Introduction
Some headphones, like KSE1500, took me awhile to get my ears around. Although my review of AKG's K1000 (bass-light) comes some two and a half years after I first took possession of them, I posted my first impressions with a pith so succinct that I am ashamed I may never repeat it. Here, I hope to collate my several impressions of K1000 (including on
keyboard,
operatic, and
chamber), particularly as compared to the more ubiquitous HD800 (bass-light), and to refine them with the more recent experiences I have had with other headphones and music.
About Me: I listen exclusively to classical music and opera.
My Chain: My Retina 5k iMac feeds a Schiit Eitr, Bifrost Multibit, and Mjolnir 2. Although I have used Amperex 1968 Orange Globes in the past, for this review, I am using Schiit's more common LISST. I use the pre-outs to feed the defunct Portal Audio's Panache speaker amp, which puts out 200W into 8 ohms.
Now, traveling back in time, this was my opinion of K1000 after a day or so of use, and I find it held up surprisingly well:
When I listen to the K1000, especially in the context of the HD800, one of the strongest associations I make is with the Gothic Cathedral of St. Peter of Beauvais:
Beauvais was the tallest cathedral in Europe at the time, pushing the technology of vaulted ceilings to its limits. It is regarded widely as
"the Parthenon of French Gothic." However, after its choir collapsed and was rebuilt, and plans to build a nave (largest part of cathedral, where the congregants sit) never came to be, it became an oddity, an aspirational object as beautiful for its achievements as its failure to reach the goals it set for itself.
Such is the K1000.
HD800 receives its share of criticism. "Not enough bass!" "Amp finicky!" "Sennheiser veil!" "Cold!" "Bright!" "Bad for anything except jazz and classical!" To the extent that these complaints are true (with the exception of the veil), they are doubly true of K1000. It is a
bright headphone. There
is not enough bass for most non-classical applications (and some classical). The only time I hear a Sennheiser veil with HD800 is coming from K1000 [
this is just as true in January 2019 as August 2016]. These ear-speakers (worthier of the term than anything Stax has produced) are definitely amp finicky: whereas a reliable Vali (1 or 2) can make an HD800 sing, K1000 are barely cooperative with the much heftier Mjolnir 2—
and I am thankful that I now can drive them with the powerful Panache. On comfort it's not even close. K1000 slides around, and you're never quite sure whether it's positioned exactly right. God help you if you want them to stay positioned correctly as you recline. HD800 can sit comfortably on your ears in many different environments, including as you lie in bed.
K1000 is a prima donna. She knows she's among the best. Bright amp? She will spit in your face. Insufficient power? Good luck getting anything out of her. To make the obligatory car analogy, if K1000 is a Lamborghini, HD800 is a Mercedes S Class, or maxed-out Tesla Model S. The rattle that
@DavidMahler talked about? Eerily similar to that of my q701 (which, uninitiated and naive, I thought was an issue with the source or my hearing, lol). K1000 gives no schiits about her rattle, though, and will start flirting with the guy next to you if you mention it.
If I were playing bang/marry/kill, inevitably it would be K1000, HD800, Abyss (tee, hee).
Back to 2019.
Pros:
CLASSICAL MUSIC KING: No headphone is more perfectly suited to classical music, to the exclusion of every other genre, than K1000. It is a love song to the last 500 years of Western art music. Particularly if the music is well recorded, K1000 will be a luxurious listening experience. I am rediscovering Karajan: Symphony Edition as I write this review and the Schumann in particular is decadence captured.
SOUNDSTAGE KING: K1000 has the most expansive, ethereal, holographic soundstage I have ever heard. Capturing the sound of an acoustic space is among the signal tasks of headphones. K1000 renders every ensemble naturally and persuasively, exceeding all others known to this reviewer. While HD800 is extremely wide, K1000 is just as wide and significantly taller. The ear speakers give an impression of openness and space that even the most open of open-back headphones, like HD800, lack.
Moreover, and this is K1000's "Sunday punch," the soundstage is infinitely customizable: grills can be swiveled in to the point of being a "supra-aural" headphone, or out to the point of directing the sound almost more past the ears than at them. Though the soundstage, in the widest setting, is second-to-none, bass rolls off—and power requirements increase—commensurate with width. A misguided reviewer once called K1000's soundstage flat; K1000 forgives their regrettable error.
IMAGING: K1000 images as precisely as HD800, but their styles are markedly different. HD800 is a precise German surgeon, an Immanuel Kant so exacting that the neighbors of Königsberg can set their clocks by his daily walk. K1000 is an Austrian poet, a Hegelian philosopher whose attention is more on the unity of all the delicate details in their conceptual system than their separation and dissection. HD800, while revealing fine degrees, nevertheless lacks the impression of reality that K1000 conveys without effort.
DETAIL RETRIEVAL: K1000 reveals details with generosity and ease. The presentation is different from KSE1500, which integrates the treble much more securely to the entire frequency spectrum, but the details come at you a mile a minute.
TREBLE: Driven adequately, K1000 competes with the best of the best on treble. Its highs are untouched by all but the finest electrostatics — SR009, HE90, HE1. Female vocalists like Beverly Sills singing
Da tempeste il legno infranto from
Giulio Cesare have never sounded more accurate and less sibilant. I reverse my
earlier opinion, in which I insisted that K1000 required equalization to perform well. To my ears, going from HD800 to K1000 is like going from HD800S to HD800. I would stipulate, though, that my ears have had 2.5 years to adjust to the flavor of K1000, though often with months between listening sessions. Another reviewer called K1000 champagne and HD800 bread. This is not far off the truth. The taste takes a degree of acquiring, yes, but is a worthwhile flavor to which to acclimate.
VOCALS: One of the most shocking aspects to the headphone is how voices are so individuated, how they pop forward from the musical ensemble supporting them. Both women and men are extremely well served by K1000. It has a "black magic" factor: voices that blend into their surroundings, for instance, in HD800's legendary left-right protractor are three-dimensional in K1000.
MIDS: So, so fine. Buttery smooth. If you want the most elegantly textured mids you've ever heard—articulate, detailed, resplendent—look no further than K1000. The Beethoven cello sonatas of Richter and Rostropovich are never better.
TRANSPARENCY: At the end of the day—and this is a point that @davidmahler made with which I vehemently agree—every other metric is second to transparency, being one with the music. If K1000 does not serve every genre well, and is somewhat (though only somewhat) challenged to provide the muscle required by late Romantic orchestras (Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler), when she is given a smaller ensemble to which she is more naturally suited, I don't know that I ever feel closer to the music. The use cases are narrower, but the oneness is extraordinary.
TRANSIENT RESPONSE: Quicker than HD800, and made quicker still by its tilted treble profile, K1000 comes free, if you will, with a double shot of espresso. It is marked by an alertness that in character, if not in technical ability, exceeds KSE1500. You don't miss a thing.
MUSICALITY: Some headphones have it, and some headphones don't. HD600 has it; HD800—less so. SR-007 has it—SR-009 doesn't. K1000
has it. The natural, lifelike character particularly of chamber ensembles and small orchestras is shockingly addictive. The nasality of the oboe is perhaps the best I have ever heard. K1000 is supple and agile in ways that HD800 plods—and the sound is commensurately lighter. It is an Italian sports car; HD800 is the muscular, maxed-out Tesla. Or, as I put it in my Chamber impressions, HD800 is Tebaldi; K1000 is Callas. HD800 is Beethoven; K1000 is Schubert.
SMALL ENSEMBLES: For the sake of explicitness: all piano, organ (shocking, I know), string quartet, lieder, and music written before 1800 will sound great out of K1000. Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven (except when reimagined as a pre-Mahlerian Colossus), Chopin, Mendelssohn, Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti, early/mid Verdi, Gounod, Offenbach, Massenet are all safe bets. Large works will benefit from the soundstage but may lack a degree of weight or impact.
PIANO: Readers of my KSE1500 review will recall that piano is a sticking point and passion of mine. It is perhaps the most glorious instrument ever made, and is devilishly hard to reproduce. Without picking favorites, KSE1500 and K1000 are my top picks for reproduction of piano music in my stable of headphones. My greatest complaint is that recordings muddy the piano bass and create a morass of sound in the lower registers. K1000's emphasis on the mids and treble cuts the Gordian knot, perhaps, but the tactility is far beyond what any ordinary EQ could achieve.
SERIALIZED: Some folks like to know what number their can is. I'm 10,543. (For HD800, I'm 06311—love that Sennheiser just assumed they would obviously cross 10,000 units.)
Cons:
UNCOMFORTABLE: If you are looking for a comfortable headphone, don't buy K1000. K1000 is a weird beast. Instead of using ear cups to sit around one's ears, it sits on one's temples using four small memory foam pads. K1000 becomes fatiguing physically more quickly than other headphones do to this pressure. MySphere solves many of these problems, though it too has not been called the last word in comfort.
RATTLE: The glue used for the grills becomes brittle as it ages, and the grills can rattle together in a distracting way. The rattle is usually absent, but comes from time to time in ways that are unpredictable. For this reason, K1000 causes some people anxiety.
GENRE CONSTRAINED: For nearly every contemporary genre, K1000 performs poorly. Even within classical music, its prowess at rendering large orchestral works with a finely contoured soundstage comes with the significant asterisk that it will fall short on sub-bass and impact. Still, K1000 will be able to give insight into vocalists and instruments that, for all HD800's sonic splendor, it cannot quite match—in detail and in tone.
NO ISOLATION: K1000 has the least isolation of any headphone ever made, i.e., none. The ear-speakers hang in mid-air and you hear every sound from the world around you.
LONG OUT OF PRODUCTION: K1000 has not been manufactured for decades. Although the original creator of K1000 is quite active on these forums, and has apparently helped one head-fier repair a K1000 (with some old spare parts he had), I would beware of the headphone's fragility and lack of warranty and parts. It is a definite gamble in terms of supporting this headphone long-term, though it has caused me no difficulty so far. If I were spending thousands of dollars again, I would go with MySphere.
POWER HUNGRY: K1000 prefers a speaker amplifier. Although Schiit Mjolnir 2 on high gain powers it adequately, I prefer it with my Portal Panache. I would recommend investing in a Schiit Ragnarok, which gives it a goosebumps-tactility feeling, or, if you have the wallet, one of the top flight Woo amps (WA5 was designed specifically for it, and to this day features a "K1000" setting in its honor—but WA33 sounded great on it when I demoed summer 2017).
INTOLERANT OF BAD DACS: I have excellent results with Mike Moffatt's Bifrost Multibit, and I'm sure the results would improve further if I upgraded to Gungnir Multibit or Yggdrasil, but in demos with inferior DAC technology, the results are astringent and occasionally painful.
INTOLERANT OF BAD RECORDINGS: Although it is magical sounding with the right stuff, it is not a "euphonic" headphone in the sense of hiding shortcomings in recordings by smearing over them with some "AKG Veil." There is no veil. If the recording is schiit, so too is the listening.
PRICE: There aren't many K1000 around, fewer still of the black-box "bass heavy" models, which command a premium for their improved bass response and even greater rarity. You should expect to pay at least $1000 and perhaps two to three times that for a bass heavy version. Still, MySphere is more expensive still (albeit under warranty).
On The Fence:
BASS: The bass is, in my opinion, extremely tight, well defined, and textured, and for most classical music, it is excellent. However, there is no denying that K1000 is, at best, "bass-light." Many people here would find it insufferably anemic. While I defend KSE1500 as having tightness, warmth, and extension down to 10hz, K1000 is nowhere near as performant in those respects. The Achilles heel of ear-speakers is that lower frequencies roll off and cause a tinny sound that lacks impact. Although they can achieve decent volumes with a good amplifier, there's no denying that the bass lacks extension. There is no sub-bass whatsoever, and as mentioned above, what bass there is rolls off as the grills are opened wider.
Still, for lighter classical music, the effect is pleasant, and the insight into heavier music, though inaccurate to the degree that the bass is de-emphasized, is a worthwhile experience—yes, even the Leinsdorf studio Walküre, wherein the magic fire music licked my face very much with flame.
BIG ORCHESTRAS: Big orchestras benefit from the resplendently large soundstage, but they are hampered in the sonic impact K1000 is capable of delivering, particularly in the bass. Measha Brueggergosman, Franz Welser-Möst, and the Cleveland Orchestra perform a gorgeous Wesendonck Lieder, and when I listen to the soprano and strings, I find myself wanting nothing, even as I know that the effect is assuredly lacking a bit of bottom. Measha could be standing fifteen feet away from me.
TOO MUCH DETAIL?: There are stories of listeners going from K1000 to the Vienna Philharmonic live and sniffing that the live performance "lacked detail." Part of this is the forward treble, yes, but beware that the music is rendered with such extraordinary detail and accuracy that you might find any other experience a letdown. It is a immensely powerful tool (I refuse to use the word "ruthless" in describing K1000's glorious sound) and you, lucky listener, must use it wisely.
NEUTRAL?: Though K1000 is endlessly revealing, highly transparent, tall and wide and customizable in sonic presentation, and though its engineers aimed for neutrality (and perhaps succeeded more in their bass heavy than bass light version of the headphones), its weakness in the bass and most special of special sauces in the mids and treble make me doubt whether K1000 is an especially neutral headphone. I am no measure-bator, however, and composed the review without the aid of frequency charts.
The Bottom Line:
AKG's legendary K1000 is a landmark achievement in the history of headphones. However, since its release in 1989 it has been surpassed in part by HD800 and more or less in whole by MySphere. It is 1.5-4x the cost of HD800, a far more versatile and known headphone, and 50-65% the cost of MySphere, a more comfortable can with much better bass and support. It's in a no-man's land and while an interesting curiosity, is probably a worse purchase than either of those. If the cost is a stretch, get HD800 and don't look back. If your wallet wants something bigger than HD800, I can't see why you should spring for a 30 year old headphone instead of saving another month or two and going for its glorious successor.
If you see it for around or under $1000...
...
and you listen largely or exclusively to classical music
...and you want to own a piece of audiophile history
...
and you can meet the enormous power requirements
...
and you won't be bummed if it unexpectedly fails...
Go for it?
K1000 does a number of narrow things extremely well. It is an incisive, revealing, poetic, perhaps opinionated interpreter of classical music. It's a headphone you either love or hate, and I very much love it. Its highs are like Himalayas. Its mids are more delicious than my almond butter-blueberry-blackberry stuffed sourdough French toast, soaked in a milk and egg bath with angostura bitters and fried in mandarin orange olive oil. I will never sell mine, and hope to continue to bring it to meets in the Bay Area and elsewhere. But I question whether it is, in 2019, anything more than a curiosity, a museum piece, a glorious flagship of an age gone by.
The King is Dead. Long Live
MYSPHERE 3.