No one knows because no one has heard them here afaik. There is a ton of speculation on the thread that came about when they were announced.

 

Someone I met who had spoken to AKG about them said pads and internal damping were tweaked as well as just the neon green cable and according to AKG they are more than just a visual upgrade.

 

Who knows...

 

EDIT - One change we can all see is it is less open - a button covers about a third of the holes on the back of the driver enclosure. Whether that makes much of a sonic difference is not clear but its right there to see.

Edited by EddieE - 12/13/10 at 3:00pm

It is nothing more than an aesthetic upgrade.  I asked AKG and that was their reply.  If they had sonically changed the headphone, they would have given it a different model number.  They changed the K450 to Q460 and K340 to Q360 to differentiate that they now have an in-line mic and remote.  The Q701 are identical to K701/K702 sonically.  The difference between the 3 models are all relatively extraneous (color, included accessories, cable permanently attached or not).

That's interesting as, as I said, some AKG employees obviously are saying there have been changes, to internal acoustics and to the pads as well as just the cable and AKG China as a whole clearly are. Seems like a case of poor communication on AKGs part, both internal and external.

 

I also don't buy the logic that we can know for sure there are no changes because of the 701 moniker. The DT880s have been the DT880s since their launch and have developed a lot from what I'm told. Various different periods of RS1 are said to sound pretty different from one another.

 

Neither can just saying "they look the same" be said to mean anything. So do SR60s and SR225s.

I've heard them. And I've spoken to the guy from Harman GmbH and he said they are exactly the same. But I've got no experience with 701s before to tell you whether they've sounded the same or not.

There is nothing unusual in the Q701's sound. I believe it's a blinky version of the K702. I heard them in a shop having the Beyerdynamic T1 aside, and the result was the same as some time ago with the K701 - the latter has overall sweeter sound but with lesser resolution. The T1 sound neutral regarding the "taste". I haven't spent much time on the comparisons as it sounded obvious to me which one was from a higher league.

If people have heard them side by side in comparrison and say they are the same, I'm happy to trust them and accept that.

 

All I need to hear is the pronouncements are based on actual experience not guess work and assumption, which is all I've seen on this subject in the past.

 

There is an issue Harman/AKG needs to deal with, though, if certain parts of their organisation are telling people one thing and other parts another.

I have a feeling that the q701 is just a 702 thats burned in more hours at the factory :)

Q701 is an definitely different from K702. With Q701 you can hear a bit more bass, less analytical and more coherent & musical sound.

Heya,

 

Every headphone is sonically different due to infinitely small variations during manufacturing.

 

The Q701 is definitively different sonically from the K701.

 

The quantity of this variation is your question.

 

The answer is: miniscule.

 

Very best,

I Compared K701 with K702 past years ... after Burning In period, I can't hear any significant differences
Now I compared K701 with Q701 - the differences are so small - I cant say if they are really or only production tolerance, exemplar spreading

In my experience, the difference is almost inaudible, you have to be looking for a difference to hear it.

Therein lies the rub
 

 

Download the AKG service documents and compare self

http://www.akg.com/site/powerslave,id,7,nodeid,7,_language,EN,cat,11.html

They are open to see for alll

From my experience and IMO there is difference in sound between K702 and Q701 when unamped. Q701's slight emphasis on bass gives you sound more body (to a small extent). I heard both and kept Q701's (see my avatar). Whatever earphones (Turbine pro, TripleFi10, PS200) I hear all day, coming back home when I hear these I will have a smile on my face...clear sound. Only gripe could be sometimes sound can be too distant instead of that intimate feel you get from Grados.