Portable Cans: (Japanese) Excel Sound EH-98 Dynamic Portable Headphones.

A friend was recently traveling through Tokyo taking the opportunity of the cheap air fares currently available. It was nice of him to think of me when he was in Akihabara, he stopped into one of the hi fi shops and picked up a pair of portable headphones and brought them back as a gift for me. What is unusual is that he choose to pick up a pair of headphones by a Japanese company called "Excel Sound" which is basically not known at all outside the Japanese domestic market. The cans indeed do not look like anything special, a very rudimentary pair of plastic portable cans, but only available for sale on the Japanese market. So they are indeed rare to be found outside of Japan.

The cans are the portable / fold able "Excel Sound EH-98" dynamic cans and from what I can understand of the Japanese, they have 40mm drivers and have OFC headphone cable.

On first listening to them I was taken back by the fact that they did not sound at all bad, quite neutral, in fact they were pretty good. I am burning them in over the next few days and will give you more details on these rather rare cans. Of course some more photos will be taken. The pair I have is the EH-98bk (bk = black), if fact the plastic is more like charcoal grey. The inset photo is what I could find on the Japanese site on the EH-98.

Comfort wise, they are very comfortable, lightweight with no clamping of the head and ears.