without right away, because it solves the most common real-world situation for anyone who plays with friends: game audio from one device, voice chat from another. A wired connection can’t fill that role, especially if you’re a console gamer. The whole appeal of wireless gaming headsets is untethered gaming from the couch, and plugging in a cable to turn on audio mixing rather defeats the purpose of buying a wireless headset.

The frustrating part is that Audeze has offered this feature before with the Penrose, its budget gaming headset from 2020, which simultaneously supported 2.4GHz and Bluetooth audio. The company’s cheapest gaming headset had a feature its $449 flagship still lacked.

What makes the omission difficult to defend is how common this feature is in 2026 at half the price. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Gen 2 mixes 2.4GHz and Bluetooth audio simultaneously for $199.99 at Amazon. The Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 costs $199.99 at Amazon and comes with two USB transmitters, allowing you to mix audio from two consoles or devices at the same time. Even the Razer BlackShark V3 Pro, which packs ANC and wireless connectivity at the bottom rather than a large area, holds dual wireless at the same time for $249.99 at Amazon. These are not obscure boutique products; they are some of the most popular gaming headsets you can buy, and they all carry dual wireless audio as tabletop speakers.

I have no doubt that Maxwell is doing well. Its magnetically tuned drivers deliver sound quality that puts many gaming headsets to shame, and the dynamic ANC should hopefully address a significant gap in headphones at this price. But for $429, you’re no longer competing on sound alone – you’re competing on the whole experience. Simultaneous use of two wireless audio would have been an easy win for Audeze here, especially after leaving it for the Maxwell 2 a few months ago, and it’s exactly the kind of addition that would have made the $100 premium feel more than worth it. Audeze knows exactly how to build it (they already did, six years ago). Until it brings that feature back, the Maxwell will remain a headset that can sound futuristic but connect like the past, and gamers who live on Discord will continue to buy something cheaper that allows them to do so.