*This has been updated*

At first glance:

I used to own a pair of Kenwood KPM-310 headphones and was impressed by the quality and quantity of sound it produced. The headphones lived a happy life until one day when I overpowered it and the right channel's voice coil gave up, I called Kenwood and they said they had no replacement parts, so they recommended me to buy a new set(what a surprise). So I ordered the bigger KPM-410, it has 40mm drivers for deeper bass and better sensitivity, although it was not listed on the manual. The single-piece audio cord was a nice touch, and the gold-plated plug ensured good connections. The manual didn't say much, it just told me not to listen to music louder than 80dB and that sort.

Listening:

Thinking this should be better than the one I used to have, I plugged it into my portable CD player and played some hip-hop and dance music. Immediately I noticed that the sound was tiny and I had to turn up the volume to hear it over road noise, but even with the volume cranked all the way it didn't get nearly as loud as my older headphones, and my CD portable CD player started to distort as the two AAA batteries were going dead. I went home and plugged the headphones into my receiver, hoping that my receiver would kick some butt, but I was again greeted with low quality sound and I had to crank the bass and treble knob way up to balance the sound. I thought maybe this headphone probably have a really low sensitivity rating than the older headphone of mine, so I didn't really look into the situation. When my cousin bought the same pair of headphones(he never uses it, so it's mine now), I compared the two headphones with a Y-adapter, and found out that the headphones I bought sounded TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the one my cousin bought. My headphones lacked a lot of treble clarity, and the bass was sloppy, while my cousin's identical pair of headphones sounded just fine. I was confused; was there a defect in my set of headphones? If it was, how could a normal consumer figure that out? I sure didn't until I found an identical pair to compare and realized that I had a bad unit, I could only hope this kind of situation doesn't happen often. But either way, the KPM-410 was not better than the smaller, more comfortable KPM-310(I couldn't wear the big headphones for longer than an hour or my ears would start to hurt). I did try to play some well-recorded album, but still with disappointing results. The KPM-410 simply lacked sensitivity, which was one of the most important component in making a quality headphones, because portable CD players can only output a limited amount of power, and headphones were primarily designed to be on-the-go, not for home use.

Conclusion:

The Kenwood KPM-410 headphones were a disappointment, the bigger size didn't help at all and made me looked like a airport operator from the 50's.


The Update:

After about a year of use, the KPM-410 headphones was finally broken in and sounded a lot more refined than when I first bought it(I'm talking about the good pair). I recently bought a Technics SU-V8X stereo amplifier from the 80's, and surprisingly this ancient piece of equipment sounded so good it tingles my body, it has soooooo much power it was not even funny. On the back of the unit it reads "AC consumption 670 watts", that is a lot! It also have an impedance switch so that this amplifier can drive either 4 pairs of 8-ohm speakers or 2 pairs of 4-ohm speakers. I have this thing hooked up to a pair of my JBL N24s and I can't turn it up beyond level 2 because the tiny JBLs will blow up really bad. So convinced that this amplifier is the shiznit for loud college parties(future plans include 4 pairs of Cerwin-Vega E-712 speakers), I plugged the Kenwood headphones in and my ears are greeted with clear highs and punchy lows, the Technics amplifier, along with the Loud button on and the EQ bypassed, these headphones sounded a lot better! I played the IASCA 1999 sound competition CD in my CD player and all the instruments are correctly placed on the sound stage, although the sound is not as convincing as the JBLs it is quite nice to enjoy good sound while your roommate is sleeping. I guess better, or perhaps better matched amplifier can always make thing better....

More update:

I got an email from an Epinion user and he told me that there is a passive membrane inside the headphones, the sound quality can be improved if the membrane is removed. I suppose the company decided to put that in for the protection of our hearing, but protecting the consumer by degrading your own product is not a very good idea eh? I removed the membrane and the sound did get much better. Thanks for the advice maxl!

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