šŸ”¶ Koss KPH30i

They had the beige and white in Amazon too

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yeah, i wouldnt wait on drop for these lol.

Just got my KPH30iā€™s, so still figuring them out a bit, but I do understand the hype now. Yeah, theyā€™re not as good as Sennheisers, but even 58x are like 8x the price (got my Koss @ Drop for $20). Itā€™s hard to escape taking price into accountā€“it would be like criticizing Sennheiser 6xx for not keeping up with ZMF Auteurs. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

ā€œRip & Tearā€ is not my primary flavor of music, so Iā€™m not as particular about what sounds right or wrong as I might be with other genres. Iā€™m not finding the bass so bad on that track, but I do agree that highs are kinda ā€œnonexistentā€ on the KPH30is, and that throws the contrast off between the bass and percussion in this track. For comparison, I listened to the same on K10 customs through my SP1000M, and I get much sharper percussion from the drums juxtaposed against the guitars and bass. Percussion on the Koss sounds distant and weak by comparison.

Now, the impressions above were based on listening to that track on Tidal through both my phone (Note 9) and SP1000M. I tried the YouTube link from my laptop (with the Koss) and yuck. Thereā€™s something sucked out and hollow in the mids on YT that Iā€™m not getting from either my phone or my DAP. It robs that song of impact and body.

As a counterpoint on the KPH30i bass, I had a very positive impression listening to, for example, Boris Brejcha:

Granted, thatā€™s not particularly demanding bass from a resolution standpoint, but the sense of impact from the Koss is downright impressive (even on YT), and the rest of the track details remain clear and easy to pick out of the mix.

My next thought, of course, was ā€œyeah, but what about bass texture?ā€ Iā€™m not the biggest Linkin Park fan, but this track gives me chills on my Cremonas thanks to the wonderfully intimate and detailed strings:

Even on YouTube, the Koss do a serviceable job. The emotionā€™s not really there, but theyā€™re getting the point across. The phone was better still, and the SP1000M turned out quite a good performance. I remain thoroughly impressed with these little on-ears.

Since I was already invested in a little critical listening with these tracks I threw ā€œRip & Tearā€ on the SP1000M + Stellias. And damn. Thatā€™s a firehose-wall-of-sound. It left me thinking that any ā€œdark signatureā€ may not be the way to go for that type of music; I expect Iā€™d be just as wanting trying to pair up HD650/6xx with that track via any source. For me, this is more their speed:

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How do you find the Yaxi Pads?

I had an amazing experience with the KPH30iā€™s listening to College dropout by Kanye west. Wow its an experience with the production quality of that album

To be honest my only real problem is thet the kph30i are the ONLY headphone/earphone Iā€™ve owned that I feel CANā€™T play a specific kind of music (mid-bass heavy, down-tuned electric guitar) and that the hype seems universal, so I feel like a crazy person when I listen to them and donā€™t seem to see what everyone else sees. Things like the Tin T2 ($35 on massdrop) are never totally incapable of a specific kind of music in my opinion and lived up to the hype for me. Sure they may not be the best for bass heavy music and can be a little sharp at times, but Iā€™ve never listen to them and thought ā€œ:face_vomiting: oh God thatā€™s horrible!!!ā€, but with the kph30i I have (and I am 100% serious with that barfing face).

The kph30i are pretty good for uncomplicated bass and overly bright recordings and for $20-$30 they are pretty good but things like the BLON bl-03 and Tin T2 are just much better value in MY opinion for only $10-$20 more.

Also ā€œrip and tearā€ is a stress test that just happens to be bomb ass metal song. I test everything with that track and if it fails then I probably wonā€™t like it, ā€œIf other headphones/earphones can handle It then why canā€™t this one?ā€ is basically my reasoning. I always chuckle a little when Boomerphiles says jazz pushes a system to itā€™s limits. It only pushes the limits of fine detail retrieval AT BEST, but I digress.

After listening to those songs you linked on my kph30i and T2. I overall like the T2 more simply because itā€™s a cleaner sound for me. The kph30i are good in all those songs for sure but for an extra $15-$20 Iā€™ll take the T2 since they still sound good for all those songs AND ā€œrip and tearā€. The kph30i are good for bass quantity, impact, texture but the quality is lacking and they canā€™t handle anything to complicated.

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When I was first getting into this hobby (auditioning speakers for my home theater), I quickly discovered that the boutique audio stores near me almost exclusively pushed classical and jazz, simple vocal tracks, maybe a little classic rock. It got to where I wondered, (a) is there some kind of Diana Krall mafia?, and (b) am I allowed to be an ā€œaudiophileā€ if I prefer other music?

What I eventually discovered after gobs of listening and auditioning is that recordings unmolested by loudness wars and recorded in a way that captures the environment (as opposed to close-miked instruments, artificially mixed in mastering) are the best way to evaluate how accurately loudspeaker systems can recreate the spatial aspects of a recording and the timbre of natural instruments. Both of those are fairly difficult to do, so if a playback system can do those things well then anything ought to sound great on that system. Naturally, the types of recordings that tend to check all those boxes are mostly classical, jazz, and recordings made before loudness wars trashed dynamic rangeā€¦

That emphatically does not mean that thereā€™s only one valid way to approach evaluating a playback chain, or that the ā€œjazz-testā€ is an essential pass/fail criterion. The advice I found when I looked into how to evaluate speakersā€“and it drove me nuts initiallyā€“was ā€œlisten to what you know.ā€ What? I know all kinds of stuff! Help me narrow it down!

Again, after way too much auditioning, I realized the wisdom of that advice is in treating a music playback chain as a system that transforms electricity into emotional response. The music that speaks to you is what youā€™ll know well enough and care about deeply enough to use for nitpicking playback chains. It will set you on the path to figuring out things like detail retrieval, imaging, etc.

Anyway, youā€™re not a crazy person for not joining in the KPH30i group love-fest, especially since youā€™re following that general advice I mentioned for evaluating audio gear. It just happens that the weaknesses of the KPH30i are especially incompatible with your musical preferences. They do plenty of things wonderfully well, but theyā€™re far from perfect.

First thing that came to mind when you said ā€œcomplicatedā€

Thereā€™s a whole lot of different things going on in that track. Like a whole lot, lol. By and large, I like the mids. The xylophone makes a good entrance, but then, once again, the lack of extended highs robs the drums of impact, which in turn ruins the chaos of that track by making it sound flat.

In fact, it seems like the weak highs are really the achilles heel of these headphones. Iā€™m a little curious whether the Yaxi pads help at all, though not sure it matters too much to me. I donā€™t intend for these to be a reference of any kind for me, except as a kind of sanity check for the rest of my collection to justify themselves against. :slight_smile:

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Have you tried the KSC75? Those are nowhere near as dark as these, much more detail oriented. I bet you would really like them. Only $14 on Amazon.

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Yeah I get the drop version because theyā€™re black lol.

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Eventually Iā€™ll get the headband for them.

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Cool. Personally I find the earhooks just fine, I just messed around with the hooks and bent them around a little bit until I got the hooks to go behind my ears fully.
I love these little things lol!

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Prob leave it as is. Change it up from always using a band with headphones.

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you can try using unscented baby wipes without stuff like aloe or if you donā€™t mind taking the pads off then soaking them in warm water and mild detergent will work. make sure to sun dry em

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can anyone tell which side is + and -

@hypersuntio - have you managed to answer your own question? Sorry, but I canā€™t helpā€“mine are still intact.

Stopped by to report that I took a field trip to Best Buy last night to try out the KPH30i vs some Beats. They trounced the Solo 3 ($200), unless you count isolation. Of course themā€™s some mighty expensive earmuffs.

The Beats demo station has a handful of tracks wired up to play on demand. I chose ā€œNaturalā€ by Imagine Dragons. Vocals were OK, but overall the track was pretty flat and muddy. Pulled up the same track on Tidal on my phone for the Kossā€™. Immediately cleaner with better separation. The same thing they do on every track, basically.

Had the audio dept guy at Best Buy take a listen, too, and thoroughly enjoyed his ā€œsurprised faceā€ when the Koss did their thing. Ended up talking music and whatnot with him for 10 minutes or so. I was kind of amazed that his threshhold of quality was being able to easily discern the separation between the humming voices (L+R) and vocals (center) on that Imagine Dragons tune. Yikes! Gotta start somewhere, I guess.

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Left is - and Right is +

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Have you tried the KSC75? The best budget detail kings imo. Way more detail and soundstage than the 30i. They donā€™t have as much bass, but I loved them so much I ended up returning my KPH30i lol. Canā€™t go wrong at only $14.

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Completely agreeā€¦ very enjoyable headphonesā€¦ I find the 75 more different from the 30i and porta pro than they are from each otherā€¦ my conclusion being I wont leave home without the 75ā€™s and 30iā€™s :+1:

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Someone should do koss mods like argons. from the mods ive seen you could do a bunch of mods on the ksc75 like drilling the holes. then place it into the kph30i band then put the yaxi pads on them. call it the Argon Koss

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I think somebody already did that in the thread previously. Might be worth a try.