TMA-1 Studio (Young Guru)

Aiaiai has already made a splash with the TMA-1 DJ headphones and is now entering the studio with two models: the TMA-1 Studio and Studio Young Guru.

Manufacturer Aiaiai
Price £183/250Euros
Contact +45 35 34 63 54
Web www.aiaiai.dk

Headphones are, of course, incredibly cool these days and associate them with a name and they suddenly become even cooler. Young Guru is a Grammy-award winning engineer who has worked with Kanye West, Jay-Z and Drake so certainly has the credentials. You pay an extra 50 Euros for his name which gets you a lighter set of phones and a straight plug rather than the angled one on the original. Otherwise the feature-set is similar, with interchangeable ear pads, a flexible headphone cable (our favourite type), a three-button remote cable, plus a carry pouch (not as ‘protective’ as it claims being, well, a pouch rather than the plastic solid case you’d find with a Bose, for example).

You also get the ‘signature Young Guru sound’ which actually isn’t so much about the sound but more about the phones’ ruggedness for road use and comfort, both of which we can report as being very positive – these are a joy to wear and very solid with a design that any Scandinavian country would be proud of.

The sound too is spot on. The Studio and DJ TMA’s are already making their mark here and these are as good. Clear, true, honest and great for mix monitoring and even the odd mastering job. We’d never buy a set of phones just because someone famous has endorsed them but these, and the other TMAs, are justifiably winning lots of friends inside studios and out.