AKG K240 strikes back

[lini]

I had the diffuse feeling, that I needed to go out and get myself at least one new toy, today - maybe one of the portable CD-players, I recently mentioned in another thread. So I drove to my nearest Media Markt - hoping to find the Sony D-EJ955, the Sanyo CDP-1300 or the Sanyo CDP-4300. And, indeed, they had the Sony - but only for the German list price of ~ 250 Euro, which I wasn't willing to pay, as my online price research had shown to me before, that I could get it for ~ 200 Euro elsewhere. Media Markt also offered a few Aiwa PCDPs, but none of these carried a separate line-out or an S/P-DIF-output, so I wasn't interested...

Slightly disappointed, I looked around and found the electrical Braun Oral B toothbrush, that my good friend Jürgen had recommended to me a while ago. I grabbed one and an extra set of spare brushes and went on looking around - strolling through aisles with portable MD-Recorders, DVD-players, surround-combos and other stuff...

After helping a few other customers with some recommendations (that always happens to me, when I'm in one of those big consumer electronics stores with mostly disinformative sales personnel like Media Markt or Saturn), my shopping basket had filled up with a few brand cables that were cheap enough and seemed worth a try as well as some AccuPower NiMH AAA and AA cells with 700 and 1800 mAH, when I finally reached the headphone aisle...

There I found quite a few earbuds (Sony MDR-E828LP, Philips SBC-HE215 and SBC-HE510) and the Sony MDR-W08L for ~ 7 - 20 Euro each as well as the Sony MDR-605LP for 65 Euro, which also seemed worth trying (I'm always hoping for a cheap pleasant surprise...). But after I had grabbed one unit of each, something really caught my attention: Six obviously freshly added packages containing the AKG K240 Studio - the revamped version of the K240M with new low impedance drivers, I had been interested in, since I had heard about it for the first time in August 2001. And, oh yes, I grabbed one for 139 Euro...

"Some new music couldn't hurt.", I thought and headed for the CD department. There I almost grabbed the CD from "Mesh", which I had seen on TV before, seeming remarkably similar to Depeche Mode and kind of interesting to me. "But wait", I thought, "these are 16,99 Euro, not Deutsche Mark. And a CD from Columbia without 'Compact Disc Digital Audio'-logo. No, thanks." So I put it back on the heap, grabbed some considerably cheaper CDs from Massive Attack (Protection), FatboySlim (You've come a long way, baby), DAF (Gold und Liebe) and Gonzales (Presidential Suite) instead, and headed for the cash register...

<fast forward: British Petrol (tobacco, orange juice, candy bars), mini meal, some phone calls, long chat with Jürgen (best friend in the same house three floors down - very convenient!), new toothbrush checked (good vibrations, very clean teeth - recommended!)>

...then I connected the K240 Studio to my recent setup (Sanyo CDP-55A -> Monster Interlink 200 -> Corda HA-1 (= Ohm jack used)), spun up Propellerheads' Decksanddrumsandrockandroll and...

Oh, yes, what a hell of a comeback: Brillant highs; very detailed imaging; excellent instrument separation; efficiency even a tad higher than my beloved DT531 - maybe + 3 dB; feather weight and comfy; no fiddling around with the fit on my head; maybe even better sound than the K501; not as much bass level as with the DT531, but deep enough to please me. Definitely recommended to audition!

So much for now...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[lini]

Addendum: Changes compared to my old K240Ms include a fully detachable cable, 1/8" mini jack (screw on 1/4" adaptor provided), less weight, driver screening with an additional cloth layer - unchanged though, alas, the same old sweaty ears problem...

Lini

P.S.: And it's got a new box, of course. Silly marketeers, though: "Portable full digital use" Oh, come on...

 

[AtEase]

Cool news, I remember reading a while back that the 240 was going to get revamped.

Are the 240's closed?

 

[lini]

atEase: No, it's semi-open just like the K240M and K240DF.

Lini

 

[Pierre Lambion]

Hi Lini,

how would you compare this K240 Studio to the HP890 and to the HD280? The K240 being semi-closed and the three of them being (now) in the same price range, there could be some matter of comparing.

Any kind of music where one would be much more fit than the other?

I'm actually also considering the HD280 as I could use some closed design. I know I would sacrifice some sound quality and soundstage however. Should I expect K240 Studio to be more balanced and detailed than HD280? How much do the K240 isolate?

Thanks in advance,
P.

 

[lini]

Pierre: Sorry, I can't provide you with comparative information to the Sennheiser HD280, because I haven't heard that yet. I'd probably have grabbed one, if I had spotted it at Media Markt (or Saturn, through which I was strolling recently, too) - but apparently they didn't carry it yet.

Compared to the Philips HP890 out of my memory, the K240S sounds maybe a little less spectacular (or less "big", as LTucci would possibly express it), with less deep bass volume (although the K240S seems to extend equally deep down to my ears), equally brillant but even cleaner in the highs (different cymbals are clearly discernible with the AKG, very nice) - all in all a little leaner and cleaner, I'd say. But the K240S is definitely on the bright side of headphones - I'd bet Neruda would like it, Vertigo-1 would probably miss the Beyerdynamic-bass, though.

Soundstage-wise the HP890 and the K240S seem quite similar to me, but the K240S might have an advantage in instrument positioning.

As far as isolation is concerned, the K240S doesn't offer a lot - maybe some 3 to 6 dB, which would go for both ways. It doesn't leak as much as the AKG K501 or the Grado SR80, and maybe a little less than the DT531 or the DT990Pro/250. So if you really need isolation from or to the outside, I'd recommend to look into the DT250/250, instead - or the aforementioned HD280, though I really can't tell how these would compare (I wish I could - curious me...

). If I should guess, I'd assume that the DT250/250 would seem more musical/involving (= more enjoyable) to me and the HD280 more balanced (= better for recording/mixing purposes), but that's really just speculation. And a strongly suspect the HD280 to isolate even better than the DT250/250.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[redshifter]

hi lini,
i have an old pair of k240m i got for free. d777->markertec mini/mini->cha47->k240m sounds great: dry, accurate sound, beautiful classical instrument reproduction. the bad is a small, recessed sound stage, like sitting in the 1st balcony. also, they don't have the detail/brightness i like, or the visceral bass. otherwise, thay make wonderful baroque music cans, especially for original instrument recordings like hogwood and gardiner. i think they are 600 ohm cans, and i need to turn my penguin amp (gain=6) to 3/4 max.

 

[lini]

Hi redshifter,

nice to see that you're still around. The K240M was actually the first real full-size circumaural headphone I bought and enjoyed - but that was back in the '80s. The K240M and it's even drier brother K240DF were fairly good headphones back then, and they still have some good qualities - but nowadays they are rather outdated, because there are better and/or cheaper competitors available.

But while the K240S comes in the well known outfit of its older brothers, it's a totally different beast. I think AKG has really done a very nice job updating the K240-series with the new 55-Ohm-drivers, obviously derived and refined from the Varimotion-drivers which were first introduced with the K400 and K500. And I'd even go so far and claim, that this refinement makes the K240S a hard contender to the K501- especially because the new drivers are less dependant on powerful amplification.

I guess, you'd be very pleasantly surprised, if you heard the K240S. To me it seems to combine classical AKG- with Grado- and Beyerdynamic-esque virtues (such as sonic balance, musicality and impact) - and I'm especially pleasantly surprised, that it works so well with the Corda HA-1, I've recently bought. The level of detail totally blows my mind. I've just listened through some well known CDs of mine like Faith No More's "Angel Dust" - and the K240S conveys quite a few details, I had never been able to spot before...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Thanks for the review. I've been seeing ads for these in my trade magazines, and've been curious. In the same ad, I've also seen the newly revamped K 141 Studio -- any opinion?

PS I like the one Mesh album I have.

 

[lini]

Thanks to kwkarth, who's informed me in another thread about a confusion on my side, the above needs to be slightly corrected: The K240S has a higher sensitivity than the DT531 (and the K501) - not a higher efficiency. Nevertheless, this makes it more compatible with portable equipment (and lower output voltage amp designs in general).


Dusty Chalk: I haven't tried the K141 Studio, yet. And actually I don't intend to, anyway, because I've once tried the older K141 Monitor version and didn't like the fit of this supraaural design...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

P.S.: Dusty, do you know whether your Mesh-CD has any copy protection? Because I wouldn't really like to buy a CD, where I can't make a working copy from...

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Quote:

Originally posted by lini Dusty Chalk: I haven't tried the K141 Studio, yet. And actually I don't intend to, anyway, because I've once tried the older K141 Monitor version and didn't like the fit of this supraaural design...

Yeah, that was the question. If you were even interested, based on the previous model. Quote:

Dusty, do you know whether your Mesh-CD has any copy protection? Because I wouldn't really like to buy a CD, where I can't make a working copy from...

I don't have the new one, I have the previous one. And I'm not a good test. I got the Nat Imbruglia CD, just because I was curious (was gonna return it), but I couldn't get it to not play in any of my players.

 

[Pierre Lambion]

Lini,

any idea if the cushions can be replaced by 401/501 velvet ones? Those seem damn comfy to me ...

P.

 

[jpelg]

Sorry Pierre, the cushions on the 401/501's are definitely NOT velvet. They are make of a sturdy, yet comfortable, synthetic. The earpieces are definitely circumaural and barely touch my ears.

While they are comfortable, they are definitely not plush.

FYI.

 

[Pierre Lambion]

OK. Actually I don't really care if its velvet or not. I'm just concerned by the "leather-like, making ears sweat" vs "velvet-like, not making ears sweat" distinction. I'm afraid my fabrics/materials terminology is lacking!

Anyway, I like the 401/501 fabric.

My question would then be: can the 240S cushions be replaced and what would be the most comfy replacement?

P.

 

[lini]

Pierre: The K401/501 pads have a different mechanism (a kind of bajonet lock), whereas the K240M uses conventional pull-off-type pads, so the K401/501 pads won't work as a replacement. Maybe the Beyerdynamic pads for the DT531 would work or some diy solution, but I haven't tried that yet - in fact I don't feel the need anymore: My ears have already got used to the pleather pads - and maybe a good part of my initial sweaty ears problem came from the cold I had then.

Apart from that, I can only say that I really enjoy the K240S. It has further improved a little with burn-in (and I've probably got used to its sonic charakter, too) - especially in the bass department, which seems even deeper and more solid to me, now. That together with the K240S' exceptional detail level and silky highs makes it the most enjoyable headphone, I've ever heard yet. So I'd recommend auditioning it to anyone as a nice alternative to other price/performance goodies like the DT531, the HP890, the HD580 or the SR80. To me the K240S is a very good blend for a nice price - just like Rosso Conero is, if you like Italian red wines like Brunello, Rosso di Montalcino or Rosso di Montepulciano.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini