I like the plain black styling and the build quality feels reasonably good, but I do have some gripes.

Pros: ‘esoteric’ tuning that may appeal to a certain market segment; rich and warm sound; decent treble clarity indicating driver capability; less sound leakage than fully open headphones. In my case, the foam layers inside the box are coming unglued, which doesn’t exactly give the packaging a premium feel but the headphones are well protected.

Adjusting the angle of the headphones doesn’t result in any notable changes in the sense of directionality. I wouldn’t say they feel like a luxury item but the plastic seems to be of decent quality, well assembled, and they don’t creak each time the are moved like some other alternatives do.

Our reviews are not the work of a single individual, but the collective effort of our passionate team. This type of design, according to the company , also results in faster transients and less distortion, so the sound is more natural and clear overall. Into the mid range the bottom half is not terrible as we move past the 1kHz region, there is a large dip that never really comes back until we are into the higher ranges. I found the Athena to have a warm, bold, low end, with a slightly recessed mid-range, and treble that was not smooth and had occasional peaks that actually became a bit jarring and fatiguing.They are 50mm dynamic driver and are a semi-closed (or semi-open if you prefer) and have a side venting system so that sound is not locked in. But first the usual look at the graph, with the HD6XX as a reference point and also the Beyerdynamic Custom Studio Pro (which is a closed back headphone but I don't have any semi-closed on hand). The Athena headphones have 50mm dynamic drivers that deliver a frequency response range of 10Hz to 40kHz.