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That good old feeling
The ST-800 is certainly a nice looking device with liberal use of high quality leather every where. The retro-cum-contemporary styling is quite eye catching while the soft padding on the cups as well as headband gives enough comfort for extended listening sessions.
The headphones features an in-line (on the wire) equalizer that lets you control bass and treble levels. The volumes is controlled by an on-ear dial (the back panels of the cups turn). These are high-impedance, normal-sensitivity headphones, which means driving them using ordinary sources could be a problem. However when you switch on the in-line equalizer, the signal is amped for considerable gain (two AAA batteries go into one of the cups).
These are certainly not neutral headphones. It couldn’t handle our 30 Hz sample too well and we noticed a definitely warm mid range. Take for instance, vocal rendition; we listened to Deep Winter Blues by Chris Rea and while his voice sounds velvety smooth, that husky edge is lost. While mastering music, you know how levels are adjusted to make things sound pleasant – rounding off harsh peaks and such? These headphones seem to do that quite a bit. Your music will certainly sound nice and the headphones will let you prolog audio fatigue. On Therion’s O’Fortuna, we found that the instrument separation could’ve been better. To sum it up there is nothing really bad about these cans in terms of sound quality but we doubt everyone will like that mellow somewhat over processed sound. Switching between the M50 and these cans definitely didn’t help its score and at a price of Rs. 9,000 they don’t really make for an optimal purchase, unless you want the look and feel.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Driver size: 50 mm
Driver Type: Dynamic
Frequency Response: 20-20,000 Hz
Sensitivity: 104+/-3dB
Impedance: 200 Ohms+/-10%
Cord Length: 1.22m (4 ft)
Battery: 2xAAA-included
CONTACTS:
Imation India Pvt Ltd
Phone: 91-22-67215161/2/3/4/5
Email: sphalak@imation.com
Web site: www.imation-southasia.com
Price: Rs. 9,000