Performance

Ths headset is really good despite being the first from Attitude One. Its overall performance is great, and it is on par with the Sennheiser PX-200 IIs in terms of sound quality out of a normal source.

With on-ear headphones, comfort is always hard to get right. There is a relatively small sweet spot to hit between clamping force (so they do not fall off and seal well) and comfort. The Almaz fit nearly perfectly on this reviewer's head with a circumference of 58 cm as the lush pads seal well, which is the Alpha and Omega if you want to get good bass out of a closed-back design.

The Almaz is very well designed ergonomically. The ear cups have, for one, a good swivel mechanism, and the pads are really comfortable. The pads could be a bit thicker, but your ear tips will rub up against the soft pads and not the hard insides of the cup since it is a supra-aural design. It is also very light, which is great for comfort. Being closed-back and supra-aural does mean that your ears heat up quite a bit during use, which all supra-aural headphones with pleather pads do. Velour pads would alleviate the issue somewhat, but such a fix usually curtails sound quality a bit.

The Almaz is on par with the BitFenix Flo in terms of bass performance. The bass is reasonably well extended as it is almost as deep as with the Flo and a bit behind the QH-90, but not in an annoying way. The bass definition is quite good. Midrange is alright and quite warm and easy to listen to. Treble performance is way behind both what the Flo and QH-90 offer, both in terms of precision and amplification. The Almaz is best described as bass-centeric with a warm midrange that gives it a pretty mainstream sound. The design has no major quirks in terms of sound quality, which also makes it nice to listen to for extended periods of time.

The microphone's sound quality is on par with what you get from a BitFenix Flo headset. It is a bit behind the QPAD QH-90, but not by much. Easy to adjust, it also does not take up a lot of space, which is nice. All portable cables come with an integrated microphone of comparable sound quality to the Samsung Galaxy S3's bundled microphone in its remote.