Last Updated On: 4-4-19
The KSC75 is an inexpensive on-ear headphone that is secured with an ear clip rather than an earbud tip or headband. It’s a less common design nowadays, but Koss does currently make several other headphones in the same style.
Packaging is basic but decent enough. The headphones are secured in a contoured packing piece and the wire and maximally folded manual are kind of crammed into the bottom.
The pad is merely a piece of thin foam that covers the driver. You can also see these are technically semi-open in the back with the array of holes. The headphone itself can rotationally pivot very slightly along the central joint where the ear clip is fastened, but the ear clip itself is immobile.
The fit and comfort is honestly pretty bad – the clip doesn’t provide any clamp force so these kind of just feel like dangling earrings. Though they’re very light they still kind of pulled my earlobe down. The foam also slid along my ear a little when I moved my head.
The wire is pretty basic. They’re called stereophones because each headphone is independently wired, then merely glued together from the joint all the way to the 3.5mm jack which is a little less than right angled.
No mic or on-board controls, all these can do is plug in.
Spec/Performance Discussion, Listening Impressions, Other Related Observations
Headphones need a good seal to optimally perform, and the KSC75 frankly just doesn’t have it. While the detail, clarity, and mid/treble response consistency was decent, the overall sound signature was bad – very thin with significant boxiness. it sounded like I was listening to regular over-ear headphones but while pulling them half an inch off my head. I actually tried pushing them against my head merely out of curiosity, but that didn’t improve things much at all, just made them sound kind of harsh.
The bass was also significantly recessed, enough so to honestly be a deal breaker on its own if the bad fit wasn’t already. I tested a few drops that I normally listen to while reviewing and they were just nonexistent.
Isolation is also essentially zero, and there’s also significant leakage that’s in part due to the semi-open backs.
And that’s all I have – this section is unusually short but at this point I didn’t see much point in taking and reporting detailed song by song notes.
Overall Take, As Compared To The Competition
The KSC75 has seemingly received a fair amount of praise, and does have decent detail, clarity, and even response at least in the mids and trebles, but I still have to give these a hard pass because of the bad fit and overall sound signature. On ear headphones need clamp force to sound right in my opinion, and the ear clip design is just inferior. If you’re dead-set on this style and just need the sound to be good enough, the KSC75 is certainly fine, but at this price point you’re going to get much better musical performance, comfort and isolation with an earbud.
