AKG K182: There are better options

[DKims]

So a little while back, I decided that I wanted to buy a secondary pair of headphones to my HE560s. Being a college student who regularly uses the loud and crowded buses to get around the campus, I needed a decent closed pair of headphones to take around with me. After a few weeks of searching, I found the AKG K182 on Ebay that had a starting bid of $40. After losing multiple bids on the Audeze EL-8C, I decided to just go for this pair since no one seemed to really be that interested. I later found out that this pair is worth $100 so I think I got a bargain

So for $100 what do you get (or for $40 if you can find them)?

Build and Comfort:

 

In short, it's pretty good. The plastic seems thick and heavy duty, the headband and folding joints have a rubberized feel and coating on some parts that feel pretty good but I'm not sure why they went for that. The ear cups are a smooth, matte black plastic that feel solid and don't seem to scratch unless you intentionally pressed your keys against them.

 

The rubber cable is OK. It's definitely too long and there isn't a short cable included, which is weird since these were meant for on the go use. The cable isn't the straightest either and doesn't like to stay straight even after a bit of cable training. You can also hear the cable if it rubs on your shirt or zipper inside the left cup, which may not seem that bad, but you can hear it clearly and right passed the music you're listening to.
 

There are two downsides to the build and comfort, though: creaking and the earpads.

These creak quite a bit. I mean just pressing the headphones slightly made them creak and that sound goes straight into the cups so you can hear them clearly. This is a pretty big disappointment since I readjust them quite often while on the bus from all the moving around that I do while the bus is moving. This might not be a big deal for the people who will only use them indoors but it becomes a problem for people who want to use them on the go - just like they're meant to be used.

The earpads... oh god the pads. To be frank, they're not the worst. They could be M40X levels of bad, but they aren't. They seem durable enough to last a good while, and they aren't filled with hard foam. However, the pleather feels cheap (how did Hardware Canucks think that they were leather? If this is real leather, then this is the cheapest leather that I've ever seen) and they are deceptively shallow.

What does that mean?

They look pretty deep at first, but as soon as you put them on, you realize that they actually aren't. My ears were easily able to touch the driver (my ears aren't big either) and after about 30 minutes, my ears were in enough pain to just take them off and not wear them for a few hours. The opening is decently large and really can't be anymore than what it already is because of the size of the cup.
I don't fully blame the pads, though. I think that the driver is way too far out and should've been deeper in the cup and angled.
They're conveniently labeled L and R in a huge font so at least there's that.

 

The headband doesn't help either. The headband has a small and hard pad at the top that's just really uncomfortable. To be fair, it's much better than feeling the plastic of the headband but being better than a plastic mold isn't really anything to brag about. After about 30 minutes (again), I started to get a headache at the top of my head from the pad being uncomfortable.

The clamp isn't bad, it's actually fairly good. But that's really all I have to say about the comfort.

 

The isolation is pretty good - any sound in the headphone is kept inside pretty well (I was listening to them at around 70 dB) and noises from outside, other than the loud as fuck droning sound of the bus was kept out pretty well.

Build: 7/10. Creaks way too much and pads feel cheap. Cable also takes off points.
Comfort: 4/10. Can't really figure out why people are saying these are comfortable. Maybe they're coming from non-pad rolled M40s or on ear headphones?

 

Sound:
 

These are pretty easy to drive. I plugged them into my Audio-GD NFB 11.28 and only had to go up to 9 o'clock on low gain. My reference is the HE560s.

Let's get this out of the way. I don't like the sound. In any way. It is very thin sounding and muffled. Sound stage is non-existent, and imaging goes about as far as LEFT, RIGHT and CENTER.
They do improve in sound when put on an amp like the NFB 11 but that's really not a good thing since the NFB 11 is more than 3x the price of the headphones. You almost never want to spend more on the amp/DAC than the headphones themselves, especially budget options.
I also tried them on an SMSL X4 portable DAC/amp and they sounded decent there too, but compared to the NFB 11, it was pretty disappointing.
Even when put on an amp like the NFB 11, they don't sound great anyway. I'm having a hard time saying that they're even just OK at $100 or even $40, which is what I got them for.
 

The fact that the K182s are that sensitive to the amp that they are fed from is really disappointing for an on the go pair of headphones.

Treble: The treble sticks out way too much, which is partly why the sound is so thin.

 

Mid Treble: Muffled. All I have to say.

 

Mids: Thin and also muffled sounding. Decent for male vocals.

 

Bass and Sub-Bass: It's certainly there, but this is what really contributes to the headphones sounding thin. Bass drum kicks are extremely digital sounding, and again, thin. There's almost no sub bass to back it up with impact or bloom, so the bass just sound empty. Sometimes, on electronic music, it just sounds like a one-note fart. That's not exactly how it is obviously, but that was the first that came to mind.

 

These are extremely boring. The HE560s, which many people thought were boring and did not have enough bass (which is I think is ridiculous but to each their own since we're talking about headphones), were much more enjoyable to listen to. The K182s were just not full sounding, it was almost as if there were a bunch of one note sounds playing instead of all of them meshing together. That also contributed somewhat to the muffled sound.
 

It's not even like these were really detailed and "revealing" so that they're "great for studio use." Overall the K182s were pretty forgiving of many of the tracks that I had that were poorly mastered. Not much of anything was revealed and bass details felt lost.

Without the NFB 11 or even the X4, everything was just flat out worse.

 

Sound: 5/10. At least they aren't Beats or the crappy old Sony's from a few years ago.

 

New Pads:

 

So recently (at the time of writing), my HE560s had to be replaced (again. Seriously starting to question the driver life span) so I returned them and obviously with the stock pads. Then I got the idea of putting on the ZMF Ori pads that were on the 560s on the K182s. This is the result:

 

They look pretty ridiculous since the pads aren't meant for cups this small. Although the since the cups look like they're layered, it doesn't look all the bad.

Overall, there was improvement to everything. Especially comfort. My ears no longer were touching the driver and I was able to wear these for a longer period of time (but not like hours longer, maybe about an hour and a half longer, which is much better than before). The headache at the top of my head is still there after some time.

 

Sound was also improved overall, but not enough in my opinion. There were some downsides to these pads too.

Treble: SSSSSSSSSSibilance. The treble was pulled back slightly but, high hats were painful to listen to. It was bad enough to make me change my foobar layout to have an EQ even though I never use EQ (I like to listen to headphones and music the way they were meant to be). I lowered the 14kHz range about 4dB. And the S's. THE S's OH GOD THE "SSSSSSSSSSS" IT HURTS.

 

Mids: Since the treble was pulled back a bit, the mids were much clearer and did not seem as pulled back. But again, there was some added sibilance, making the higher notes for female vocals shouty.

Bass: Much better than before but still not there as much as it should be unless the track had been mastered to have stupid amounts of bass.

Sound stage is somewhat there now and imaging is still LEFT, RIGHT, and CENTER.

 

Overall, improvement is there, but the sound is still thin and somewhat muffled and there is added sibilance. Some thin felt around the insides of the pads should fix this but not worth the fix in my opinion.

The ZMF Ori pads  are $60 without shipping. That makes these headphones around $160 if you add these pads and you still have to consider adding a felt ring on the inner parts of the pads to counter the sibilance. This is seriously not worth the price and even at $40 for the headphones alone, this is not worth it.

Edit: Tested with SMSL X4 and ZMF Ori Pads

 

Much better than with NFB11.28. Sibilance is less than before but still there since the Wolfson DAC is much warmer than the Sabre DAC. Detail is lost but it's better than sibilance. I still have the EQ set to pull the mids and highs back a bit.

 

6/10 with a Wolfson DAC. 6.5/10 once my EQ is dialed in.

 

Overall:

 

At $100, I don't think these are worth it. There are better options for under that price and especially when you factor in the mods that were mentioned above. There are many open pairs that will simply outclass these cans for lower and even for closed there are a few options like the M40s, which are slightly more but need a pad upgrade, and the Status Audio CB-1s (although the build is no where near as good, the comfort is way better at stock).

At $40, they might be worth it. They're better than most cheap, celebrity branded/common (Sony from a few years ago) options so they might be worth buying as a backup pair (and they don't look ridiculous at stock like the Koss Porta Pros). But I say that with a bit of hesitation.

The pickiness of amp/DAC is also a big downside since these are meant for on the go use.

 

Overall: 5/10. The only thing going for these is the build quality. At $100 these are simply not worth the price and I simply cannot understand how these got any good reviews. Decent I can understand, good? Not really.

[Max_Settings]

Closed under $100 is hard. Status Audio CB-1s or Takstar Pro 82s are your best bet. As for after that between $100-$200 is really hard. DT770s, MSR7s, and Semi Open T50RPs is about all that's worth it. After that a few more options open up.

[DKims]

7 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Closed under $100 is hard. Status Audio CB-1s or Takstar Pro 82s are your best bet. As for after that between $100-$200 is really hard. DT770s, MSR7s, and Semi Open T50RPs is about all that's worth it. After that a few more options open up.

Yes, but for a reputable brand to price a product like this at $100 is disappointing. I forgot to mention it in my review but even my Corsair Vengeance 1500 V2 from 4 years ago sounds much better than these other than in detail. I stopped using those but decided to compare them to the K182s.

[Max_Settings]

1 minute ago, DKims said:

Yes, but for a reputable brand to price a product like this at $100 is disappointing. I forgot to mention it in my review but even my Corsair Vengeance 1500 V2 from 4 years ago sounds much better than these other than in detail. I stopped using those but decided to compare them to the K182s.

All reputable brands have bad products. Take the M50Xs, Audio-Technica is a great brand, but those are an abomination of a headphone.