Heard From the Front
Studio reference headphones for a graduate
The ask
Our daughter graduates in sound recording this spring. She mixed her senior project on borrowed headphones in a dorm room, and in the fall she starts as an assistant engineer at a studio. We would like her to own a reference pair. Under $2,500, all in.
The gift
A pair of open-back reference headphones, designed in Germany and built in Ireland around a large ring-shaped dynamic driver, with two detachable cables, one of them balanced. With them comes a desktop digital converter and headphone amplifier in one case, built in the United States, with enough power for the high-impedance drivers. We test the two together before they ship, and they arrive in the linen box with a wax-sealed card.
Why it's extraordinary
Each driver is set at an angle in its earcup, so sound reaches the ear slightly from the front, the way it arrives from a pair of studio monitors. The design imitates the speakers she will mix on at work.
The moment
The headphones sit on the desk beside her laptop, and every mix she brings home from the studio is checked on them before she sleeps.
A curator replies within one business day.
