The House of Marley must be a pretty substantial property, because the range of headphones it's home to is extensive. Have a look at thehouseofmarley.com
if you want to take the tour – after a lengthy viewing we decided to go with these Stir It Up on-ears. They're part of the Freedom range – and yes, all the different ranges and models are named as laboriously as this one.
Nice look, but that's where it ends
You make your own mind up about the red/gold/green motif, but there's no doubting House of Marley's commitment to premium materials – the Stir It Ups are a tactile combination of sustainable beech-wood, aluminium, canvas and leather.
They feel weighty, and are very comfortable as long as you don't mind the grip on your head inching towards the vice-like. These are headphones that feel expensive even if they don't automatically look it.
The braided cable is slightly clingy, but it does feature a three-button Apple remote/mic, and despite their grip, they don't make your ears too hot even after a long session.
Mind you, for a closed-back design they leak sound quite profusely, so
as a train proposition they aren't ideal.
With an uncompressed file of the slavish Marley facsimile Handsworth Revolution by Steel Pulse provided via iPod Touch, the Stir It Ups deliver a compact, tight presentation with a completely unsurprising emphasis on the lower frequencies.
Fierce treble at high volumes
Bass is deep and reasonably well defined, though it could be a lot tighter. Voices in the midrange enjoy decent separation, occupying the front of the stage and projecting well, while treble sounds are crisp-going-on-splashy, and the more volume you wind in the fiercer they become.
At no point are you convinced that you're hearing all the details of a recording, though, and the big-boned bass drags at tempos.
The real elephant in the room, though, is the Stir It Ups' overall tonality: 'funnelled' doesn't begin to describe it.
Music sounds like it originates from a sea-shell - a recording of Beastie Boys' Sure Shot features the 'hands cupped around the mouth' effect from the bottom of the frequency range to the top.
In light of this overarching colouration, the relative shortage of detail, the lethargic bottom end and their confined character all seem rather trifling.
As we said before, there are plenty more headphones and earphones throughout the House of Marley – so we're not about to write off the entire range on the basis of the Stir It Ups' shortcomings.
But these particular headphones are less than the sum of their carefully selected parts, and that's a bit of a disappointment.
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