Headgear for the audiophile

A new pair of headphones with impressive hi-fi quality that’s ideal for both music and game playing, the Razer Kraken Forged Edition phones are designed with light and durable materials that make them wearable for hours at a time. 

They boast specially tuned 40mm drivers that reproduce top sound quality and look good too with the brushed aluminium finish of the ear cups contrasting with the black headband, leatherette cushions and black masks.

The ear cups are machined out of aircraft-grade aluminium and finished with a sleek brushed metal texture for a durable lightweight form factor. Razer, a world leader in high-performance gaming hardware, says the ear cups are carefully hand-assembled with high quality aluminium and leatherette parts.

The light and fully adjustable headband means that the phones are comfortable to wear, a sensation that’s reinforced by the plush leatherette ear cushions that line the ear cups. 

The headphones are foldable and Kraken Forged Edition comes with a hard carrying case for portability and storage. There’s also a swappable cable with an in-line microphone, meaning you can use the phones as a smartphone headset. 

If you’re playing a PC game where you need to talk to other players, you may need to buy an audio/microphone splitter for connecting to a PC soundcard’s stereo jack and mic jack, like the one that is provided with Razer Hammerhead Pro.

Kraken Forged Edition has very good sound quality thanks to the 40mm neodymium drivers. Razer says its audio engineers spent countless hours fine-tuning the drivers to perfection. The exceptional drivers work in unison with the headphones’ optimised acoustic chambers and isolated closed ear cup design to deliver booming bass, clear mids and crisp highs.

The closed ear cup design cradles your ears to provide an optimal level of sound isolation, thus immersing you deeper into your music or game playing.

The headphones have frequency response of 20 – 20,000 Hz and 32 ohms of impedance. Kraken Forged Edition has very high sensitivity of 100 dB.

The in-line microphone, which comes with the swappable cable, has frequency response of 50 to 10,000 Hz and Signal-to-Noise ratio of 60 dB. It’s omni-directional and the in-line microphone cable works with iPod, iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Android phones, Razer Blade, Macbook Pro as well as today’s newer Ultrabooks.

I enjoyed testing Kraken Forged Edition and wore the phones for hours without any discomfort.

I found the Kraken Forged Edition reproduced pulsating bass sounds, clear and high-details of guitars lines and clean and beautiful voices.

I tested it with an iPad and found that the sounds were really pleasing. The music was clean and powerful, especially the rock tracks.

I also tested it with LG Nexus 5 and was again impressed by the music quality, especially the pulsating bass on Listening to “Every Breath You Take” from the “Best of Sting”.

I mostly tested it with my PC’s soundcard, using the Foobar 2000 program and Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) driver to enhance sound quality. I used music files in the lossless FLAC format to test the headphones and was suitably impressed.

As a rock fan, I enjoyed listening to the powerful bass and drums and screeching guitars on AC-DC’s “Black Ice” album and Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” album.

The sax on “Sax for Sex – Beautiful Night” was sweet and in sharp contrast to the deep sounds of bass and drum and the crispness of the high-pitch instruments.

The phones also scored high on the “Best Audiophile Voices V” highlighting the female singers’ voices while detailing the other instruments. For example, the song “You’ve Got a Friend”, in the album was reproduced with a very powerful bass.

On the “Kitaro – Meets the London Symphony Orchestra” album, it was possible to hear the violins, cellos, and percussion instruments individually as well as the synthesizer

Razer Kraken Forged Edition headphones retail for about Bt12,900. They’re available at JIB and Zest shops as well as game hardware stores.

 

Key specs

HEADPHONES

_ Drivers: 40mm Neodymium Magnets

_ Frequency Response: 20 – 20,000Hz

_ Impedance: 32 ohms at 1 kHz 

_ Sensitivity @1kHz: 100dB ± 3dB

_ Input Power: 30mW

_ Approximate Weight: 390g

 

MICROPHONE

_ Frequency Response: 50 – 10,000Hz

_ Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 60dB

_ Sensitivity (@1kHz, 1V/Pa): -38dB ± 3dB

_ Pick-up Pattern: Omni-directional

 

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

_ Audio Usage: Devices with 3.5mm audio jack

_ Headset: Devices with combined 3.5mm audio + mic combined jack