808 Audio Studio-Precision Tuned Over Ear Headphone Review

808 Audio is one of the new brands taking a shot at consumer audio claiming they offer studio quality sound at a consumer price. As an audiophile, I am rather skeptical of this but budget headphones that sound great certainly exist and it is possible that 808 Audio delivers on their promise. Before doing a review on any gear from a brand we don’t know, we always do a little background research to see what type of company we are  working with to give us a bit of a  heads up on what to expect.

The most interesting piece of information we found was 808 Audio is a subsidiary of Voxx International, a mother company that owns several brands with a foot in the audio industry, one of which being Klipsch, a 65-year-old veteran in the audio industry. While we couldn’t find much information behind the formation of 808 Audio, we would assume 808 Audio was founded to better target younger audiences, as the Klipsch brand is aimed at older audiences.

EXTERIOR PACKAGING AND COMPONENTS

The 808 Audio team did a great job at making a nice looking package with a small budget.  It has a simple cover with all the basic product information your average consumer would be concerned about, like driver size and frequency response.

As a reviewer though, I would have liked them to have provided the impedance of the headphones, as well to tell me how hard the 808 Over Ears are to power. As a consumer oriented product, it would be safe to believe that the impedance is either 16 ohms or 32 ohms which is the average for most consumer headphones.

The 808 Audio Over Ear headphones come with a neoprene case and two different cables, a flat styled cable with a single button remote and red cable, both of which connect to the headphone via a 3.5mm jack. The only complaint we have with the cables is they don’t have a mechanism that keeps them in place and the thing that keeps the jack inside the headphone is the innate notches on the 3.5mm jack.

We were little surprised that they would include a neoprene case instead of a hardshell case for a headphone like this as they are using rather hard plastic for the headband and a hard case would offer better protection.

SPECS AND PRICING

The 808 driver is 40mm (dynamic range) with 100dB sensitivity and 20Hz – 20kHz frequency response.  A quick check of Amazon shows these headphones at being under $50.