my first impression: most fatiguing things speakers/headphones I've ever heard. I'm sensitive to bright sound and I'm immediately regretting my purchase. obnoxious and fatiguing.
mid impression: I'm sure if you're reading this you've read up elsewhere on these so I won't get too far into them. there's a lot of great stuff going on here. my big gripe is that while they are marketed as reference headphones, they are not. I'm noticing a lot of peaks which create strained and resonant sound. only in the treble though really. this makes them much less useful to learn and analyze frequency with. also I find the very high treble a bit too loud and it hurts my ears. for these things the headphones are a 4-6/10 for me.
I'm going to hold them a bit higher for now because they do have one thing I didn't expect: my ears can feel any live instrument played and it's fantastic.I'm sure that doesn't shock a lot of hardened hi-fi crowd but I'm frankly blown away. too bad I listen to a lot of electronic music..
next step for me is to try to acquire a DA8. I'm currently powering them with a Yulong U100 but I want to really overkill them before I give them a final rating.
mid impression 2: been powering them now with an old denon preamp (pma 750). Clarity seems decent, not sibilant anymore. still not neutral, still too much bass. electronic music sound bad on these, acoustic music sounds great.
electric music rating: 4/10
acoustic music rating: 8/10
seriously very unsuited for mixing bass heavy music.
mid impression: I'm sure if you're reading this you've read up elsewhere on these so I won't get too far into them. there's a lot of great stuff going on here. my big gripe is that while they are marketed as reference headphones, they are not. I'm noticing a lot of peaks which create strained and resonant sound. only in the treble though really. this makes them much less useful to learn and analyze frequency with. also I find the very high treble a bit too loud and it hurts my ears. for these things the headphones are a 4-6/10 for me.
I'm going to hold them a bit higher for now because they do have one thing I didn't expect: my ears can feel any live instrument played and it's fantastic.I'm sure that doesn't shock a lot of hardened hi-fi crowd but I'm frankly blown away. too bad I listen to a lot of electronic music..
next step for me is to try to acquire a DA8. I'm currently powering them with a Yulong U100 but I want to really overkill them before I give them a final rating.
mid impression 2: been powering them now with an old denon preamp (pma 750). Clarity seems decent, not sibilant anymore. still not neutral, still too much bass. electronic music sound bad on these, acoustic music sounds great.
electric music rating: 4/10
acoustic music rating: 8/10
seriously very unsuited for mixing bass heavy music.
Current chain:
Yulong DA8 -> Denon PMA-750 (speaker amp) -> K712
The sound is MUCH better, while they can still hurt my ears on the high end occasionally I wouldn't describe them as sibilant. The lacking mid range which left me scratching my head has finally been filled in. I personally could do without the 2k peak. It sounds a little too engaging for my tastes. The real flaw with the headphones is the bass. In my opinion there's too much and it doesn't seem very well controlled either. I can't be sure of the latter comment though so don't weight that too hard.
Anyway my philosophy is anything away from neutral is flawed so for me it's really the bass and the 2k peak. Otherwise no complaints for the time being. I'm hoping to get an HE-6 soon and then I'll really know how good these are (turning into an expensive review
)
Yulong DA8 -> Denon PMA-750 (speaker amp) -> K712
The sound is MUCH better, while they can still hurt my ears on the high end occasionally I wouldn't describe them as sibilant. The lacking mid range which left me scratching my head has finally been filled in. I personally could do without the 2k peak. It sounds a little too engaging for my tastes. The real flaw with the headphones is the bass. In my opinion there's too much and it doesn't seem very well controlled either. I can't be sure of the latter comment though so don't weight that too hard.
Anyway my philosophy is anything away from neutral is flawed so for me it's really the bass and the 2k peak. Otherwise no complaints for the time being. I'm hoping to get an HE-6 soon and then I'll really know how good these are (turning into an expensive review
Originally I had listened to the K712s on a Yulong U100 and they were the most expensive headphones I'd ever used. I was dissatisfied but I didn't feel it was fair. I don't want to be the guy running in frantically, waving his arms, talking complete nonsense.
I have spent plenty of time with these headphones now. I have A/B'd them with a the Avid Omni HD, Yulong U100, Yulong DA8 (through the headphone out and via the Denon PMA-750) as well as straight out of my Galaxy S Note II. I've pitted them against the Sennheiser HD280, Sennheiser HD25-II, and the Hifiman HE-6.
Look and Feel:
I think these headphones look great. They would be comfortable but my head is too small for them, they droop down the sides of my head. The pads are easy to replace and the cables are easy to swap.
No physical issues IMO.
Sound:
I spent an hour writing garbage and then re-listened. The bottom line is I don't like the K712s' boosted bass, I also think the 2k peak (creating a sort of aggressive immediacy is a choice that needs to be considered). Properly amped I liked the K712s but they still sound like headphones against the HE-6's. They sound notably lower quality when it comes to better recordings, but they're decent headphones (even if they feel like they're struggling to reproduce music sometimes instead of just being a window). They aren't sibilant in the treble at all, despite what I previously felt.
I give them a 7 because I don't love them but they're not bad.
