Koss Porta Pro Consumer Headphones

I bought these headphones at Best Buy in 1996 (that superstore no longer carries them) in an attempt to buy a pair of headphones that make my portable audio devices sound better. And I still use these headphones on a regular basis.

When I first listened to them, I was astounded at the amount of bass these headphones deliver! Oodles of bass, to be sure. The mids are a bit recessed; the highs are clear. There's no need to use the bass-boost function on my portable CD player! And even the weakest portable CD players will have no trouble producing quality audio through these headphones! (That's right; the bass has already been recorded on my CDs, but the low-quality stock headphones that come bundled with most portable CD players can't reproduce that bass.) Sure, these headphones aren't the best-sounding ones on the market, but for under $50, they are among the very best ones in their price class.

These headphones are very comfortable to wear! The temple pads rest above my ears, and the earpads have three pressure-adjustment settings; the two sets of pads work together to minimize the pressure that supraural (on-the-ear) headphones are accused of exerting. I can have the "firm" setting (which makes these headphones feel like typical on-the-ear headphones), the "light" setting (which places all of the pressure on my temples rather than on my ears), or an in-between setting. And these headphones weigh just over two ounces. As a result, I can wear these headphones for many hours at a time.

As with all headphones, there are a few drawbacks to these headphones. The first - and most obvious - is styling. These headphones were first introduced in the mid-1980's, and they did (and still do) look like a refugee from the late 1970's. The second is distortion; like all open-air headphones that claim to produce big bass response, the drivers in these headphones begin to clip somewhat at medium-high volume levels. The latter is only a minor annoyance; I don't recommend listening to music at super-loud volume levels since such listening drastically increases the risk of permanent hearing damage.

Other little details include a four-foot Y-cord attached to both earpieces and a right-angle 3.5mm mini plug (nickel-plated on the sample I own, gold-plated on currently shipping versions). The Porta Pros come with a 3.5-to-6.3mm plug adapter and a carrying pouch. Too bad the pouch is too small to hold these headphones.