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When I first laid eyes on these headphones, my initial thought was, “Wow”. The OneOdio Monitor 60 Professional Monitor Wired Headphones have a presence to them, and I am not talking about their high frequency reproduction. They look big and imposing and almost like they’ll cause a neck injury in wearing them, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Monitor 60s are large, and for good reason, but they don’t carry the weight you might expect and offer a surprising level of comfort that makes these a joy to listen with. Let’s take a closer look.
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Of course, the physical size is the first this we need to address. The Monitor 60s are a solid set of cans, and they remind me of some of the studio headphones we used to use in the ’90s. Now, this isn’t a retro revival image thing, where the design team also had fond memories of big cans and wanted to recreate a look. The housings are such to accommodate the drivers that become the backbone to the Monitor 60’s sound. For inside the big casing is a 50mm neodymium driver that delivers plenty of volume and doesn’t carry a lot of weight.
They are fitted with large leather-feel memory foam pads that completely cover your ears to keep that sound in. Best of all, being such a thick pad, you are left with a good amount of space between your ear and the actual driver. Allowing you to hear the sound in the air, rather than as a vibration off the out housing of the driver. The result is a big sound that is full of life and responsiveness. It’s like sitting right in between two studio monitor speakers and switching off all the reflections and environmental noise in the room.
On top of the space they create, the pads offer a very comfortable fit. They completely cover the ears with a soft touch feel to the outer leather-like material. But the memory foam within allows the pads to find a natural resting position over your ears and not crushed against you head. This means that even during extended listening sessions, your ears don’t feel fatigued from continual pressure against them. The adjoining band is adjustable to fit just about any size of head, even my oversized skull. So, finding a comfortable fit only took a couple of small adjustments to get the pads sitting where I wanted them. It’s padded too, across the top ridge, so any part of the Monitor 60s that is in contact with you is soft and comfortable. With just a single cable running out of the right ear pad, it ensures you’re not getting caught up in it when moving around the mixing desk, studio, or booth.
So, for design and fit, these headphones tick all the boxes. Now comes the most important factor, the sound. I have tried and tested hundred upon hundreds of headphones of the past two decades. I’ve reviewed more than a hundred pairs of headphones in my time with Mixdown magazine, many of them selling for upwards of 10 times what the Monitor 60s come in at. With that in mind, I can honestly say that these headphones hold their own when it comes to audio clarity. They sound like you have just spent a disgusting amount of money.
Many time over we see claims of perfectly flat frequency responses in headphones in all sections of the market. Aside from being wildly false, such claims are not entirely ideal with a pair of speakers enclosed over your ears, not affected by environmental characteristics and reflections. So, it is pleasing to see that the Monitor 60s don’t claim to have a flat frequency response, in fact they have a carefully-sculpted sound that actually sounds flat, when it is quite a way off.
There’s a bump around 100Hz, a trough around 4kHz, and a peak up at 7kHz, among a range of other subtle adjustments. The result is an articulate sound that allows vocals to be heard clearly, but not pushed forward in the mix. It has an ‘air’ to the sound that proffers a studio room feel, without actually having the studio there. It brings together the complete audio image and makes it sound natural. And that is what a true response in a pair of headphones should be, the feeling of no colouration, the illusion of a flat frequency response.
But you don’t have to listen to me waffle on about how good they sound. These headphones are backed by Sony Hi-Res Audio verification. What this means is that the OneOdio Monitor 60 headphones have been tested and proven to deliver hi-resolution audio to a standard set by Sony for playback of digital audio. These are not just designed for listening to CDs. You can expect a clarity and audio quality that delivers when replicating hi-resolution digital files without losing the sound quality in playback. It’s all well and good to record at 96K sampling rates, but if you can’t hear the difference, you’re just chewing up disc space for no reason. With Sony’s verification of these headphones, you can be confident that you will be able to hear that extra quality that is found in hi-resolution recordings.
You can use these in the studio for tracking, mixing and editing, you can use them in a DJ booth in high volume situations, or you can simply use them on the couch when you want to really enjoy listening to some music. You can be confident that they are going to be very comfortable to wear and deliver incredible audio reproduction. You won’t want to take these headphones off!
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