Creative's Aurvana Live! headphones promise promise to give you the experience of a "live" performance, but can they? We get listening to find out.
The large headphone cans come in a black and silver design with plenty of padding oozing expensive.
With a high gloss finish, gold tip connectors and a quality build you'd be forgiven for expecting these headphones to cost more than the £90 price tag. A good thing in anyone's book.
There are grumbles of course with the design, you can't fold them up to save space in your bag, nor can you detach the headphones socket for ease of packing, finally you only get a cloth bag rather than a hard case, but in use and none of these are biggies.
On the plus side you do get a 50-inch extension cable and an adapter for audio equipment.
On the spec front and the Aurvana Live! headphones include 40mm Neodymium magnets with composite bio-cellulose diaphragms drivers, and optimally contoured earcups that promise to minimise internal sound distortion and offer accurate playback.
What this means in reality is that you get a very rich and mellow sound that as promised does go some way to giving you that "live" experience.
We tested it on a number of live tracks such as Radio One's Live Lounge Album, Tori Amos and then some non-live recordings such as NOFX and the Foo Fighters.
In most cases the headphones acted beautifully, well for the price at least, but while the bass tones where amply recreated high notes did at times give issue. Listening to Tori Amos' Under The Pink album highlighted this especially as did some elements of the NOFX Punk in Drublic album. This was highlighted further at loud volumes.
For the price the headphones offer a good mellow and well-balanced sound. However at loud volumes, watch out for those high notes.