Astell & Kern, Beyerdynamic team for big, small headphones

Great possibilities tend to get us foaming at the mouth, and so when two established players in the audio game decide to collaborate, we get very interested.

If the idea of spending big on things for your ears doesn’t make you shy away, listen up, because a company that really loves headphones has decided to team up with a company that adores high resolution audio, as Beyerdynamic and Astell & Kern collaborate for a couple of cans, or rather one can and one set of in-ears.

For these two products, we’re seeing Beyer’s take on how a headphone should be developed, relying on new transducers with a stronger set of magnets than most headphones normally receive. The technology is after Nikola Tesla because apparently they provide one Tesla (the measurement) of flux density.

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What is this supposed to do?

According to Beyer, it should provide clearer and more precise audio, which is surely the reason why it has attracted the attention of Astell & Kern.

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For the AK T1p, Astell has worked with Beyer to get an updated version of the T1 driver from a few years ago, with the big and circumaural headphones arriving with a balanced 2.5mm cable for use with Astell & Kern media players or a standard 3.5mm jack, we’re told these headphones should be good for people who love luxurious sound.

That said, they’re not cheap, with Astell & Kern’s local distributors BusiSoft telling GadgetGuy that the T1p will fetch a recommended retail price of $1899. Ouch.

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You might not need big and over-the-ear, however, and so Astell & Kern and Beyerdynamic have found a way to shrink the Tesla technology down to a smaller in-ear product.

That’s what you’ll find in the T8iE, a tiny pair of earphones relying on an 11mm version of the driver with a design that Astell says doesn’t have to be pushed too hard to get in the ear.

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The cable on this pair is covered in a head resistant synthetic fibre we’ve heard of being used on speakers before — Aramid — and this is here to keep the cable strong, while the tips for this pair of in-ears includes silicone and foam tips.

Again, though, pricing isn’t for people expecting cheap, because while these are smaller than their T1p sibling, the T8iE will fetch an expected price of $1599.

You’ll find both of these in specialist stores shortly.

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