Circumaural Headphones

Audio Technica ATH-M40FS Precision Studio Headphones

Wow! I totally dig these headphones. If you’re looking for full over-the-ear with high quality sound that won’t break the bank, look no further. The Audio Technica ATH-M40FS Precision Studio Headphones are simply the best full coverage earphones I’ve ever seen in this price range. Trust me, you won’t be sacrificing sound quality when you get these babies.

If you never tried circumaural headphones before, you don’t know what you’re missing. Circumaural means the padding of each new piece covers the entire ear, so you get a full seal around your whole ear. The audio quality jumps up by an order of magnitude because of this acoustic seal. The difference between normal headphones, which don’t have that total seal around each ear, and circumaural headphones is really like night and day. Try out these precision studio headphones, and you’ll never look back — trust me when I say this. It’s great for studio recording, or if your DJ, or simply just playing games — you’ll hear sounds that you’ve never noticed before in any piece of music you’ve heard or game that you’ve played before.

These Audio-Technica’s premium studiophones are professional studio quality headphones that can be used for monitoring. The construction of the unit is very solid, and quality components are used throughout, delivering exceptional sound quality and high SPL capability. Solid bass is delivered by 40mm drives with neodymium magnets coupled with copper-wound aluminum wire CCAW voice coils. The frequency response is an outstanding 5-28000 Hz, with a maximum input power of 1600 mW at 1 kHz. The sensitivity is 100 dB with an impedance of 60 ohms. In human language, there’s no hiss on these babies, and everything you throw at it sounds oh so good. The bass is more than sufficient for me, but if you really need thumping bass you can try the Audio Technica ATH-D40FS Precision Studio Headphones, which have extra bass response.

Even the design of the 11 foot long OFC litz wire cable is well thought out. It has a convenient left side exit, with strain relief attachments and a standard 1/4 inch (6.3mm) phone plug. The headset is very comfortable to wear, with nicely padded earpieces that can be rotated all the way around to allow monitoring with just one ear. Any of the cables, drivers, or ear pads can be replaced to keep the unit working well for years to come.

Did I mention the AHTM40FS headphones are extremely comfortable to wear? A lot of the over-the-ear headphones hurt because they press against your ears so tightly to achieve that perfect acoustic seal. These headphones have plenty of padding and don’t clamp down so tightly on your ears, yet still provide an excellent acoustic seal.

If there’s anything negative to be said about these headphones, but that they’re a little bit large and make your ears warm if you use them for hours. But that’s true of any full-coverage headphones, so it’s not a weakness that is specific to this brand and model.

Audio Technica has hit a homerun with these precision headphones, in my book. I’m so happy with these headphones, and even though I normally prefer using external speakers instead of headphones, these are so comfortable and the sound quality is so great that I find myself playing a lot of games with headphones now. And compared to a lot of the $200 to $1000 circumaural headphones out there made by companies such as Sennheiser, Koss, Sony, and Bose, the price and sound quality of these Audio Technica ATH-M40FS headphones simply can’t be beat.