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Thank you sir for such informations. Working on improvements with ergonomic department were truly required with the precedessor. As same as about tuned up bass response. Looks like you are really the right men to the job.
For me personally K1000 with some effort and thinking behind getting a proper system to drive and steer them, can be really a strong opponent against the most part of todays market of extraordinary constructions. So I hope your current project will be too.
I think the only areas where K1000 can nowadays feel a breath of their competitors are:
- very hard to extract the lowest bass department. I could get around 30-40 Hz of bass from K1000 with my old, trusted and kind of bassy Yamaha M-35 power amplifier from late 80's.
- too much pronounced areas of 2,4 kHz and 6-8 kHz for long-runs lasts at least few solid hours. Once again my Yamaha via her slightly dark nature and combined with pure copper cables could do the trick, but with normal, common equipment is a kind of having luck with synergy.
- slight lack of final polishing of sound. It was top class during the days, but now this pair of marvellous headspeakers have to compete with very refined flagships. I was heavily compared last time my pair (SN 6800) with Audeze LCD-4 and in many ways K1000 stood their ground, leaving me very impressed with both pairs. I also mentioned many of those observations in their review on audiofanatyk.pl.
Talking about target curves, I like working with physical evidences and certain reference products. In whole history of AKG headphones, there is only one pair in my opinion, which FR was so close to the ideal tuning - the AKG K500 EP with large bassports on back of their DKK45 driver capsules. I believe your company launched them in 1991 and kept in production only to 1993. The secret behind these headphones is that they are the most bassy from all other models in this series, yet with very close, intimate vocals and the classic AKG's treble, but toned down, still fresh and detailed but natural, real, safer and not so shouty as for example K401 or 501 and especially every single model from modern lines. The LP version came with narrow bassports and therefore their sound was in my opinion ruined completely against EP variant - lack of bass, much more dry character, increased brightness. I also did a direct confrontation of both and took some pictures, which can easily explain the differences:
Damping material inside my capsules is not original. I've had to replace it with other foam taken from DT100 dust filters.
I was comparing them with such headphones as for example HD800, HD800S or T1 Gen2 and - especially against Senns - while my old AKGs played music with more pronounced grain and worse resolution, more suitable for current Premium class, in terms of tonality they could return hits with ease. I know there is always a lot of personal preferences and every single member of this forum has its own picture of ideal sound, but for me, the K1000 and K500 EP duo is a combination capable of leaving very deep imprint on any listener. Those two pairs are nothing alike, but at the same time - very similar in various ways. I am considering my K500 always as "more human" version of K1000 working in lower class and with lower quality but much greater ergonomics. I can only encourage you to take your time and go back to this particular model and give it a round. Maybe you'll find some more sonic inspiration lying behind those drivers.
Thank you for this, quite instructive. It's timely as I also learned from talking with Focal rep about the new Utopia/Elear phone about how the rear venting system of the driver is typically used to tune the bass (first resonance and its Q factor I suppose?). I always thought the bass was controlled by the front chamber (earpad cavity) with the pads / driver baffle, just like electrostats so I was bit surprised. You are proving the point with showing two K500 drivers with widely different bass and, indeed different rear port arrangement.
Now, if you've seen the utopia / elear drivers, they have no such filters behind them and the suspension seems very very compliant so I wonder if the rule isn't quite universal...
cheers,
arnaud
