 Portable audio solutions have gotten generally more compact over time and that's a good thing Who wants to carry a bunch of crap around with them just to listen to music? well Sure thinks you might and if you got a chance to listen to their KSE 1200 Electrostatic earphones. Yes, you heard me right Electrostatic earphones for did I mention that they're $2,000? You might actually agree with them. This is gonna be interesting The sure KSE 1200s are not your run-of-the-mill in-ear monitors for starters They've got this thick Kevlar reinforced cable that's designed to isolate each of the two conductors And then that plugs into a matched amplifier that you must use through this obscure push-pull limo headphone connector that you'd be more likely to find on aviation or medical equipment than on a smartphone But why? What is it about these earphones that makes all of this necessary? The answer is in the drivers Inside each earbud the actual mechanism that transduces electrical energy from your source into sound energy on your eardrum uses a technology that is rarely used in speakers seldom used in headphones and almost never used in IEMs these have electrostatic drivers Now the vast majority of speakers out there use dynamic drivers where electricity flowing through the cable interacts with a permanent magnet to move the diaphragm back and forth The goal is for the diaphragm to only move along one plane back and forth like a piston But dynamic drivers struggle to do this because the cable is only fixed to the diaphragm around its dome Allowing other parts of the flex here to warp in other directions this introduces distortion which hurts sound quality But this doesn't happen nearly at all with electrostatic drivers because the diaphragm is not physically connected to the voice coil Instead it's actually suspended between two stators like a sandwich The diaphragm itself is made of an ultra low mass plastic film which in some cases is Actually even lighter than the air that it's displacing and it's impregnated with an electrically conductive material And then held in place by a strong electrostatic field created by a high voltage power supply That right there now we're getting to the bottom of this that is why the KSE 1200s need this amp So as the current carrying the music flows through the stators work together to push and pull the diaphragm back and forth Thousands of times per second and it's really really fast because the diaphragm weighs so little so that's awesome For creating clear tones even when there are lots of instruments playing at once it also lets the driver produce frequencies Across the spectrum so the KSE 1200s use only one full range driver per earphone with a frequency response of 10 Hertz to 50,000 Hertz well beyond the range of human hearing This is in stark contrast to most high-end IEMs which deploy anywhere from one or two To eight drivers per earphone so that each one of them can focus on a more narrow frequency range So that's some cool tech But most people don't pay too grand just to have cool tech in their pocket they have to actually sound good and Subjectively these don't sound good Because they sound fantastic You guys see what I did there honestly it's kind of like having a tiny band playing a show for one Inside your head and and that's not just because they're electrostats the fact that they're in-ear monitors Basically means that you're kind of wearing earplugs with the KSE 1200s purporting to block out up to 37 decibels of ambient noise Provided that you choose a sleeve that makes a good seal in your special snowflake ear canal So I prefer the really really small ones There are four different sleeve types in the box and these IEMs should be compatible with the same sleeves that fit any other modern Sure, se style earphones they also come with a cable clip two different lengths of aux cable for connecting to your source and two Livestrong style bands for repping sure Actually, no, it's not for that. It's not it's for holding everything together But on that subject what do you what even is this setup like? Couldn't I just? Connect the amp to my phone The answer is yes, yes you can But it might feel like a bit of a waste because the song or podcast that you're listening to is a digital Signal that has to get converted to an analog signal by the time it hits the headphones now your phone Does have a digital to analog converter or a DAC built in? But the audio file argument would be that it's probably of such low quality that it kind of defeats the purpose of your $2,000 headphones So while yes, it is possible on many iOS and Android devices to output the pure digital signal by passing the onboard DAC Again, you'd need to add a DAC into the chain because the KSC 1200s do not have a DAC built in in fact That's what differentiates the KSC 1200s from the KSC 1500s that launched back in 2016 For a thousand dollars more both the amp and the headphones themselves are the exact same But the system included an integrated DAC and equalizer which you could tune with the help of an OLED screen Now those functions are still available to KSC 1200 owners, but only through a companion app So depending on your setup you could have a source like a phone plugged into a dedicated DAC Plugged into the KSC amp with the headphones then plugged into your head Or you can use a combination source and DAC like the M9 that our friends over at Fio graciously sent us So with something like this you can stream from supported apps it runs Android But it's actually still quite locked down or you can load your lossless audio tracks via microSD So you've got high quality links across the entire chain all the way to your ears But the question is if you need two or three devices You know zip tied together in your pocket is this solution really portable? Now I mean for old folks like me This really doesn't seem that cumbersome I mean I used to carry a Discman around at school every day and by carry I mean Delicately caress so that it wouldn't skip but compared to this generation that grew up Just using their phone for this stuff, which we all have to carry around anyway It is quite an adjustment With that said relative to other hi-fi solutions This is downright minuscule and having them on a plane is an absolute godsend Unfortunately, there's more to portability than just size You don't normally have to worry about battery life with wired headphones But with these you do because they don't operate without the amp and while the 2200 milliamp hour battery provides More playback on these than the KSC 1500s 12 hours up from 10 That's still a lot lower than many Bluetooth headphones that can push 25 hours or more Plus you got to manage the source and DAC batteries, which is just More hassle more things to recharge every night What really irks me is that this $2,000 device doesn't even have fast charging over USB type-c Now it's got this stone age micro B connector and takes three hours to fully charge the device I mean come on you guys so bottom line should you buy these headphones? Their sound quality to size ratio can't be beat and I might even choose them over Over audio file like over your headphones just for the added sound isolation that in ears offer I'm a bit of an in ears guy not to mention that they're easier to wear to bed than over ears Which is something you could realistically do like these were very comfortable for me over long periods The wire here is formable so you can get a nice snug fit around your ear There's a light to tell you if your input signal is gonna clip and they absolutely nailed the sensitivity and feel of the tactile volume knob but I'm stopping short of a recommendation here for the same reason that I've never recommended that anyone buy a Titan graphics card or an Extreme edition processor. I mean sure they're the best But they're an enthusiast product in the truest sense of the word a product that not only has a low price to performance ratio But also one that asks the user to make affordances that would be complete deal breakers for a lot of people Including a little old me Thanks for watching guys if you just like this video You know where that button is But if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in The video description to be clear. I'm not saying don't buy it. I'm just not saying to buy it I mean if you got two grand to blow like I can certainly think of dumber things to spend that kind of I was at I was At the airport on my way back here from a recent trip and like they have purses for like $4,000 They don't even have electrostatic drivers in them. They're just dead cow