Sound + Image

audio-technica ATH-AWKT Kokutan

These are luxurious headphones indeed, and even their packaging proclaims their greatness. They arrive in a huge slip-cased box 39cm high, stylishly emblazoned with Japanese calligraphy and an anticipatory circle of woodgrain, this outer casing seemingly so enormous that you might expect it to yield headphones built to adorn some monumental sumo wrestler. But inside the first box is a second, inside that second a third, this last being of lighter wood. And like the inner sarcophagus of a Pharaonic tomb, only when you open the third box are the headphones themselves finally revealed, nestling in satinlike fabric (which smelled very nice).

The cups of these headphones immediately grab your attention, though in the most sophisticated and gentle of grabs. They are beautifully carved and hand-finished from a

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