[Gwarmi]

 
 All the way from the UK comes 'Angle & Curve' ~ anyone heard these yet?
 
 Priced at 60 pounds (approx. $95USD) 
 
 They're designed in-house by the firm's own audio engineers, designers and DJs, based in London's
 Covent Garden.
"The Classic offers all the advantages and features of other top-end headphone brands, but with a 

 cutting-edge twist in style and fit," the firm claims.

 (Source: What Hi Fi)

 

 

 

[NinjaSquirt]

Don't know about sound... or quality but that looks REALLY good. If it cancels or isolates enough, definite a considerable for my portable list.

 

[Ishcabible]

They use the same housings as some Eskuche and Merkury headphones. I'd like to think that Angle & Curve improved the drivers though. They seem to be quite confident about the sound actually.

 

[Uncle Erik]

They look wonderful.  Can we get someone to "take one for the team"?

 

[Graphicism]

"frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz, an impedance of 32 Ohms and sensitivity of 97+/- 3dB."  - Typical default driver, they won't be anything special.

 

[madkat]

Just posted about these on another thread I'll copy & paste wholesale and shamelessly in 3... 2... 1...
 
 
 
Angle & Curve's domain name, angleandcurve.com, belongs to a company called Sefour, a London company who appear to resell various bits of DJ equipment. Sefour only stock one type of headphones, and that's not the "Angle & Curve". That in itself is odd.
 
What's also odd is that when I first visited, angleandcurve.com didn't appear to have any online retail presence. Now it does have a shop, but it's not immediately accessible. The website is one of those that annoyingly plays music at you even though you never asked it to, and fails to stop the music on the page that has a YouTube video. It also looks like there might be a bit of Engrish in there: "Angle & Curve is headphone manufacturer [...]"
One might suspect that the company sprung up in order to satisfy a requirement from Orange to push out a promotion promising high quality headphones but without actually costing very much. If they're really worth £60, how would it be economically viable to give them away with a £40 handset that's not bound to a contract?
 
It may also be a possibility that poor reception (I've not managed to find many reviews of the A&C headphones, but the ones I did find were not favourable) forced Sefour to ditch the whole enterprise. At which point Orange swoop in, and say "Keep the website up at least until we've shifted this lot, yeah?" - Sefour keep offering the headphones at £60, and people believe they're WORTH £60. Buyer beware - if A&C disappear after Christmas (the Orange promotion runs til 24th Dec), who's going to deal with the manufacturer's warranty?
 
Third option is that Sefour cast out the net for brand-awareness building opportunities and Orange got in contact - fine, but the growing awareness is that these things are sent out with cheap phones that are "worth" less than the headphones. And that still doesn't stack up.
 
A&C's "classic" headphones look REMARKABLY similar to the Eskuche 33 1/3 which also retail at £60 - except Amazon sell the A&C at £35 while A&C still sell at £60.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eskuche-33-Ear-Headphones-Black/dp/B003N1W1A0/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t
http://www.muazo.co.uk/Eskuche_Headphones/Eskuche_33_Silver_Headphones
 
That confirms my suspicion that these are probably cheap generic headphones produced in a Chinese factory before being stamped with their client's name & logo.
 
Probably something like (by which I mean "exactly") these:
 
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/343333970/stereo_headphone_MY_6730_.html
 
 
You might wonder what my point is. Loads of stuff gets made like this. But I do not believe these are worth £60. I do not believe Angle & Curve, or Sefour, employ any staff who have properly scientifically researched headphone technology and come up with what they honestly believe to be The Best headphones for their price bracket. But that's their marketing pitch, and that riles me something rotten. Angle & Curve repeatedly make claims about drivers and style designed in-house. They clearly haven't been.

 

[Gwarmi]

 
 Excellent work madkat,
 
 That's Head-Fi super sleuthing at it's best ~ new product gets posted for interest and someone like you gets
 to the bottom of it all, unfortunately, in this case ~ only to find that Angle & Curveball are throwing dodgy
 marketing hype into the pool.
 
 Such a shame to see this from an emerging UK company, could happen from anywhere but the UK
 generally has a very proud cottage audio industry. 

 

[madkat]

Not sure how to read your reply... Do you feel for A&C, after they've blatantly lied about the product? Sure, they wouldn't sell ANY if they said "We got these generic headphones and slapped a logo on the sides" - but they could have executed it better. Including not giving (allegedly) £60 headphones away with hardware worth half that.
 
If it was me entering the headphone market I wouldn't get some off Alibaba unless I'd secured an exclusive deal for the design or got them really cheap (and was reselling them really cheap.) You can, for example, buy a cheap, generic Android tablet from Maplin (Radio Shack? what do you guys have?), and it's cheap and crap and available unbranded on Alibaba. It doesn't pretend to be anything it isn't.
 
I take exception to two things:
  Firstly, the pure bollocks about being styled and internally designed by people who probably don't even exist - the company is, in their first foray into the marketplace, setting themselves up for a fall. Who are these designers & DJs? Anyone we've heard of, in either the DJ world or the acoustic design world? Besides, it's only a matter of time before someone cracks a pair open (they're free with a £30 phone at the moment) and discovers the cheap, generic drivers. And some smartarse finds the exterior design to have been used by someone else before, and therefore also not internally designed.
  Secondly, the fact that they are being marketed as "worth £60."

 

[Gwarmi]

 
Quote:

Not sure how to read your reply... Do you feel for A&C, after they've blatantly lied about the product? Sure, they wouldn't sell ANY if they said "We got these generic headphones and slapped a logo on the sides" - but they could have executed it better. Including not giving (allegedly) £60 headphones away with hardware worth half that.
 
If it was me entering the headphone market I wouldn't get some off Alibaba unless I'd secured an exclusive deal for the design or got them really cheap (and was reselling them really cheap.) You can, for example, buy a cheap, generic Android tablet from Maplin (Radio Shack? what do you guys have?), and it's cheap and crap and available unbranded on Alibaba. It doesn't pretend to be anything it isn't.
 
I take exception to two things:
  Firstly, the pure bollocks about being styled and internally designed by people who probably don't even exist - the company is, in their first foray into the marketplace, setting themselves up for a fall. Who are these designers & DJs? Anyone we've heard of, in either the DJ world or the acoustic design world? Besides, it's only a matter of time before someone cracks a pair open (they're free with a £30 phone at the moment) and discovers the cheap, generic drivers. And some smartarse finds the exterior design to have been used by someone else before, and therefore also not internally designed.
  Secondly, the fact that they are being marketed as "worth £60."

I feel no sympathy what so ever for A&C, your dig revealed quite clearly that it appears to be a re branded version of that cheapy from Shenzen.
 
They have attempted to mislead the community and public at large for a quick buck - that's it more or less.
 
Last thing this industry needs is more fluff over substance.
 
 
 

 

[madkat]

Gotcha Sorry, I attached the "unfortunately" to the wrong part of your reply.

 

[SanjiWatsuki]

Pointing out a rebrand is great information. If a company going to use a known OEM and price it at a higher price than another company, I'd like to know if it is doing that.
 
Quote:

Madkat are you an Area 51 theorist as well You seem to have mentioned 5 companies and have not even heard or seen the product. I'm really unhappy your trashing an up and coming UK company in these harse times. Where is the season of goodwill? This is your only post, nothing before or after? do you work for another telecom firm or something? The Angle & Curve headphones are actually very good, great bass response and for the price very good detail in vocals. I highly reccomend at this price point

 

 

[Ulti]

Here's what I posted in the other thread:
 
Quote:

I've actually got a pair of these and just tested them for a bit. Although the sound isn't bad, it's definitely not worth the £60 RRP on them.
 
The build quality is very poor and plasticky with a poor finish. They're very light and don't feel solid at all. Due to their lightness, they feel very loose on the head and the clamping force is quite weak. As they're on ears, isolation is terrible.
 
In terms of sound, the overall sound is similar to the CX300 (IEMs). They've got an emphasized low end that is rather muddy and vocals are slightly upfront but the rest of the midrange is full. Detail is there but laid back. Overall clarity is lacking.

 

 

[madkat]

That was more-or-less my point. Maplin do this all the time, I looked at a tiny bluetooth QWERTY keyboard there priced at £15, scanned the barcode with my Android tablet and got one off eBay shipped from Hong Kong for a fiver. I only use Maplin for physically browsing the hardware I'm going to get cheap from elsewhere, or if I need something in a hurry that I can't get from my local independent electronics shop (who are waaay cheaper.) But at least I know what to expect from Maplin, and they don't claim to have actually designed any Nikkai-branded hardware themselves.

 

[madkat]

Did philcod1984 delete his post?
 
In response... no, I'm not a conspiracy theorist - although I work with one, and he cracks me up all the time! I've seen enough of the product (three photos of the same product detailed enough to see they ARE the same, from three separate companies, all claiming it to be their own design) to know what it is. I know the product is not worth £60 (and therefore not as high quality as they claim) because you can buy them for £35 on Amazon or get them free with a £30 cellphone/handset/mobile. And I know that big, bulky £20 headphones will be cheap & tacky, whatever their RRP.
 
Hope this helps

 

[Gwarmi]

 
 Nope, nobody but the Mod Squad can delete a post after it is submitted, if the post happens to contain profanity, personal
 accusations, or personal defamation then you can expect a little message in the inbox informing the individual that it was deleted.
 
 A few too many of those in the inbox and well....I'm sure everybody knows how that story ends