citroeniste
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2001
- Posts
- 123
- Likes
- 10
A couple weeks ago, thanks to advice I received on this forum and others, I purchased Koss KSC-50 headphones, and subsequently ‘modified’ them with an eyeglass strap per the post by JJDyn0mite. (Many thanks for your excellent post on the subject, sir!)
However, until recently I had not had occasion to really use the things. After all, who wants to listen to, well, anything else when Sennheiser '580s are at hand? Prior to my travels, I had tested the ‘50s with the different eyeglasses I own, and done a little bit of listening, but it was more to see if I could have them on my head without going batty than to critique their SQ.
So then, my first real experience with the '50s came during Swissair SR-121 flying between Atlanta and Zurich on Thursday-Friday, 20-21 September 2001. (Blame the Viennese cable-modem company Chello for the time lag of this post.) The sources were my Philips portable CD (Swissair having dispensed with the fiction that CD players harm planes) and a Neo25 MP3 player with an 18.6GB IBM HDD. They were always driven by a HeadRoom Total AirHead headphone amp.
(Sidenote: airport security is tighter, but not terribly unreasonable. Yes, nail-clippers will be confiscated. Also, you will probably be asked to verify that all of your electronic gadgets -- headphone amp, laptop, MP3 player, Palm, cell, etc. -- work. It all seems a bit silly to me, but if that’s what it takes to get skittish people flying again….)
The first CD I listened to whilst wearing these cans was “Everyday” by the Dave Matthews Band. It is definitely not hifi, but I like the music. At first, on “I Did It” I thought the bass a bit shy, but pressing them down against my ears just led to amusical thudding in the midbass, and no improvement in the nether register. Also, the cans seemed to impart a brittleness or hardness to the sound, sort of a thin glass edge around the upper mids that sounded like it could break at any moment and deposit the music's ashes all over my shoulders. I could hear noises around me at about the same level of attenuation that the ‘580s provide, which is to say nearly none at low volume.
After “Everyday”, I put in something more demanding, some Natalie Merchant. (“Tigerlily”? The blue CD with a woman dancing on it.) The same brittle colouration was there, but otherwise, they sounded pretty uncoloured. The AirHead with the processor switched out didn't notably improve the sound over the CD player's direct output, but with the processor it brought the image nicely forward. On the bright side (no pun intended!) I wasn’t terribly conscious that I was wearing earphones. Wearing headphones can be a real chore for people who rely on eyeglasses (see http://www.bulgari.com/image/200052212027.jpg for a photo of the ones I usually wear) to see the world around them, but they seemed to go OK. Undoubtedly, the mod helped.
Upon switching to the MP3 player, I was in the mood for some ska. I put on Guster’s cover of S&G’s “Mrs. Robinson”, and the brittleness I heard was mostly covered up by the lo-finess of the performance, recording, and encoding. The music was arresting, though.
Then I put on some rap, Ludacris’s “You’s a Ho”. The bass had very nice pace, and in general liked what I heard. With Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.” though, the brittleness raised its ugly head again.
With Madonna’s “Ray of Light” encoded at 320kbps the edges of every note were quite overwrought, but I still found my lips moving soundlessly (I hope!) along to the music. In the bass, the
'50s don't massage the earlobes like '580s turned up too loud, and the KSC-50s quite obviously inform the listener when s/he has the volume up too high by adding copious quantities of spurious artifacts. That said, their bass is definitely in league with the typical high-end 6.5" 2-way bookshelf speaker.
The next day, I took my cans onto the streets of Vienna in search of a cell-phone that would and could talk to my Palm. Fittingly, I was listening to Antonin Dvorak’s “Aus der neuen Welt” symphony (Maazel/Wiener Philharmoniker). The brittleness didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. I heard music but I was not conscious that I was wearing headphones. However, at this time I also noticed a cut in the cloth covering for the wires. The wires themselves were fine, though, and the cable was patched in the most American way possible, with duct tape.
In summary, the Koss KSC-50’s are great runabout headphones, but they’re not for serious listening as they impart a pretty blatant colouration upon all halfway decently recorded music. However, I'm being quite unfair by comparing them to one of the true landmark products of high-fidelity music reproduction, the venerable Sennheiser HD-580. Going from lesser headphones to the KSC-50s will probably produce amazement far in excess of my disenchantment compared to the '580s. I would actually consider the KSC-50s more appropriate for serious listening than, say, the Grado SR-225's.
As for the ‘580s, I simply cannot say enough good things about them. I miss my '580s already. Unfortunately, my 580s lost a coin-flip to a pair of patent-leather formal shoes in the packing process, so they remain in Atlanta. I will not have them until my sister comes to visit me in December.
jbh
Vienna, Austria
However, until recently I had not had occasion to really use the things. After all, who wants to listen to, well, anything else when Sennheiser '580s are at hand? Prior to my travels, I had tested the ‘50s with the different eyeglasses I own, and done a little bit of listening, but it was more to see if I could have them on my head without going batty than to critique their SQ.
So then, my first real experience with the '50s came during Swissair SR-121 flying between Atlanta and Zurich on Thursday-Friday, 20-21 September 2001. (Blame the Viennese cable-modem company Chello for the time lag of this post.) The sources were my Philips portable CD (Swissair having dispensed with the fiction that CD players harm planes) and a Neo25 MP3 player with an 18.6GB IBM HDD. They were always driven by a HeadRoom Total AirHead headphone amp.
(Sidenote: airport security is tighter, but not terribly unreasonable. Yes, nail-clippers will be confiscated. Also, you will probably be asked to verify that all of your electronic gadgets -- headphone amp, laptop, MP3 player, Palm, cell, etc. -- work. It all seems a bit silly to me, but if that’s what it takes to get skittish people flying again….)
The first CD I listened to whilst wearing these cans was “Everyday” by the Dave Matthews Band. It is definitely not hifi, but I like the music. At first, on “I Did It” I thought the bass a bit shy, but pressing them down against my ears just led to amusical thudding in the midbass, and no improvement in the nether register. Also, the cans seemed to impart a brittleness or hardness to the sound, sort of a thin glass edge around the upper mids that sounded like it could break at any moment and deposit the music's ashes all over my shoulders. I could hear noises around me at about the same level of attenuation that the ‘580s provide, which is to say nearly none at low volume.
After “Everyday”, I put in something more demanding, some Natalie Merchant. (“Tigerlily”? The blue CD with a woman dancing on it.) The same brittle colouration was there, but otherwise, they sounded pretty uncoloured. The AirHead with the processor switched out didn't notably improve the sound over the CD player's direct output, but with the processor it brought the image nicely forward. On the bright side (no pun intended!) I wasn’t terribly conscious that I was wearing earphones. Wearing headphones can be a real chore for people who rely on eyeglasses (see http://www.bulgari.com/image/200052212027.jpg for a photo of the ones I usually wear) to see the world around them, but they seemed to go OK. Undoubtedly, the mod helped.
Upon switching to the MP3 player, I was in the mood for some ska. I put on Guster’s cover of S&G’s “Mrs. Robinson”, and the brittleness I heard was mostly covered up by the lo-finess of the performance, recording, and encoding. The music was arresting, though.
Then I put on some rap, Ludacris’s “You’s a Ho”. The bass had very nice pace, and in general liked what I heard. With Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.” though, the brittleness raised its ugly head again.
With Madonna’s “Ray of Light” encoded at 320kbps the edges of every note were quite overwrought, but I still found my lips moving soundlessly (I hope!) along to the music. In the bass, the
'50s don't massage the earlobes like '580s turned up too loud, and the KSC-50s quite obviously inform the listener when s/he has the volume up too high by adding copious quantities of spurious artifacts. That said, their bass is definitely in league with the typical high-end 6.5" 2-way bookshelf speaker.
The next day, I took my cans onto the streets of Vienna in search of a cell-phone that would and could talk to my Palm. Fittingly, I was listening to Antonin Dvorak’s “Aus der neuen Welt” symphony (Maazel/Wiener Philharmoniker). The brittleness didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. I heard music but I was not conscious that I was wearing headphones. However, at this time I also noticed a cut in the cloth covering for the wires. The wires themselves were fine, though, and the cable was patched in the most American way possible, with duct tape.
In summary, the Koss KSC-50’s are great runabout headphones, but they’re not for serious listening as they impart a pretty blatant colouration upon all halfway decently recorded music. However, I'm being quite unfair by comparing them to one of the true landmark products of high-fidelity music reproduction, the venerable Sennheiser HD-580. Going from lesser headphones to the KSC-50s will probably produce amazement far in excess of my disenchantment compared to the '580s. I would actually consider the KSC-50s more appropriate for serious listening than, say, the Grado SR-225's.
As for the ‘580s, I simply cannot say enough good things about them. I miss my '580s already. Unfortunately, my 580s lost a coin-flip to a pair of patent-leather formal shoes in the packing process, so they remain in Atlanta. I will not have them until my sister comes to visit me in December.
jbh
Vienna, Austria
