Ecky- ecky- ecky- ecky- pikang- zoop- boing- goodem- zoo- owli- zh
Written: Jan 24 '04 (Updated Feb 22 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great sound, great comfort
Cons: power hungry, not portable
The Bottom Line: The best closed headphones i've ever listened to. If you don't need portability, and want to block noise, go for it!
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| zoogelsnof's Full Review: Beyerdynamic DT-831 Consumer Headphones |
I need to start with a small preface, I love sound, I’m obsessed with it, and I listen to sound all day and all night on all different speakers and TV’s and car systems. Due to my audiophile nature it is very possible there are things that would bother me in a set of headphones that most people wouldn’t notice, or care about.
Testing Environment
These were tested with my friendly Sony D-EJ2000 personal CD player, amplied with a headroom AirHead. As these are well known for their sound blocking abilities, I tested these partly in my room, and partly in a half full local restaurant that is located downstairs and around the corner.
The listening experience
I tested these with two CD’s, first my brand new “Return of the King” soundtrack, which is just absolutely unbelievably good and which you should all own. Second I tested it with the Outkast CD, “Speakerbox” which is a hip-hop/rap album that is widely considered one of the top albums of 2003.
Sound Quality:
To most people, this is the most important element for obvious reasons. These headphones sound fantastic, and have a bass component that I just adore.
The bass is exceptional. It’s always there where it should be, it thuds when there’s a thud, it’s ominous when it needs to be ominous, it can slowly grow, creeping up like the tell tale heart until suddenly the highs just explode and I damn near get a heart attack! They don’t suffer from the boominess common to many closed headphones.
The middles are like liquid silver, they pour over you in a smooth coating of great sound at a level of quality that it would be near impossible to beat in this price range.
The highs are a little bright, but justtttt the littlest tiniest bit. Hardly enough to be noticed by somebody who wasn’t listening with the intention of finding a reason to fault these headphones. They really are incredibly accurate and have a great sound.
Comfort:
The headphones feature a four-piece design consisting of the two earpieces, the headband, and a second, “overarching” headband. These are spring-loaded auto adjusting headphones, a style I’ve never liked. I prefer to be able to determine the fit I want manually. However, that said, these fit me very well and were extremely comfortable, especially for auto-adjusting headphones. The ear pads are huge and fuzzy and, for reasons that defy logic, bright silver. They are easily in my top 5 all time in terms of overall comfort.
Other Notes:
These are closed headphones and block noise extremely effectively. In a reasonably noisy restaurant they eliminated almost all outside sounds, they were really effective at this task.
They have a 10 foot non-removable cord that connects to both earpieces. It’s coiled, which helps, but it’s still very long, so consider if that will be an annoyance or a helpful thing for you.
Bottom Line:
**note, these are related to price, EG, it’s not sound quality related to the best sound in the world, it’s sound quality related to the other things in this price range.**
Sound Quality: A
Portability: C
Comfort: A
Overall:A-
5 points for anybody who figures out what the title of my review is stolen from =)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
zoogelsnof
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Member: Zac Cramer
Location: Boston, Mass.
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