RushJet1
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2005
- Posts
- 11
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A mini-review/rant - I'm fairly new here (well, I was here about a year ago), but I figured I'd post more here!
This thread isn't a thread about how I need new headphones and I need help to find them. I'm getting some K81 DJs tomorrow. I'm just going to post a nice thread that rips on the current headphones as a warning to those who want to buy these. Do NOT buy the AHS602i headphones... they're not worth it, unless all you want is a headset for online phone calls.
The story starts about a month ago with the breaking of my old, old cheapo headphones that had come with an old Sony Discman many years back. I looked in my bookbag and they were snapped in half, probably thanks to letting someone borrow them and having them just throw the headphones back in the main area of the bag. These headphones actually had surprisingly decent sound quality- nothing to write home about, but not horrible either. I could still wear them, but they'd fall off (and fall to pieces) after moving even slightly.. so when I got home for Thanksgiving from college, I went out to find something, anything to replace them. I thought, "surely just about any 30-40 dollar headphones will be better than those cheap things!"
Well, it turns out that I was wrong. I got the Altec Lansing AHS602i headphones for 29.99 and went home. The first thing I did was look into reviews for them (this is odd, I know, but I do this a lot). All of the reviews I read were glowing with happiness about their quality in video games and music, but they were mostly by tech sites whose columnists didn't care much about music quality anyway, and most of them even used some overly-compressed audio trash as a means to test it.
After reading reviews, I plugged them into my laptop (which sounds just fine with my HD595s) and tried listening with these. First off, I tried some Muse, but it was a bit murky and the soundstage sounded like it was trying ever so hard to by MONO instead of stereo! It gives me the same impression that listening to REALLY loud speakers with your hands cupped over your ears gives me.
The bass is pretty good actually, somewhat accurate and impacts nicely but it doesn't extend overly-well and isn't accurate quite like my HD595s are obviously. the mids are not really there very much, but they're not terribly bad, but the highs are almost non-existant. I tried using just my laptop speakers and they actually seem to reproduce highs and mids MUCH more faithfully. That's pretty unacceptable to me. The level of isolation in these things is very nice though. They fit RIGHT over my outer ear, so it creates a kind of seal that probably causes the muddy/closed-in soundstage problem partially.
I tried using its "3D SRS" nonsense, but all that did was seperate the stereo to unimaginably wide range, like there were two sound sources playing different parts of the same song, and they were completely isolated from each other. This also requires batteries, and I'm not a fan of wasting batteries for a sound feature that doesn't really improve the quality of the headphones.
I also realize that they're not very comfortable, as my ears get really tired after a few minutes. They're like a clamp but also somehow get very hot after a bit.
Last but not least, I've used a lot of things I typically listen to (and even a few that I don't) to hear some things:
Muse / Apocalyptica / Epica / Rock stuff - lacking in highs and a little in mids.
Disney/Lord of the Rings/Crimson Tide/Movies - not quite as bad here, but highs are not good, everything sounds a bit hollow
Techno stuff - depending on what you listen to, these headphones are pretty decent for this type of music - bass is boomy enough to carry them, though cymbals sound flat and muffled.
The squashed soundstage applies for everything, detail is lacking for everything. I'd almost recommend ipod earbuds for sound quality AND for comfort, and that is a LOT coming from me! EQ using winamp did very little for these headphones. Adding more treble by boosting higher frequencies made them sound tinny, and boosting both mids and highs made them sound tinny AND like they were blaring. It's as if these can't take very much boosting in the mid range.
Well, that's my rant/review! Enjoy, and advise people not to get these! If I had to assign a rating, it would be something like a 3/10 or maybe a 3.5/10 because of the decent enough bass response.
as a side note, I could probably do a similar thing for my old Sony MDR-V300s if anyone wanted, but it wouldn't be quite this negative
This thread isn't a thread about how I need new headphones and I need help to find them. I'm getting some K81 DJs tomorrow. I'm just going to post a nice thread that rips on the current headphones as a warning to those who want to buy these. Do NOT buy the AHS602i headphones... they're not worth it, unless all you want is a headset for online phone calls.
The story starts about a month ago with the breaking of my old, old cheapo headphones that had come with an old Sony Discman many years back. I looked in my bookbag and they were snapped in half, probably thanks to letting someone borrow them and having them just throw the headphones back in the main area of the bag. These headphones actually had surprisingly decent sound quality- nothing to write home about, but not horrible either. I could still wear them, but they'd fall off (and fall to pieces) after moving even slightly.. so when I got home for Thanksgiving from college, I went out to find something, anything to replace them. I thought, "surely just about any 30-40 dollar headphones will be better than those cheap things!"
Well, it turns out that I was wrong. I got the Altec Lansing AHS602i headphones for 29.99 and went home. The first thing I did was look into reviews for them (this is odd, I know, but I do this a lot). All of the reviews I read were glowing with happiness about their quality in video games and music, but they were mostly by tech sites whose columnists didn't care much about music quality anyway, and most of them even used some overly-compressed audio trash as a means to test it.
After reading reviews, I plugged them into my laptop (which sounds just fine with my HD595s) and tried listening with these. First off, I tried some Muse, but it was a bit murky and the soundstage sounded like it was trying ever so hard to by MONO instead of stereo! It gives me the same impression that listening to REALLY loud speakers with your hands cupped over your ears gives me.
The bass is pretty good actually, somewhat accurate and impacts nicely but it doesn't extend overly-well and isn't accurate quite like my HD595s are obviously. the mids are not really there very much, but they're not terribly bad, but the highs are almost non-existant. I tried using just my laptop speakers and they actually seem to reproduce highs and mids MUCH more faithfully. That's pretty unacceptable to me. The level of isolation in these things is very nice though. They fit RIGHT over my outer ear, so it creates a kind of seal that probably causes the muddy/closed-in soundstage problem partially.
I tried using its "3D SRS" nonsense, but all that did was seperate the stereo to unimaginably wide range, like there were two sound sources playing different parts of the same song, and they were completely isolated from each other. This also requires batteries, and I'm not a fan of wasting batteries for a sound feature that doesn't really improve the quality of the headphones.
I also realize that they're not very comfortable, as my ears get really tired after a few minutes. They're like a clamp but also somehow get very hot after a bit.
Last but not least, I've used a lot of things I typically listen to (and even a few that I don't) to hear some things:
Muse / Apocalyptica / Epica / Rock stuff - lacking in highs and a little in mids.
Disney/Lord of the Rings/Crimson Tide/Movies - not quite as bad here, but highs are not good, everything sounds a bit hollow
Techno stuff - depending on what you listen to, these headphones are pretty decent for this type of music - bass is boomy enough to carry them, though cymbals sound flat and muffled.
The squashed soundstage applies for everything, detail is lacking for everything. I'd almost recommend ipod earbuds for sound quality AND for comfort, and that is a LOT coming from me! EQ using winamp did very little for these headphones. Adding more treble by boosting higher frequencies made them sound tinny, and boosting both mids and highs made them sound tinny AND like they were blaring. It's as if these can't take very much boosting in the mid range.
Well, that's my rant/review! Enjoy, and advise people not to get these! If I had to assign a rating, it would be something like a 3/10 or maybe a 3.5/10 because of the decent enough bass response.
as a side note, I could probably do a similar thing for my old Sony MDR-V300s if anyone wanted, but it wouldn't be quite this negative
