AKG K702 65th Anniversary Edition - Page 55

I hope someone at Harman sees this.
Edited by toschek - 1/18/13 at 10:41pm

While I do greatly prefer the Annie, I still think the dry, analytical K701 has it's own purpose and merits. Its not exactly musical, but quite revealing. The Annie trades off a smidge of that revealing signature for musicality and euphonics.

Well, inside EU, at least Germany and Holland, they are not cheap and the price is very close to MSRP. In US and Australia they are much cheaper, especially US now with USD 400 shipped, good price.  I stick with my K702 as well.

Oh BTW my serial # is 752.

 

 

 

Comments like those make me think AKG developed the new headband and pads with the though of retrofitting them into all the other x70x, but they just want to start out by milking them first on the K702 anniversary edition. 

 

It would make logical sense to put the same pads/headband on the other x70x.  They don't need to manufacturer 2 sets of headband and 2 sets of pads for otherwise identical headphones (minus the paint schemes).

 

If they just went and put them on all the x70x though, the anniversary would be less desirable and a harder sell at it's higher price, as it's perks would no longer be exclusive to it.

That's true; it'd be stupid if they put in the money to research an upgrade on their existing products, and only to stop manufacturing or using these new techs on anything once the limited edition stock runs out. Your hypothesis may very well be correct.

There is some true in that, maybe AKG just run that limited production to see if these are going to hit, who knows, we must wait and see.

 

LOL! I guess this is what Harman calls "research" now. New colors, new pads, new headband! VOILA! 

I really hope AKG abandons the bumby headband design in the future.

If that's true the Annie buyers are doing a great favor for future 70x owners.

I'll take one for the team, at least I get to hear them first.

 

Same here. I'm just glad I've found such a good headphones.

I'm curious, do the K702 ANV's sound more forward in the lower midrange than the Q701? The Q701's midrange was a bit laid back in this area, a problem I found was further emphasized by their 2khz bump. This was my major nitpick with the Q701, more so than their slightly lean bass, and the reason I found them to sound boring with some types of music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X326p4FE6RY#!

Found this video on Electronic Music Exchange forum. Just stunning on the Annies.

 

Edit: Though there are two spots of where the drop hits and it distorts very very slightly don't know if it video compression my comp Realtek onboard, my dac E17, my amp E09K, or my monoprice optical cable or my headphones.

Edited by Hailin - 1/19/13 at 10:50am

May in fact be something in your source chain.  Though I do occasionally notice what I believe to be overdrive distortion with the 65th's, it's much less so than my old K701.  I also notice it's more track dependent than pure volume level dependent.  The max input power of the x70x series is 200mw, which when paired to the lower than average efficiency can cause that occaisional overdrive, but with the 65th it's less noticeable and not a deal breaker for me given everything else it does right.

 

That being said, I tested the above track with this chain: Schiit Modi > Audio-GD SA-31 >  K702 65th and noticed no such distortion.  It could be your amp clipping.  I'm using MLE's old SA-31 and nothing short of an HE-6 is going to make this amp clip.  

Yeah, I didn't get any clipping/distortion off either the ODAC/SA-31 or Compass 2.