shasty
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2006
- Posts
- 316
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I've recently acquired AKG K181 DJ's from a fellow headfier. Our consensus was that the cans sound surprisingly good for the price. Even Saint panda, in his extensive review of closed headphones, described the sound to be above many, most, closed portable cans.
This made me wonder why the cans aren't talked about at all at headfi despite the sound quality that, from my experience, trumped ES7 or RP-21's. My first response was the comfort issue. The clamping force and supra-auraal design of the cans takes much of the comfort away. This, however, can be probably be fixed by stretching the cans out, and same issues are present in its popular sibling K81 DJ and even more popular Grados.
With this in mind, maybe the discrepancy really lies in the aesthetics. AKG K181 DJ have bass switches as well as stereo/mono switch on the driver casing. I'm suspecting that many head-fiers would be repelled by the very presence of these switches, which does not look very audiophile at all. Perhaps aesthetics matter much more to headfiers than they would like to admit
Please feel free to comment if you disagree
This made me wonder why the cans aren't talked about at all at headfi despite the sound quality that, from my experience, trumped ES7 or RP-21's. My first response was the comfort issue. The clamping force and supra-auraal design of the cans takes much of the comfort away. This, however, can be probably be fixed by stretching the cans out, and same issues are present in its popular sibling K81 DJ and even more popular Grados.
With this in mind, maybe the discrepancy really lies in the aesthetics. AKG K181 DJ have bass switches as well as stereo/mono switch on the driver casing. I'm suspecting that many head-fiers would be repelled by the very presence of these switches, which does not look very audiophile at all. Perhaps aesthetics matter much more to headfiers than they would like to admit
Please feel free to comment if you disagree