What's with all the studio headphones lately? Big and bulky is how most people like headphones these days, and that can be a good thing. It can also be a completely useless thing. The point of studio headphones is to provide music listeners with better sound. But, lately, lots of companies have been jumping on this bandwagon without much reason to.

The latest company to get in on the studio headphone craze is AKG. AKG has just released the K551 studio headphones for around $330. That a high price to pay for a set of headphones - are these cans worth that price? Here's what I found out.

Design and Quality

If you're a brave enough soul to wear massive headphones in public, you'll like the design of the K551 headphones. Big and bulky is an understatement here. These headphones come with massive cans and will certainly stand out with a white casing and a baby blue cord - yeah, you have to have a lot of self confidence to rock these in public!

But, you can fold these phones flat to carry them around, and they are built in a sturdy fashion. So, carrying your K551 headphones until you reach a safer neighborhood won't be that hard. If you can handle the design of these headphones, the next thing to take a look at is the sound quality.

Overall Sound

The K551 headphones do produce decent sound, though it's a sound that is usually reserved for home headphones. You won't find a bass bump with these cans, so it might be hard to hear what you're listening to when you are traveling via metro or train or other city transportation. If you're out in the open air of the country, you'll like these headphones just fine. Otherwise, it might be hard to hear bass on all tracks.

Music that sounds great with these headphones includes anything from the classical genre with some rock tunes taking a close second. Just don't expect the AKG K551 headphones to shake the ground with some knockout bass.

Overall Impressions

Clearly, AKG is aiming for the serious audiophile market with the K551 headphones. Whether or not serious audiophiles will like these headphones is a different story, though. It takes a brave person to wear these headphones in public, the bass could definitely use a big boost, and they are somewhat treble heavy. Otherwise, the K551 headphones are great for listening to music at home, checking out previously unreleased classical recordings, or just showing the world that you can wear standout $300 headphones and not care.

Love what you're seeing and reading? You can get your hands on the new AKG K551 headphones right now at various stores online, through the AKG website, and by checking out some audio stores in your own town - you might have to go to some specialty shops, though. Take a look at the pic above to see what I mean when I say that these headphones weren't meant to blend in!