AKG GHS-1 have rather strangely made it here. As a gift.
They look like this:
And they're - wait for this - a gaming headset built around the K-81 core. There's no mistake whatsoever, the square apertures in the driver grille and the typical K-81 "bass, low midrange, midrange, some high frequencies" sound give them away.
Single-entry cable with a headphone volume wheel and microphone switch. The microphone itself is cardioid, and well, they work rather nicely for Skype, except that the microphone picks up too much ambient noise in public places. Tried them in Starbucks, and whenever the fellows from the right table said anything loud[ish], they talked into Skype pretty much. The microphone rejects the left side noise perfectly, but since the boom is fixed, and there's no way to swivel the microphone into a "facing mouth" position, it tends to pick up whatever comes from in front/right, slightly diagonal.
The velour pads actually worsen/muffle/bleed driver power. It's not that terrible, but they don't have the same impact as the K-81 unless you push them onto ears. The pads are puffed, so maybe tearing out some of the puffing foam will "deflate" them and improve the sound, sittng drivers closer to ears.
The upside, of course, is that they're comfier and softer on ears than the K-81.
The sound's nothing special, it's K-81 with no muddy bass (no bass boost foam), and with some power bleed due to velour pads and the drivers being farther away from ears. They're not really that great for music because of that, the sound gets a bit anemic with presence/power slightly dropped.
Overall the set can be summed up as "K-81 minus superbass foam plus microphone". And with velour pads instead of pleather. And with a single-entry cable. The headband is reminiscent of the K-2xx series, though there's a wire going through a plastic band, no steel wires there.
The headset is terminated with a single cable split in two at the end, both ends having three-pole 3.5 mm plugs. This was an issue for the original owner as his Apple Macintosh computer insisted on treating the microphone plug as line plug, never supplying power for the microphone. It works perfectly with the Roland UA-1G interface though.
They look like this:
And they're - wait for this - a gaming headset built around the K-81 core. There's no mistake whatsoever, the square apertures in the driver grille and the typical K-81 "bass, low midrange, midrange, some high frequencies" sound give them away.
Single-entry cable with a headphone volume wheel and microphone switch. The microphone itself is cardioid, and well, they work rather nicely for Skype, except that the microphone picks up too much ambient noise in public places. Tried them in Starbucks, and whenever the fellows from the right table said anything loud[ish], they talked into Skype pretty much. The microphone rejects the left side noise perfectly, but since the boom is fixed, and there's no way to swivel the microphone into a "facing mouth" position, it tends to pick up whatever comes from in front/right, slightly diagonal.
The velour pads actually worsen/muffle/bleed driver power. It's not that terrible, but they don't have the same impact as the K-81 unless you push them onto ears. The pads are puffed, so maybe tearing out some of the puffing foam will "deflate" them and improve the sound, sittng drivers closer to ears.
The upside, of course, is that they're comfier and softer on ears than the K-81.
The sound's nothing special, it's K-81 with no muddy bass (no bass boost foam), and with some power bleed due to velour pads and the drivers being farther away from ears. They're not really that great for music because of that, the sound gets a bit anemic with presence/power slightly dropped.
Overall the set can be summed up as "K-81 minus superbass foam plus microphone". And with velour pads instead of pleather. And with a single-entry cable. The headband is reminiscent of the K-2xx series, though there's a wire going through a plastic band, no steel wires there.
The headset is terminated with a single cable split in two at the end, both ends having three-pole 3.5 mm plugs. This was an issue for the original owner as his Apple Macintosh computer insisted on treating the microphone plug as line plug, never supplying power for the microphone. It works perfectly with the Roland UA-1G interface though.
