AKG K340 Electrostatic Headphones - Page 2

That's more than you need, I drove mine mainly with a MG Head OTL headphone amp and sometimes a pair of 18wpc push-pull monoblocks.

Nice score...particularly at $10.

 

I had a pair for about two years, and sold it when my current gear wasn't a good match.  I've regretted it ever since.

 

I'd recommend a powerful HEADPHONE amp to drive them.  I'd used a RSA XP-7 and a Corda Pre-Head with good results.  I found with more power that the soundstaging really opens up with more power.  When under-driven, they tend to sound flabby.  I think that the electrets seem to have a lot more sparkle when driven well.

I add my congratulations to Senor Morden for his lucky score.

 

On amplification: is the headphone-driving system in a stereo amplifier necessarily the same power and quality as the rest of the amp? What about the pot that regulates the juice to the headphone jack? Is it the same quality as the potentiometer in a good dedicated headphone amp? I think these are issues hinted at in the skepticism above.

 

I frankly don't know, but suspect the quality could vary a great deal from amp to amp or brand to brand. Power is only one of quite a few pertinent elements.

there is no way you be driving more then 2-5ws into any headphone unless you want your hearing to suffer. i never used any of your amps but the stereo amps' wpc has nothing to do with how it will perform with the headphones. the headphone jack on stereo amps has resistors between the speaker power amp section and headphone out so you are getting no where near the full power of the amps power amp section. if you want to get the full force from the power amp section you'll have to rewire your headphones making them balanced and hook them up to the speaker outputs in the back but most of the time if not careful you can blow your ears and the drivers so always keep volume at zero cause even at zero you'll get enough volume headroom.

i think the k340's use a 4 conductor cable so you can strip them and hook them straight to the speaker outputs.

=( tried my new pair of K340 from a class-a 20w speaker amp wink loaned me... It sounds like utter cow manure. (the amp is fine and drives K1000 beautifully)
The mids are colored, the bass is boomy but not at all deep, the highs are dim/grainy. (same with my small tube amp and all the other amps I own)
Hate to be on the wrong side of YMMV...I remember my old pair being a lot better, or maybe my other HP being a lot worse
Edited by svyr - 6/6/11 at 3:47am

aaand I should've cleaned the plug that was nearly completely oxidized before trying these lol...After doing that they seem to sound pretty similar to the old pair I had.

I own a nice pair of K340's, and they are really good sounding cans. I have trouble getting them to really fit me right, and so I don't actually play them that much, but I swore to myself after buying and selling and then rebuying K340's 4 different times that I would never sell the set I have now

by the way they sound spectacular from the headphone out of my Pioneer SX-1250 and SX-1980 vintage 70's receivers

Looks like the fit problems are pretty common then.  I got mine to fit better by putting two thick felt spacers in the space between the back of the cups and the bottom of the circular part of the headband assembly to force the cups to angle as much as possible, and then I also put an inch or so long piece of that self adhesive door insulation foam (they come in rolls of thin strips) between the pad and screen on the bottom side, so that the pad is thicker on the bottom.  These two combined makes it so the pads meet my head under my ears instead of hanging off.  But they're still really floppy. 

Yeah, the drivers in the K340 are great. The headband and housing assembly, not so much.

Problem is, I had several versions that were modded to try to address this, and none of them sounded as good as the pair I have now, which I bought NOS.
Edited by Skylab - 6/6/11 at 12:56pm

I would like to know what the designer's heads look like.  Maybe trapazoidal like Dwight Schrute?

KT88 sells a really fine set of pads for the K340 that are larger and softer than the OEM.   They make the K340 considerably more comfortable for long listening sessions.  He doesn't always have them, but they are well worth the modest cost.   This is my 3rd pair of K340s and if I had the pads on my first set, I would likely still own them. 

 

Ron

Don't they give them more treble presence?  I used them on my K240 and they lightened the bass up a bit and brought out the treble, which was a nice FR change for the Sextetts, but the treble isn't clean enough on them to want much more than the stock pads offer.  IMO   

 

But the K340 already has a bit too much treble for me.