Webster defines the word sound as; “mechanical radiant energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a material medium (as air) and in the objective of causing hearing.” In other words, sound is waves of different pressure intended to impact our ears. This is exactly what the House of Marley set out to do when they began their work on a line of headphones. Inspired by the works of the Great Bob Marley and the Reggae sound these products seek to encompass the not only the sound, but the feel of the music you listen to. In addition to audio quality the House of Marley also claims to have very eco-friendly products. They accomplish this by using recycled material and parts they call sustainable. So let’s take a look at the House of Marley Redemption Song On-Ear Headphones and see if they can really convey not only the sound or the music we listen to, but the feeling and emotion.
Performance - With audio gear it is hard to be objective. After all different people like different music and even people that like the same music might like to listen to it in different ways. To make sure that I cover the audio products that we get here at DecryptedTech I like to have more than one opinion. Usually I gather 5 other people to listen to different audio types (gaming, movies, MP3 and CD-Audio). I then ask for a rating of one to five with one being the worst and 5 being the best for each category. As an added item I also ask for a single word to describe the audio quality. I then follow up with my personal feelings and observations. The HOM Redemption Song headphones are meant more for music reproduction. We also wanted to try them out in our other environments so we will cover them hear, but will focus on their performance with music and in particular digital music.Music (MP3 and CD-Audio)For Music I have a few favorite tracks that I like to use. These are not always other people’s favorites but they serve as a baseline and have some impressive audio features to them that can distinguish between good audio and bad. One of them is Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. It is an amazing track. Others are A Day in the Life by the Beetles, Are you Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, and Cage the Elephant’s Ain’t no Rest for the Wicked. To this listing we added some jazz, funk, and of course Reggae (Bob Marley of course). The numbers for this along with their corresponding one word comments are below.Wow, that is all I can say about the audio quality from these headphones. This is in comparison to the Sennheiser PC350 AND the Sirus headphones. Neither of these other two over-the-ear headsets was able to reproduce the same level of audio we heard from this on-ear headset. This is unusual as nine-times out of ten an over-the-ear headset is going to give better audio performance. This was not the case here at all. The audio was clear with nice separation between the highs, mids, and lows. Many times when you extend the lower end of the frequency range the low end gets muddy and pulls away from the mid-range sounds. This causes a blending of these which distorts the separation of instruments. We did not see any of these when at all on our ZuneHD, Our Desktop PC with an Asus Xonar Xense and on the Tech On Model 55 Tube Amp VERY impressive. Some of our listeners described the experience as “like listening to the song for the first time”. They said they were hearing things in the music that they had never heard before.Gaming -Although the Redemption Song Headphones were not designed for gaming the extra room at the low end gives us something more. This is very evident in games like Medal of Honor and Modern Warfare 3 where the sond of the gunfire took on a whole new feel. Even in games like Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning the audio was great and brough a whole new depth to our gaming experience. The numbers are shown below, while the words used to describe the gaming quality were; Wow!ImmersiveAmazingLoudSmoothMovies/Video -Movies was an easy one also, I have several Bluray titles that are great for this including Pirates of the Caribbean. So I loaded up this title and then dropped in a couple of other movies that have good surround effects. The response was not as good as the gaming, but still the surround piece did seem to impress. The numbers and words are shown below. The movie experience was also very impressive. There is something to be said for a pair of headphones that can accurately reproduce good clean low-end sound. This allows you to feel parts of the audio experience in a way that many other headphones cannot emulate. We were more than impressed with the audio here even without surround sound. Comfort -Although the Redemption Song Headphones are heavier than most they were still comfortable to wear. We did not have any discomfort until we had been wearing them for almost three hours. At that point our ears began to feel a little cramped and we wanted to take them off. This is still very good though as normally we would not want on-ear headphones on for any length of time.
