STUDIO SESSION
By Erik V. Miller
KRK KNS-8402
SOLID STUDIO CANS When DJ/producers are seeking studio headphones, they have many options in the market today, many different features and tunings that innovate on the traditional studio headphone. And now, KRK Systems, perhaps best known for its range of studio-monitor speakers, has delivered a pair of new headphone products for your studio applications – the KNS-8402 and the KNS-6402. The KNS-8402 (reviewed here) is an around-the-ear and closed-back headphone that begs to replace your current studio headphones with KRK’s clean and direct take on the product. So, let’s take a dive into this and see what it can do. First Impressions: Upon receiving the box, I would say that the packaging lines up across the board with other products from KRK, a Gibson Pro Audio brand. KRK’s iconic yellow color scheme is evident, to go with its distinctive logo – those stand out to make you know from afar that this is a familiar brand dedicated to great studio sound. Brand recognition,
KNS-8402: Quality sound, great isolation & accurate replication.
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always a good thing for any company to have. The headphone set itself is allblack, and initially didn’t feel to be so sturdy – they’re very plastic and somewhat clunky to move/adjust. The headband separates on the top when adjusting to fit your head and leaves an opening, so be careful not to get your hair pulled a bit. When I look at similarly built headphones, they extend from the inside out to avoid that issue, so I think that would have been a better way to go about this for KRK here. The ear cups swivel and, though they have screws holding the cups in at the base of the headphones here, I was careful not to push their stability. One thing I really enjoy are the breakaway cables that are included with the product. Why? Because they are easily replaceable if something happens, like a short or some other kind of issue. The ¼-inch inch jack is a fitted one, and those are my favorite kind because they are a lot easier to maintain when you must unscrew them for removal – so kudos to KRK for including that useful feature. The acoustic memory foam on the ear cups are extremely comfortable and I could see someone tracking/mixing with these for hours without issue because of that comfort coming from the ear cups here. Thumbs up here, again. Lastly, I have to say that, for many reasons, I am not a fan of the volume-control slider and the process of connecting it to the headphones. The volume slider on the headphones is great for someone to control how loud their monitoring is in the studio and not need to ask the engineer to up the volume. They work, but the way it is built here reminds me of oldfashioned Skullcandy headphones, a consumer product. The process of connecting the cable to the headphones is a doozy, but I got through it. It includes a bright yellow tag on the
