The Lowdown
These are plainly meant to be fun. With lots of colours and finishes for different tastes, they’re the complete opposite of most DJ headphones, which are either mock-technical or simple black affairs. As such, they are going to suit the fashion-conscious DJ who’s as careful about his image off the decks as he is on them.
Video Review
First Impressions / Setting up
In the colour-matched presentation box alongside the headphones are a DJ-style coiled cable, a street-style straight cable with built-in microphone, and a drawstring carry bag. Just like the headphones themselves, the carry bag is distinctive; in this case it’s blue with the white ringed arrow motif of the company.
The headphones are unusual in that they have a short, straight length of cable coming from them that ends in an 1/8″ stereo TRS plug. This can either screw in to the coiled DJ-style cable (so it can’t be pulled out), or plug in to the microphone on the end of the straight “street” cable.
This means that if the street cable (which of course being straight has no give in it) is accidentally yanked, instead of possibly damaging the join to the headphones, it will just detach at the joint. Nice touch.
Away from the styling, the headphones are of a design not so far apart from the Allen & Heath Xone XD2-53s or the Sony MDR-700s, at least as far as the size of the earcups goes (they contain a decent 57mm driver) and the way the earcups pivot on the headband. They appear to be strudy, with metal adjusters for headband size and what apear to be metal pinned pivots. Although the two-pronged earcup holders are plastic, they’re fixed firmly to the earcups.
The leather padding is extremely soft leather covering foam, making them comfortable. A nice touch is that you can twist the middle of the headband to loosen or tighten the overall fit, so if you want them tighter for DJing (less sound leakage) you can achieve this, loosening them up again for day-to-day longer term use.
The earcups pivot 180 degrees vertically or backwards 90 degrees, which means they’ll suit most DJs’ one-on-one-off techniques.
In Use
They isolate well, although even when at their loosest they were a little tight on my head. The cable only attaches to one earcup (pretty standard nowadays), which means they’re more convenient than bi-wired models once you’re wearing them. With the “street” cable, the microphone is positioned close to your face so you don’t have to hold it when using your phone (it works with iPhone and Blackberry), although if you want to you can clip the microphone to your lapel or similar. The microphone has auto music cut when a call comes in. Clicking its small silver button once manually play/pauses the music, clicking it twice jumps forward a track, and three times jumps back a track.
Of course, while all this is good for effective auditioning of your DJ music while on the move, they’re going to live or die for us depending upon how well they perform in a DJ scenario. Once the DJ cable is screwed in and you’ve attached the supplied 1/4″ adaptor, which you’ll more than likely need to interface with your controller or mixer, you’re ready to go.
The DJ cable is easily long enough, with the benefits of being coiled so it doesn’t get in your way when you’re close up to your gear. As such, they appear to be fine for DJing. but of course, the proof is in how they sound and feel.
Sound quality wise, the huge drivers deliver a good amount of bass and defined treble, but with slightly muted mids. They’re plenty loud enough – the same kind of volume output as the Behringer HDX6000s we reviewed last week, and overall around the same sound quality (although the Behringers have less bass but more mid). Overall, the sound is very good while not hitting the heights of true pro DJ phones. Because the padding is thick, your ear has a lot of room room to sit naturally within the phones, which if you don’t want a headphone sitting right on your ear should appeal to you.
Round the neck, because the earcups fold very easily up/down, the ‘phones immediately adjust to sit clear of your chin, so they’d be comfortable for long periods of time hanging round your neck between mixes.
Conclusion
These are plainly meant to be fun. With lots of colours and finishes for different tastes, they’re the complete opposite of most DJ headphones, which are either mock-technical or simple black affairs. As such, they are going to suit the fashion-conscious DJ who’s as careful about his image off the decks as he is on them.
The way the two cables work is clever and means there’s no real compromise in having one set of headphones for all your uses. If you’re looking for some sharp, large street headphones that you can also DJ with, and your budget is around where these are pitched, I can recommend them. All you need do is take a long look at the range and decide the style that suits you best.
