Hello!
I am listening to AKG K712 and K701 for quite some time (more than 10 years). On several amps before (Heed CanAmp, iFi ZEN DAC) both K712 and K701 sounded a bit shouty to me, I mean with over-emphasized upper mids (aggressive vocals sometimes, especially in bussy passages). However, I recently obtained Violectric V222 amp which tammed that shoutness very nicely. Now K712/K701 shine in its full potential - very wide, open, expensive, smooth, fast, engaging...perfect.
Then I was curious about Sennheiser HD650 (and praise associate with it for many, many years on all kinds of audio forums...) so I went for it and I was a bit dissapointed...somehow congested, non-engaging 2D compared to wide 3D holographic sound of K712/K701. I mean, there is very nice natural timbre of vocals with HD650 (maybe slightly more appealing than AKGs) but that is all...Even with balanced cable it did not open up, or widen soundstage enough to compete properly with K712/K701.
Now I would like to consider some closed-backs which would sound similar to K712 and that is why I am here on this thread. It was mentioned here that K872 sounds more similar to K712 than to K812. Could someone who owns both compare the soundstage of K872 to K712 please? I would like to avoid narrow, congested sounding headphones (like HD650), although it might be hard for closed-backs.
Also, several times a honky and nasal sound of K872 was mentioned. What exactly does it mean - does it have a lot of reverberation (echo like effects) which is sometimes assiciated with closed-backs? Or simply it has higher freq. emphasis, so the reason it sounds similar to K712, although their FR curves looks quite different - K712 has 2 kHz emphasis, while K872 has a big dip there and then it has slight emphasis near 5 kHz ...? Can someone elaborate more the similarities between K872 and K712 (especially sound stage width and depth)?
Thanks!