New Headphones :AKG K551

A half-decade of active, high-profile in-ear earphone innovation began to stall out two years ago with the ascendance of Monster's Beats by Dre headphones, which were heavily marketed to consumers as large, highly visible fashion statements rather than on compact size or sonic quality. The success of Beats led many rivals to focus on creating similar-looking glossy headphone housings or paying for celebrity endorsers, but thankfully, a handful of companies kept toiling on technical and sonic improvements as well. Today, we're looking at three recent earbud and canalphone designs -- AKG's K391 NC ($200), Audio-Technica's ATH-ANC33iS ($80), and Logitech UE's Ultimate Ears 900 ($400, aka UE 900) -- as well as a high-end pair of over-ear AKG headphones called K551 ($380). 

The smaller headsets are some of the best we've ever tested, while the largest one is a surprisingly big disappointment.
Normally, the arrival of a pair of high-end headphones would be cause for some excitement around our offices—it’s always interesting to see what an audio company can do when it’s less constrained by price considerations and able to express the talents of its industrial designers and engineers. 

Unfortunately, AKG’s new K551 is so puzzling that we just couldn’t figure out what the company was thinking by releasing it as an iPad, iPhone, and iPod-ready model; it has all the good looks and generally the right pricing necessary to challenge overpriced metal headphones such as Beats Pro, but not the right sound.

K551’s problems begin with the cable. The 43” black plastic wire isn’t short in an absolute sense of the word, but feels that way by comparison with many of the high-end over-ear headphones K551 resembles—there’s no included 1/8” adapter or cable lengthener in the box for use with older hi-fi systems. This part isn’t an issue for us, as AKG seemingly tried to tailor K551 to the needs of iPod, iPhone, and iPad users who wouldn’t need an even longer cable. Yet for some reason, AKG chose to use one of the largest and most unwieldy 3.5mm headphone plugs we’ve seen—one with a jacket so thick that only a handful of Apple cases will work with it. It’s a pain to connect, and completely unlike the beautifully tailored 3.5mm plugs on the just-released AKG K391 NC, despite K551’s even more Apple-focused inclusion of a three-button remote and mic on the cord. The design is odd enough that one might guess AKG was given the raw specs for making an Apple-compatible cable design but didn’t actually test the headphones with Apple devices first.