Portable audio solutions have gotten generally more compact over time, and
that's a good thing. Who wants to carry a bunch of crap around with them just to
listen to music? Well, sure thinks you might. And if you
got a chance to listen to their KSE 1200 electrostatic earphones, yes, you heard
me right. Electrostatic earphones for did I mention that they're
$2,000? You might actually agree with them.
This is going to be interesting.
The Sure KSC 1200's are not your
run-of-the-mill in-ear monitors. For starters, they've got this thick Kevlar
reinforced cable that's designed to isolate each of the two conductors. And
then that plugs into a matched amplifier
that you must use through this obscure
pushpull limbo headphone connector that you'd be more likely to find on aviation
or medical equipment than on a smartphone.
But why? What is it about these earphones that makes all of this
necessary? The answer is in the drivers inside each
earbud. The actual mechanism that transduces electrical energy from your
source into sound energy on your eard drum uses a technology that is rarely
used in speakers. Seldom used in headphones and almost never used in IM.
These have electrostatic drivers. Now,
the vast majority of speakers out there use dynamic drivers where electricity
flowing through the cable interacts with a permanent magnet to move the diaphragm
back and forth. The goal is for the diaphragm to only move along one plane,
back and forth, like a piston. But
dynamic drivers struggle to do this because the cable is only fixed to the
diaphragm around its dome, allowing other parts of the flexier to warp in
other directions. This introduces distortion, which hurts sound quality.
But this doesn't happen nearly at all
with electrostatic drivers because the diaphragm is not physically connected to
the voice coil. Instead, it's actually suspended between two sters like a
sandwich. The diaphragm itself is made of an ultra low mass plastic film, which
in some cases is actually even lighter than the air that it's displacing. And
it's impregnated with an electrically conductive material and then held in
place by a strong electrostatic field
created by a high voltage power supply.
Ah, that right there. Now, we're getting to the bottom of this. That is why the
KSC 1200's need this amp. So, as the
current carrying the music flows through, the stators work together to
push and pull the diaphragm back and forth thousands of times per second. And
it's really, really fast because the diaphragm weighs so little. So, that's
awesome for creating clear tones even when there are lots of instruments
playing at once. It also lets the driver produce frequencies across the spectrum.
So, the KSC1200's use only one full
range driver per earphone with a frequency response of 10 hertz to 50,000
hertz, well beyond the range of human hearing. This is in stark contrast to
most high-end IM which deploy anywhere from one or two to eight drivers per
earphone so that each one of them can focus on a more narrow frequency range.
So, that's some cool tech. But most
people don't pay two grand just to have cool tech in their pocket. They have to
actually sound good. And subjectively,
these don't sound good because they
sound fantastic. Do you guys see what I did there? Honestly, it's kind of like
having a tiny band playing a show for
one inside your head. And and that's not
just because they're electrostats. The fact that they're in-ear monitors
basically means that you're you're kind of wearing earplugs with the KSC1200's
purporting to block out up to 37 dB of
ambient noise provided that you choose a sleeve that makes a good seal in your
special snowflake ear canal. So I prefer the really really small ones. There are
four different sleeve types in the box and these IM should be compatible with
the same sleeves that fit any other modern Sure SE style earphones. They
also come with a cable clip, two different lengths of ox cable for
connecting to your source, and two Livstrong style bands for repping. Sure,
actually, no, it's not for that. It It's It's for holding everything together.
But on that subject, what what what even is this setup? Like, couldn't I just
connect the amp to my phone?
The answer is yes. Yes, you can. But it
might feel like a bit of a waste because the song or podcast that you're
listening to is a digital signal that has to get converted to an analog signal
by the time it hits the headphones. Now, your phone does have a digital to analog
converter or a DAC built in, but the audio file argument would be that it's
probably of such low quality that it kind of defeats the purpose of your
$2,000 headphones. So, while yes, it is possible on many
iOS and Android devices to output the pure digital signal, bypassing the
onboard DACK, again, you'd need to add a
DAC into the chain because the KSC 1200's do not have a DAC built in. In
fact, that's what differentiates the KSC
1200's from the KSC 1500s that launched
back in 2016 for $1,000 more. Both the
amp and the headphones themselves are the exact same, but the system included
an integrated DAC and equalizer, which you could tune with the help of an OLED
screen. Now, those functions are still available to KSC 1200 owners, but only
through a companion app. So, depending
on your setup, you could have a source like a phone plugged into a dedicated
DAC plugged into the KSC amp with the headphones then plugged into your head.
or you can use a combination source and DAC like the M9 that our friends over at
FIO graciously sent us. So with something like this, you can stream from
supported apps that runs Android, but it's actually still quite locked down.
Uh or you can load your lossless audio tracks via micro SD, so you've got high
quality links across the entire chain all the way to your ears. But the
question is, if you need two or three devices, you know, zip tied together in
your pocket, is this solution really portable?
Now, I mean, for old folks like me, this
really doesn't seem that cumbersome. I mean, I used to carry a Discman around
at school every day. And by carry, I mean delicately caress so that it
wouldn't skip. But compared to the generation that grew up just using their
phone for this stuff, which we all have to carry around anyway, it is quite an
adjustment. With that said, relative to
other hi-fi solutions, this is downright
minuscule, and having them on a plane is an absolute godsend. Unfortunately,
there's more to portability than just size. You don't normally have to worry
about battery life with wired headphones, but with these, you do
because they don't operate without the amp. And while the 2200 mAh battery
provides more playback on these than the KSC 1500's, 12 hours up from 10, that's
still a lot lower than many Bluetooth headphones that can push 25 hours or
more. Plus, you got to manage the source and DAC batteries, which is just more
hassle, more things to recharge every night. What really irks me is that this
$2,000 device doesn't even have fast charging over USB type-C. No, it's got
this stone age microB connector and takes 3 hours to fully charge the
device. I mean, come on, you guys. So, bottom line, should you buy these
headphones? Their sound quality to size ratio can't be beat. And I might even
choose them over audio file like overear
headphones just for the added sound isolation that in-ears offer. I'm a bit
of an in- ears guy. Not to mention that they're easier to wear to bed than over
ears which is something you could realistically do. Like these were very
comfortable for me over long periods. The wire here is formable so you can get
a nice snug fit around your ear. There's a light to tell you if your input signal
is going to clip and they absolutely nailed the sensitivity and feel of the
tactile volume knob. But
I'm stopping short of a recommendation here for the same reason that I've never
recommended that anyone buy a Titan graphics card or an Extreme Edition
processor. I mean, sure, they're the best, but they're an enthusiast product
in the truest sense of the word. A product that not only has a low price
toerformance ratio, but also one that asks the user to make affordances that
would be complete deal breakers for a lot of people,
including little old me.
So, thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, you know where that button is. But if you liked it, hit
like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video
description. To be clear, I'm not saying don't buy it. I'm just not saying to buy
it. I mean, if you got two grand to blow, like, I can certainly think of
dumber things to spend that kind of I was at I was at the airport on my way
back here from a recent trip, and like they have purses for like $4,000.
They don't even have electrostatic drivers in them. They're just dead cow.