I need to start with a small preface, I love sound, I’m obsessed with it, and I listen to sound all day and all night on all different speakers and TV’s and car systems. Due to my audiophile nature it is very possible there are things that would bother me in a set of headphones that most people wouldn’t notice, or care about.
Real World Experience:
In my final AKG K series review I decided to go to the far edge of the spectrum, the cheapest ones I could find, because, well, my store doesn’t carry really insanely expensive headphones, but we do carry real cheap ones!
Testing Environment
These were tested again with my happy friendly
Sony D-EJ2000 personal CD player, unamplified.
The listening experience
I tested these with two CD’s, first the
Empire Strikes Back soundtrack, a good mix of fast, medium, and slow paced orchestral pieces; second an acoustic guitar CD burn/mix featuring assorted people playing the acoustic guitar.
Sound Quality:
To most people, this is the most important element for obvious reasons. The sound that comes from these headphones is a little bit below average for this price range, but not bad.
The bass is easily the weak part. These simply have no ultra-deep, or even just deep bass. They really ruined the
Imperial Death March as they struggled valiantly, and ultimately failed to provide the critical base line.
The mid range notes are okay, you can hear most distinctive instruments but there is some melding at times. They’re nothing special.
The highs are dependant on the music being listened to. For the acoustic guitar they were perfect, really brought out the sounds of the each specifically plucked note, but for the
Empire Strikes Back they made everything sound way too high. On music that is largely without bass they’re good, but when there is a bass line, not so much.
Aesthetic:
The headphones feature a four-piece design consisting of the two earpieces, the headband, and a second, “overarching” headband. I don’t like auto-adjusting headphones such as these are, with a spring that automatically expands to fit your head. I don’t find them as comfortable, in general. Comfort wise the headband was okay (I believe, or at least it seems like, all the AKG “K” series uses the same headband.) The ear covers are large and padded. They’re reasonably comfortable, but nothing special. My ears started to feel them after a couple of hours.
They’re sealed, which is very strange because usually sealed headphones are very bass heavy. So I don’t know why these have essentially no bass. Nobody was around when I was testing these, so I couldn’t do a, “sound leak” check, sorry.
As far as looks they are really goofy, I wouldn’t really want to be seen wearing them myself. They have this weird texture on the outside of the headphone that just looks strange.
Bottom Line:
**note, these are related to price, EG, it’s not sound quality related to the best sound in the world, it’s sound quality related to the other things in this price range.**
Sound Quality W/Bass:D+/C-
Sound Quality W/O Bass:B+/A-
Portability: C+
Comfort: B
Overall:C+/B-
