Coby High-Performance Professional Studio Monitor Headphones CV320 (Silver)

These are fully circumaural headphones, and as a result, they look abnormally large and bulky. The headphones are decently comfortable, although, again because of the circumaural design, use for over 2-3 hours leads to sweaty ears (didn't think ears sweat, did you!). The sound isolation is subpar and little compared to really good full size headphones like...say the sennheiser hd280 pro or bose triport. However, since effective sound isolation is a difficult task to pull off, better isolation usually translates to a big price jump, unless it uses noise cancellation, which is just an annoyance (I've owned 2 already). The sound is pretty good with decent bass. Overall, a n averge full sized headphone, but still deserves 4 stars because, well it cost 6 dollars.

I bought these for my husband to listen to Bible CD's that I loaded onto our iPod. He has some hearing loss in one ear and with the regular earbuds he could only hear in his good ear. With these headphones, he can hear in both ears and he really likes that. They sound pretty good with music, but are great with the book format. I personally do not care for the large around the ear sytle headphones, but he does not mind them and says that outside factors are less distracting to him when he has these on. He did not care for the earbud style headphones. The price was amazingly low and they work for our needs.

When people review headphones they oftentimes write that they hear things in music with those headphones that they never heard before. With the Coby CV320, I had the opposite experience : I failed to hear things that I had always heard before. The problem with these headphones is a very unbalanced frequency response. Bass is strong, but the midrange is quite recessed, and the high frequencies are also quite recessed except for a narrow band of frequencies that are over-emphasized giving an artificial trebly quality. There is no upper treble at all, and this results in cymbals having no sizzle and bell-type instruments having a dead quality to them.

To explain the frequency response in another way, imagine yourself sitting in the audience listening to a rock band. With the Coby CV320, the bass guitar, cymbals, and wood blocks would be right in your face, and all other instruments (e.g. guitar, organ, drums, and vocals) would be back stage. It is those back-stage...Read more