Koss KSC75 Portable Stereophone Headphones

I bought these this week from amazon.co.uk for £10 including delivery. That's US $15.

Packaging, appearance, warranty, euro-nanny knows best:

Mine arrived in the small European packaging box, branded as Pulse clips as well as "Koss high performance on-ear clips". With the clips came the Koss warranty and the euro-nanny-state leaflet on waste disposal. The phones are the silver plastic Koss branded items everyone knows.

The lifetime warranty is valid but irrelevant because shipping costs from UK will exceed the value of the product. But I do very much appreciate a company that has faith in its products and is known to honour the warranty.


Construction, design, materials, euro-nanny isn't done yet:

The slightly odd design works extremely well. With a little careful bending of the plastic-enclosed metal clips I got a good snug fit and no discomfort. I wear spectacles with ultra thin titanium frames and there is no difficulty. With more conventional specs there could be obvious problems.

The silver plastic parts are a blast from the past, looking like cheap stuff I remember from the 1980s. But I don't care. The materials clearly do the job and don't cost much. The cable is unremarkable, 4' long with a straight jack. When I go to plug it in I notice a tiny sticker attached: it's another euro-nanny warning not to dispose of electrical items in household waste. Yes mummy. No mummy. There is a committee in Belgium worried that the first thing a customer will do is cut off the non-detachable cable and throw it in a landfill. I won't do that because I like to listen to some tunes while burning old tires and drunkenly shooting at endangered species in the national park at 2 am.

Everything seems properly assembled and when I press play it works as intended.


Using with portable players:

The Koss KSC75 need much more power than typical budget portable headphones, IEMs or buds. With a player like the Sansa Clip+ you'll probably need to run it at or close to maximum volume which means battery life is reduced. This is especially true for well produced music such as from before the modern loudness war fashion, and any classical music. My iRiver H140 and H340 players put out about a third more voltage than the Clip+ and do a much better job of driving these Koss earphones but unless you're in a quiet environment it might both be not enough and also too much because.....

Isolation:

There isn't any in either direction. If you use these on public transport everyone will hate you. In the street or a noisy workplace you'll hear everything around you and anyone close by will hear your music. The natural thing to do can be to keep raising the volume. This is the road to hearing damage. Compared to using IEMs I find myself running the Koss 'phones at dangerously higher levels and still finding the background noise doesn't let me fully enjoy the music. Beware.

Sound Quality:

It has some bass, which is a welcome contrast to similarly cheap buds and IEMs. I've listened to some orchestral music, some harpsichord pieces, some choral music, some heavy rock and some bass heavy electronic stuff. The sound is nicely balanced and generally enjoyable. The biggest defect is poor stereo imaging. There is no possibility of imagining oneself being present at the performance. There is no convincing illusion such as I get with a really nice recording and my Shure SE215 or Sennheiser CX 95. With the Koss 'phones the impression of sound is close left, close right and a slightly recessed bit in the middle. Some of this is due to the lack of isolation. For the last few years I've been using IEMs and closed and semi-open headphones. I am really surprised how background noise such as the rumble of traffic from the street below or a kitchen or bathroom extractor fan might not be loud enough to dominate the music but is enough to really kill the dynamics and imaging in a fully open 'phone.

The above might sound overly critical but I'm trying to describe the experience without allowing the price and value to totally colour my opinion. It's true that the Koss KSC75 is still unambiguously better than any bud or IEM included with any device I've ever bought.

Is it worth £10?

Yes, but I might not have bothered if it had been £15 and I definitely wouldn't pay £20 because for £30 I can buy Sennheiser PX 100-II that have much nicer sound, work better with low powered portable devices, are made of nicer materials and come with a carrying pouch. I would also hesitate to recommend these to anyone because the tendency to keep raising the volume to dangerous levels is hard to avoid. Because you can get a better sounding headphone at £30, and better sounding IEMs at less than that, the Koss is running out of selling points and has too many drawbacks. The most attractive feature is probably the clip-on design which is great for runners and people working out and those who won't or can't use IEMs.

It's about 9 pm here, the traffic noise has died down and I'm starting to enjoy the sound much more. And that's why these are hard to recommend as portable 'phones: they only make sense in quiet environments where others won't be disturbed. I expect to mostly use them with my PC because the USB soundcard has enough power to drive them properly and it's good to still be able to hear voices, phones, the doorbell and so on. These are also good to use with a mini system or domestic portable.

Conclusion:

As odd as they look. An idea whose time has come and gone. Worth £10 or £15 but not giant killers any more.

Taking price into account above all else, these are the best headphones I have ever owned.  Obviously my HD650s and DT880s sound better, but they also cost 15-25x as much. I've probably put ~150 hours on them. I did do the kramer mod (involves drilling a few holes in the driver cover to allow more sound through) but they sound great even without the mod. I also bought a Parts-Express headphone from Amazon, took the garbage drivers off them and snapped the Koss drivers on. I find them much more comfortable this way. As a plus you can bend the headband however you like to suit your comfort level. Some people do the "quarter mod" where you put a quarter over the earpads (after taking them off the drivers) and cut out a circle to allow more sound through as well. I chose not to do this because I love their sound with the kramer and headband mod.

 

I listen mainly to electronic music, so people who listen to more jazz or rock might not like these as much as I do. But for trance, dance, dubstep, these are simply amazing. My DT880s show me new things in my music that I've never heard before. It's one of the things I love most about them. Now this isn't me blowing smoke... but there have been times I heard something on the Koss that I've never heard before. This includes faint vocal tracks in the background, synths, and little things here and there.

 

These are my work headphones, because they allow me to hear people talking and not completely isolate me from my environment. Some people say they leak too much sound to use in public, but I use them in my cube and no one has ever complained about hearing my music. I don't crank them up but I certainly don't listen quietly. I use them straight from my phone (Nexus 4) and they sound great. I brought my Fiio E17 to work once to try them amped and I just felt like they lost some of their magic. Don't ask me why, or how, I don't know. All I know is that they didn't have as much sparkle, which is something I love about them.

 

I'm no expert in describing audio, but I'll do my best. They have a great attack and decay on the notes, which to me translates to good PRaT (pace, rhythm and timing). The space between notes is very discernible and they just get me groovin'! The imaging is fantastic as well. I can clearly hear music going from side to side, and even in front of and behind me to a degree. The bass is punchy and extended. It also has a great texture to it. It's not muddy or bloated at all. They're also very airy and have a nice open sound to them. The treble is sparkly but unfatiguing (in my opinion). Some people find them a bit too treble-forward, but I have experienced almost no sibilance from them. Mids and vocals are good, nothing amazing but they're not recessed. Female vocals are quite nice on them, with male vocals almost as good.

 

I honestly think these are worth $75. I might be slightly more critical of them at that price, but these are so cheap, I have literally nothing to complain about. I don't plan on recabling them because I love them just the way they are. I bought 3 pairs over the holidays to give to friends. I only ended up giving away 1 pair. These are just... so good. I'm more satisfied with these than I am with my HD650s.

 

What Koss has done here is simply magical. I would never have dreamed something so good would be so cheap. I honestly could not love these more. They are my favorite headphones out of all that I have ever owned.

 

Thank you, Koss. THANK YOU!!!

This are Titanium coated Earphones. Actually I've known no other headphones brand that uses this kind of technology. 

Pros: Excelent Sound from the very bottom low frequencies (well balanced and undistorted), through excelent mids definition, plus a superb high definition (no like other phones which sound like piezo electric cheap tweeters on your ears!).

Once you get to know how to wear the clips, you forget that you have the KSC75 on.

Cons: The volume control is oversized and after let's say the first 4 months of wearing, they sound like my grandma's Telefunken hi-fi audio system knobs!!!  

The clips get unuseful very quickly (due to the wear iself) too. So you may have to use a little superglue dots in the clip/driver-junction to make them a little tight again.

 

I´ve used Koss stereophones since I first knew the brand using a set of Koss' TNT (Titanium Nitride Tech) 66's, which lasted me more than 18 years of really serious home-studio use!!! The sound never changed.!!! (I only had to change the cable twice during these years).

Well this little set of portables (KSC75), are amazing with no distortion perceptible at loud or mid volumes, also you can hear the fingers stepping over guitars when listening to Acustic Alchemy with no fatigue, or you can actually feel the solid bass in some late remixes by Tiesto and Armin V.B!!. This phones can handle whatsoever kind of music. Even let me tell you that once, when I had to suddenly move to another state for a while, I  didn´t have the budget to get a koss or a Bose set of new phones, so I went to Radio Shack and bought this model KSC75 and opened them, and together with another set of Audio Technica phones (not inexpensive at all, by the way) that I already had; So I took the audio technica poor sound quality drivers away and then i glued these KSC75's (takin its clips only off) drivers to attach them to the Audio Technica's right and left shells, and... Voualá!!!  I got a new set of pro-stereophones!!  I compared their sound to one friend of mine's BOSE AE2, and believe me, the only difference was the more powerfull bass on this Bose's. But in mids and high tones, I prefered the koss natural balanced sounding.. Anyway Paying more than 150 bucks is worth the KSC75!!! 

 

So i love them very much for the quality of details you can get from any kind of music, and there is no comparison against Skull Candy, Sony, Pioneer, even some Panasonic or JVC bass powered models... Obviously, talking into account products under the $100-$150 price!!

I have to mention by the way, that these clip-ons are open-design, so when you give them a better acustic environment, you´ll exponentiate their bass response through your ears too.

 

And if you evre don´t have the budget for a BOSE or any higher koss model, think on having these 75's and put them into another stereophone shell just as I did, and get amazing bass response with new acustic!!!

 

So give them a try and find why this inexpensive model is an outstanding performer out.  It's around $15-$20 bucks only!!!

 

Hopping this helped you to decide with your next shopping!!! (dec.2012)

As someone who enjoys all different kinds of headphones and has owned a few different ones at a number of pricepoints, I can reccommend only one headphone to pretty much anyone who listens to music and wants more fun out of their portable rig. That phone is the Koss KSC75.

 

Why are these phones so great, so much so that I am on my fourth pair? For half the price of an apple earbud, you get a pair of detailed, easy-to-drive, energetic and involving headphones that will bring out detail and life you have never experienced with the phones that came with your ipod/iphone/walkman/discman/minidisc player etc. While they are not perfect, They are so good that I use them more than any other phone I own (including ones that cost 100 times more) that I can only assume that it is my favourite headphone of all time.

 

Looks aren't that great, let's be honest. You aren't going to impress your Dr. Dre Beats-wearing friends with these, and the clips take a while to loosen up to where they dont pich your ears. And don't expect world-class build quality either -- the plug and cable is flimsy and is prone to breaking easily. It helps to be handy with the soldering iron if you want em to last longer than the gestation period of your average foetus. But that's not the point of these beauties. It's their incredible sound quality for the price means you can buy three or four pairs and always have a spare ready in case one needs repair or needs to be tossed.

 

In terms of genres, I find they do best with genres that aren't so dense and layered. Metal and heavy rock can get a bit muddled and muddy, but it's still a marked improvement over most earbuds. Jazz, folk, country and blues go fantastically well with the Kosses, and electronica sounds great (but a little light on boom in the bass area if that's your thing). Hip hop is not my area but the stuff I have is serviceable but not outstanding.  I should mention that they don't isolate sound at all, which is both a positive and a negative. For me, it means I can use them while riding my bicycle at low volumes and still hear quite a lot of what is going on around me. For that reason they are the only phones I use on the bike or when running. Not that I necessarily endorse using headphones on a bicycle, though I have done it extensively for many years and am still here to tell the tale. So there's that. Of course the negative to this is that they leak sound like crazy, so you have to have them pretty low not to annoy people on the train or in the office. This is their mean weakness in being a portable phone, so if you listen a lot to music in public, you might need to look elsewhere.

 

They respond well to amping, I use a Ray Samuels Hornet portable headphone amplifier with them and they do gain a bit in bass control and punch, but the beauty of these phones is that you can drive them perfectly out of your iphone or ipod headphone jack. They give great detail but they're not so good that they make your 128kbps rips sound like crud, which is a big issue with the better phones. And their all-plastic construction means they're light and very portable.

 

I love these things and I hope they never go out of production. They can be modified and repaired easily, are cheap as hell and worth at least five times their asking price sound-wise (but not construction wise). Try a pair today, you really have nothing to lose, and I guarantee you'll like them a lot more than your apple ibuds. You might even like them more than your $1000 Beyers or Sennheisers

These headphones have it all for the price. I've never heard anything like them at this level. They have a clear, balanced sound with all frequency ranges represented fairly equally, with mids and highs ever so slightly forward compared to bass in "clip-on configuration". If you mod them with a PortaPro or Parts Express headband, the drivers are pushed closer to your ear and give a bit more bass and mids.

 

The main thing that stands out with these is a simply silly amount of instrument separation. Everything sounds like it is popping out of a pure-black background -- think of turning the contrast up on your TV or monitor; or more correctly, adjusting the gamma level. This lets you analyze tracks very easily, useful if you're a musician. A downside to this is that they don't sound too "cohesive", and music can sound a little hollow, flat, or broken-up. Don't confuse this in any way with "dull", though, because they are full of energy and never fade into the background, while still not being harsh.

 

A fairly unique sound in absolute terms, and a steal at the price. The only downside is the comfort of the clips; I could never get them to feel great, but they were at least functional. Good work Koss.

Bought purely out of curiosity after reading so many Head-Fi-ers say great things about them.

Simply amazed at the sound quality to price ratio. I love these headphones! I can wear them for hours. In fact i forget they are there after a while. 

 

What can I say that hasn't been said before about these?

 

For $15 you can hardly go wrong!  The tonal balance is similar to my Alessandro MS-1is, although with noticeably poorer bass extension.  The bass is also noticeably a bit muddy comparatively, but seems to improve a little with amplification.  Bass impact depends on how tight you have them on your ears - right now, with them a tiny bit looser than stock, both the MS-1i and my HD 600 have more bass impact.  That has surprised me a bit, especially after hearing the PortaPros and having been overwhelmed by relatively muddy mid-bass.

 

The detail isn't quite there at the same level as the MS-1i or any other 'phones on that level or higher, but again it's remarkable for the price.  Both midrange and treble have a similar level of detail - good but not great, and definitely not excellent on an absolute scale.

 

The soundstaging of the KSC75 is a bit of a surprise - so far I've noticed two things:  The ambience and sense that the sound is coming from farther away from your ears than a few fractions of an inch is excellent.  On the other hand, the imaging (i.e. preciseness of direction in which sounds appear to come from) is rather poor.

 

As for looks - well, they're rather hideous.  Like wearing a pair of clip-on aftermarket hubcaps of the cheapest kind on your ears.  This is only the second worst part of these headphones though...

 

The worst part of them for me, so far anyway, is the comfort.  "Ear rape" is an appropriate term.  I've been playing around with the clips, and unfortunately, it seems that when I loosen them up enough to be moderately comfortable, the drivers are too far away from my ears.  Tighten them back up to about stock for proper distancing of the drivers, and they pinch my pinnae painfully.

 

I don't know, maybe I'll get used to them or find a more comfortable configuration of the band.  I do admit that the headband-less design is intriguing in terms of portability.  I'm not a big fan of IEMs in terms of comfort or soundstaging, so that's not really an option for me.

 

One interesting possibility is that these may be decent headphones to sleep with - my preliminary wear testing seems to indicate that they aren't any less comfortable when resting the side of your head on a pillow.

 

 

UPDATE (January 8, 2012):  I've certainly come to like these a little bit more over time.  I don't use them very often, but I did get the clip clamping dialed in/got used to them.  They're reasonably comfortable now, but my ears are still a little sore after an hour or two.  It's a marked improvement and for the price not bad.

 

With more listening, I also found the sound to be rather sssssibilant.  -3 dB at 9000 Hz (0.7 Q) on the equalizer fixed that, and now the treble sounds much more refined.  I've also thrown in a little bit of bass and lower midrange boost to suit taste, but the important thing was taming the sibilance.

 

Now I probably wouldn't hesitate to have these as my only headphones for a short ultralightweight trip - I think I prefer them to my Shure E2c's.  Those were my gateway drug, too.