Overall – 
Yeah, I bash the T3 a lot, but it certainly does what it says it does – you plug it in and music goes out. My real problem is finding when this would do the job when headphones won’t. To combat this, Orbitsound has spend quite a bit of effort to show just why headphones are terrible. Yeah. Headphones.
The trouble with headphones is that they are not really stereo – just two separated mono signals clamped to your ears. Listening to stereo means hearing the sound from both speakers with both ears – that’s what gives you the stereo soundfield in between the speakers. With headphones you can only hear the left speaker signal in the left ear and the right speaker in the right: most people therefore hear the sound in the middle or back of their head, as opposed to in front and around you where the soundstage is supposed to be.
Are you serious? Let’s take a look at some of the situations in which the T3 is totally impractical versus the supposed antiquated headphones.
- When moving
- When in a public place
- When there’s a proper stereo system available
That leaves… parties at remote locations? Play up airSOUND all you want, I’ve used plenty of solid headphones, and they have saved my roommates from being subjected to my terrible taste in music.The Orbitsound T3 is clearly something more geared towards iPods for those occasions that you want to share your music to the immediate public, but even then, $100 is a lot to shell out when considerably cheaper, more portable, and acceptable alternatives exist. The gimmick of airSOUND is cool, but it’s really hard to justify the added expense.