Aurvana Live! from Creative

When you walk around downtown or in any populated area, what do you see? People with iPod-style earphones in their ears. I can’t help but think that if we had iPods back in the seventies, everyone would walk around with those big cushiony headphones that were the standard headphones back then.

The seventies probably would have given us iPods the size of shoeboxes, but that is not the point. My point is that those cushiony headphones have a certain aesthetic to them, just like the walkman headphones of the eighties. Sure, we couldn’t make cushiony headphones any smaller back then, but we shouldn’t give up on a nice design simply because something else can do it in a more compact package. We might as well give up on analog clocks, simply because digital clocks are easier to read. Yes, those cushiony headphones are beautiful, and a symbol of music just as much as the record player.

Unfortunately, cushiony headphones with their noise canceling technology are somewhat impractical in a society where everyone walks around listening to music in the background, not the foreground. We certainly don’t want people being killed simply because they didn’t hear the car coming. But for those who loved the cushioned earphones and want to cancel out the rest of the world while listening to your favorite tunes, Creative has just what you need with the Aurvana Live! Headphones.

The first thing a user would notice about the Aurvana Live! Headphones is that they are quite light. If you were to put this on a double-tray scale with some cushiony heaphones back in the day, the side with the old school headphones would surely break, while the Aurvana Live! would barely be noticed. The Aurvana headphones also look better with its sleek black finish and leatherette cushions.

But enough about how it looks and feels, the important thing is how it sounds. It has a 40 mm Neodymium magnet driver with composite bio-cellulose diaphragm which allows for clear playtime as well as natural playback. In comparison to normal earpads, it truly creates a perfect wall of sound in each ear, perfect for listening to classical music or the latest movie in HD. I can see why Creative thought it appropriate to put in an exclamation point when they named the Aurvana Live!

The Aurvana Live! Headphones can be purchased at the Creative site for $149.00. The kit includes the headphones themselves, a convenient pouch, a five foot extension cord, as well as a quarter-inch (6.3 mm) stereo adapter.