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AKG K701 Headphones
June 22, 2009 and July 8, 2009

June 22, 2009 Posting
Back in 2005, due to the influence of a co-worker, I got back into audiophilia. Well, actually, I became an observant bystander by subscribing to the Absolute Sound and Stereophile magazines. These days, trying to afford any of the big-buck components reviewed in the magazines is to dream the impossible. However, I did hook onto the headphone scene, wherein, for much less money, you can have excellent sound that is personal and a lot less disruptive to your family and neighbours.

I bought a Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 tube headphone amp, Sennheiser HD650 headphones and Benchmark DAC-1 as my key components for headphone listening. I bought some other smaller amps and accessories along the way, but the three components were the jewels.

Eventually, the bug to change things around bit me and I sold the X-Can amp and DAC-1. Instead of having two components taking up space and precious power outlets, I wanted a single box with DAC and amp built-in. The DAC-1 actually has a headphone amp built-in, but I wanted more functionality from the DAC-1.

I looked at the Grace M902, which has the desired functionality, but costs quite dearly at around CAD $2,000. Benchmark upgraded the DAC-1 to offer my desired functionality with a DAC-1 Pre version, but this version costs nearly as much as the M902.

What makes the DAC-1 Pre more desirable is that it offers a set of analog inputs, a USB input, a pre amp function, and an output defeatable headphone jack.

• Analog inputs allows for connecting a non-digital source to the DAC-1, such as an iPod – I don’t always listen to music through the computer and it’s nice to be able to have music in the background from a non-computer source
• USB input – for most occasions, I would use a computer and having a USB input allows for a direct connection instead of having to use adapters or auxiliary USB-to-digital boxes that I had to use with my old DAC-1
• Pre amp function allows the DAC-1 to control the volume with a set of powered speakers
• Output defeatable headphone jack allows you to plug in a headphone and mute the output to the powered speakers so you don’t have to turn off the speakers whenever you want to do some private listening

$2,000 is a fair bit of change to blow on an amp/DAC-1 combo and I wanted something less costly. I bought a HeadRoom Portable Amp, which is an amp and DAC in a conveniently small package. Nice build quality and good sound at a much lower price point, but alas, I discovered after purchase that this particular amp only works on battery power. There is no ability to keep it running on just AC power and running continuously on battery power will drain the battery after about 20 hours.

I bought another HeadRoom amp, the Micro, which is also in the same small package as the Portable, but this time as an AC-powered amp without a DAC. I bought a Blue Circle Thingee to provide the DAC function.

In hindsight, with the money spent, I should have just bought a HeadRoom Desktop amp/DAC combo, which would have done everything I want and probably still come out ahead in cost. Ah well, you live and learn.

So, no more money spent on amps and DACs for the time being, but maybe another set of headphones…

Ever since reading about the AKG K701 cans, I’ve been very curious and wondered if they might be the ideal compromise headphones. The Sennheiser HD650s are great cans that would be on the warmer, darker side of the tonal spectrum. Great bass impact, which helps to provide a solid foundation for rock and classical music. Comfort wise, the headband pinches a bit, so probably not the best for those with larger heads.

I used to have a set of Grado SR100 cans. Compared to the Sennheiser HD650s, Grados fit on the other spectrum of the tonal range with the brand sound being fast but lean and bass not being as fully extended – note: I write this with not a huge amount of experience with Grado cans. While I’ve listened through a set of RS-1 cans, I’ve not listened through the old HP series, which some consider the best to come from Grado.

AKG cans seem to straddle the middle ground between Sennheiser and Grado; more open in the high frequencies than Sennheiser, but not as strident as Grado.

While interested, I did not expect to buy a set of K701s anytime soon. However, after being asked to do some book reviews and posting the reviews on the main Amazon.com website, I was “forced” to buy the K701s (yah, my rubber arm got all twisted up).

I discovered that I have to be a customer of Amazon.com in order to post reviews. I’m already a customer of Amazon Canada and have bought many books in the last few years, but unfortunately, the two websites are separate and purchasing histories are not shared. In order for me to fulfill my book reviewing obligations, I had to become a customer of the big Amazon website.

Thus, I surfed around the site trying to find something simple and affordable to buy. Music downloads seemed ideal, until the site popped up a message stating no sales to Canada allowed. Curses!

With nothing else of interest, I decided to check out the headphones and there I saw the K701s selling for USD $262. Add in another $41 for S&H and I paid USD $303 for the cans, which translates into CAD $350. I thought, hey, not too bad for cans that used to sell for $500 plus. Then a friend told me about his brother buying a set of K701s at close out from a local high-end audio store for CAD $250. Curses!

Curiously, the reseller, who shall go nameless, had no problem selling the K701 to a Canadian, while other Amazon retailers refused to due to distribution rights and restrictions. A buck is a buck in this global village and it astounds me that some companies still don’t get this global economy thing, although governments do with all their hefty taxes and duties charged on imported goods.

The package arrived courtesy of USPS and Canada Post and I had myself a nice, new set of AKG 701s, since superseded by the K702s and given how cheaply the K702s sell for these days, I wonder if K703s are due anytime now.

The K701s are classic Apple iPod-friendly white in finish. Unfortunately, my classic white iPod died a few months back after four years of mostly fine service (with two DIY fixes to keep it running the last two years). No matter, and with apologies to Martin Luther King, it’s not the color on the outside, but the quality and character inside.

The K701 ear pads are circles compared to the ovals of the HD650. Both cans have nice, comfortable cushioning that wrap around the ear as opposed to fitting on top of the ear like Grado headphone do.

Whereas the HD650’s headband is one piece, the K701 is two pieces with an outer, dual wire frame for rigidity and an internal, padded leather headband. The K701 look a bit retro to me and remind me of the cheap and awful headphones used by my elementary school. Thankfully, they sound anything but cheap and awful.

I did no serious listening until at least 50 hours of burn-in time had past, which was primarily done using an iPod on continuous play mode, outputting to the HeadRoom Micro Amp set for a robust volume (not bleedingly loud, but loud enough I could easily discern every note and lyric from three feet away).

Putting the K701 on my head felt very comfortable without the slight pinch of the HD650s or from my former Grado SR100s. First listen gave me a lively sound that I could tell is more open and airy than the HD650s, but they also seemed a bit damped in the bass. I don’t get quite the bass impact and wallop as from the HD650s. It’s not to say that there’s no bass, which is very much the old Grado SR100s; there is bass and there can be good impact felt, but the weight is not there.

It’s like listening to a set of full range speakers that can plumb the nether regions of the bass in the low 20 Hz range and then listening to a speaker that only goes down to about 40 Hz. The full range speaker will provide the music with a solid foundation and if you’ll excuse the term, there’s just more there, there.

One trepidation I had with the K701 is that they would be brighter than I would prefer. However, I was relieved that while more sparkly in the treble, the K701 is not strident as my memory keeps telling me about Grado headphones – strident to the point of unlistenable with much pop and rock that are not known for high fidelity sound engineering.

As with everything else, I seem to be promising a review at some point down the road. My only defence is that it does take a while of regular use to come to terms with what a product offers. Case in point, my Epson Artisan 800 printer. Great specs, but there are aspects of use that I don’t like. If I had just written a review during the honeymoon period, I’d be writing a review that would not be of much use to anyone. So, more detailed review of the AKG K701 headphones coming down the road.

July 8, 2009 Posting
As reported in my introductory post about buying the AKG K701 headphones, my first impression of these highly regarded cans was airier and more open than my long-time headphones, the Sennheiser HD650s.

I found that the bass oomph to be not as strong as the HD650s, which help the Senns provide a wonderful heft to various music with a strong presence in the bass. Think bombastic symphonic delights, such as those recorded by Telarc of the Cinncinatti Pops Symphony (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.)

After regular, extended listening sessions and then doing comparison listening against the HD650s, my first impressions remain intact.

There is an articulation of details from the K701s that can lead to wonderful listening moments in which you hear details never heard before. Many times those little details give you a new appreciation for the song, but it's a fine balance between articulation and clinical. At times the K701 will, depending on the music, straddle both sides of that fine line.

With well recorded music, such as from Telarc and other audiophile approved record labels, the detail provides just the right amount of articulation that allows you to take in say, the bright blast from the brass section in stride. However, when listening to much pop and rock music, articulation can turn into a relentless presentation that has you reaching for the volume level to tone it down, or worse yet, to turn the music off.

With the HD650s, there's never been a sense of relentless and clinical tonality. The German cans are smooth compared to the Austrian cans (where the K701s are made). At times, the HD650 can be too smooth, the opposite of the K701's relentlessness. The smoothness can lead to a homogenization of the sound so that the individual instruments tend to get congealed into a mass of sound, whereas the K701 provides better differentiation of the individuals. Ideally, I would like a balance of the two cans, to have the smoothness and bass impact of the HD650 with the articulation and air of the K701s. The new and very expensive Sennheiser HD800 seem like they could very well offer that ideal balance, but at USD $1400, I won't be in a position to know anytime soon.

With the judgment that the K701s are brighter in tone and at times too clinical in presence, you would think that the K701s have an "in your face" kind of perspective. Actually, not so. The HD650s provide a more immediate presentation, as if you are much closer to the musicians, say row D or E (my old HD580s seem to offer row A). The K701s set you back further, say row L or M, and this provides a sense of a larger soundstage - as much as is possible with headphone listening. In short, the HD650s are intimate and the K701s are distant, which does seem at odds with each can's tonal balance.

With that sense of tonal balance, I can move onto thinking about the kind of amp that would be appropriate to drive each can. The HD650s are ones that will do well with a solid state amp that has a lean tonal balance. This will help to balance out the sound of the HD650s - think Benchmark DAC-1, although the HeadRoom amps tend to do very well with the HD650s too, as I can speak with some experience now.

The K701s, I feel, will do best with a tube headphone amp that will help round off the leading edge of the music and soften those hard trebles. I no longer have my Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 tube amp, so cannot verify if the K701 would indeed be tamed, but I may have to reconsider my on-again, off-again relationship with tube amps. Love the sound, hate the idea that the output devices will wear down each time I use it.

These comments are based on trying to listen critically and put down thoughts and impressions on paper, but I have to say that most of the time, when I listened for pleasure, I could set aside some of the K701's leanness and just get on with the music. Photographers often say that the best camera in the world is the one in your hands when a photographic opportunity presents itself. That can also apply with headphones.

If you have been grooving to the warmth of the HD650s then listening with the K701s or Grados may jolt your ears and either hurt them due to the stronger treble presence or make you feel more musically alive due to the greater detail offered. Conversely, if you started with the K701s and then went to the HD650s, you may feel that the music is more dull, or finally feel a sense of relief at the smoothness. It's all a matter of personal taste and there's no right or wrong.

In continuing the photographic analogy, there is no one camera that can do it all and those that take their photography seriously, will have multiple cameras with each having a particular feature, trait or benefit. For example, a capable little digicam for keeping in one's pocket all the time; a compact DX format SLR with an all-in-one lens for travelling where one wants quality but does not want the gear to intrude on a family or business trip; a full sized, full frame SLR for handling everything else.

With that horses for courses mindset, one can, if one can afford to, own more than one set of headphones for listening to different types of music. One can also take this further and have multiple headphone amps dedicated to each headphone, so that one always has the best balance.

All audio equipment reviews include various descriptions of specific pieces of music listened to and what the reviewer is able to discern with the equipment under review. I usually find these sections to be of little use, because rarely has an audio reviewer used music I like and am familiar with.

What use is it to tell me that XYZ amp driving ABC speakers extracted the most glistening and realistic sheen from the violins on a piece of unobtanium music, such as monophonic chamber music only available on 1930s era 78 rpm records. Or, the music is of a genre that I have no interest in, like bluegrass, or of an Andean-influenced group whose signature tune is their interpretation of a Baroque era piece of...er, wait a second, I actually do like Andean-influenced music 8^)

Antu is a local Vancouver group that plays Andean-influenced songs and their signature tune is their version of Pachelbel's Canon in D major. While Antu has produced some CDs, I do not know if they are available outside of Vancouver. The group's leader often plays solo as a street busker in downtown Vancouver, and about every second week, I can hear him playing when working in the office. Sorry for mentioning this potential piece of unobtanium ;^)

Anyway, I won't be presenting any notes on specific pieces of music as heard through the K701s or HD650s and what they did or did not do for me, but I will present some comments below on some pieces of music I found interesting.

Conclusion
If I was a professional recording engineer and could not afford the HD800s, I'd go with the K701s (I'd also listen to Grados before making such a choice though), because of the articulation and detail provided. I also enjoy using the K701s with recordings that are reticent and could use a little perking up, but for a lot of my music, the K701 can be a bit too much.

I don't regret buying the K701 at all, as I like the idea of having a set of cans that offer a different perspective than the HD650s, but the purchase of the K701s may end up being pricier than first envisioned, as I have my eye on an Antique Sound Labs tube headphone amp now.

Technical Notes
My listening sessions included the following systems:

• MacBook outputting to a Blue Circle Thingee DAC, which fed a HeadRoom Micro headphone amp
• MacBook outputting to a HeadRoom Portable Micro Amp/DAC
• iPod Touch outputting to the HeadRoom Portable Micro Amp/DAC via an Audio Line Out docking cable (cable allows you to use the iPod's dock instead of the compromised headphone jack to output a signal)
• iPod Touch on its own, directly feeding the headphones

The HD650s were primarily used with a custom Zu cable, but I did switch in the stock cable for comparison. I also threw in the old HD580s for a couple of songs to take me back to the mid 1990s when the HD580s reigned supreme. While you cannot switch cables like you can with Sennheiser cans, it is possible to mod the K701s with some custom cables, but this becomes a permanent mod.

Music files ranged from 320 KBPS and variable bitrate MP3 files, as well as full resolution AIFF files. My critical comparison listening were only with AIFF files on all systems.

Music ranged from the usual rock/pop from AC-DC to Dick Dale to U2 to ZZ-Top. Symphonic music included tracks from Telarc's now classic Time Warp and Symphonic Star Trek. Other similar music included music from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Some pieces of music used during the listening sessions, none of which is unobtanium, although they may not be to your taste:

Carrigfergus from Loreena McKennit's Elemental CD - an old Irish song sung by Cedric Smith with McKennit backing. It's a melancholy song telling the tale of an old , world weary man having lost his love to death and wishing for his own so that he can join her.

Mack the Knife by Ella Fitzgerald from the Number 1 Jazz Album. This is a live recording and has Lady Ella having fun and making light of this classic song. She pretends not to know all the lyrics and seems to make them up as she goes along, but it is of course way too polished and professional to really be an ad lib. In the last half, she does a great impersonation of Louis Armstrong.

(I) Can Can (You?) by Vanessa Mae from her Storm CD. Take a Chinese/Thai violin protégé playing a piece of music more commonly associated with bawdy saloon dancers, throw in some hip-hop style sampling and you get a strange, but good fusion between classical and urban music. It also does not hurt when the violin player is a hot, young female with a penchant for wearing skimpy clothing in her videos. Anyone see Vanessa Mae's Toccata and Fugue where half the time she's in a tropical sea, wearing a white, see-through dress and the other half where she's running around on the beach in short shorts. Egads, Bach (not Beethoven) must have rolled over in his grave 8^)

Misirlou by the Surf Coasters. Take an old Greek song with some Turkish influences, play it back on a Fender Stratocaster guitar with the amp set to 11, and you have the makings of a classic surf song. Dick Dale did exactly that in the early 1960s when he was challenged to play a song using just one guitar string. The well-known opening riff to Misirlou is played on the guitar's sixth E string. The song put Dick Dale on the map and opens the credit sequence in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Two versions (original and 2004 version) by the Surf Coasters (Japanese surf band) are even more frenetic and a touch more exotic in sound.

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