[richard51]

Very useful , instructive and hopeful post.... Thanks thousand times....

The important sentence coming from people who knows: "they should be harmless within 50 years."

I hear a level of high frequencies so musical in mine that i think they are in a good shape and i will be dead, because i already had 71old this year, when they will lose their magic.... Ouffff ! if they go on for the next 10 years at least i will be ok.....It is impossible for me to replace them with other headphone at a cost under 1000 bucks and perhaps way more to do so WITHOUT frustration ....

I am very happy to have read your post.....


The better albums to test higher frequencies i had among others like string quartets, is "The arte of violin" by Locatelli and interpretated by Elisabeth Walfisch... On the K 340 the beauty is celestial....

For the bass test body I listen to Akhenaten of Philip Glass....Or a gong or Taiko drums...

For the soundstage "out of the head "many choral albums but the Liszt "Christus" by Antal Dorati is one of the greatest musical work ever written....



For the mid frequencies any album with the voice of a singer we already know if not try the marvellous jazz album of Irene Kral






And this album is a killer audiophile recording on all counts almost :

The ageing of the electrets is already noticeable. Even worse: The series variations are due to differences in the thickness and polarisation of the electret, the production tolerances were high at that time. Just as Heinz Renner, the developer of the K1000, could only produce the first 5000 copies with a FS of 25 Hz under very strong factory selection. Most of them were rubbish and did not reach the target.

AKG is experienced with electrets and the technology of the K340 was also used in microphones such as the C412 and the D99 dummy head "Harry". I notice differences due to ageing especially in the range above 8 kHz, some still seem "fresh", some are already more covered there. Electrets will loss of charge. According to a former employee at AKG, from who I bought various headphones, they should be harmless within 50 years. The sensitivity and the volume will decrease, but the slow ageing should not be noticeable with normal usage (as you get used to it). In any case, no K340 will ever sound the same as it did when buyed in 1979.

I once had contact with a specialist around electrostats like a Jecklin Float as well as Stax and he said that a remagnetisation of the electret would be difficult and not worth the price. Replacement electrets for the K340 were available until the early 2000s from a German company namend "RW Soundsystem".

Serious channel imbalances are always due to temperature fluctuations (attic, uninsulated basements) or UV light.

Regarding my problem with the resonating metal from the electret: Simply print a new grill with a 3D printer.

 

[richard51]

The clarity of deep bass details and extension rivals the proverbial highs extension attributed to the AKG K340.... Most negative reviews linked to the lack of bass or the lack of bass extension in the K340 case reflect only the owner's problems of optimization for this headphone: no vibrations/resonance controls , bad pads or the wrong one, bad or wrong amplification, bad cables and bad or wrong dac ....(The lack of higher frequencies however for sure could reflect an electret fatigue which is the main problem of this headphone with time, ouff 50 years though of potential durability)...

With good components and the right optimization, one of the great amazing underestimated fact relating to this can is the relative independence of 2 cells electret and dynamic, then the minimal contamination possible between bass and mids because of the presence of 2 types of drivers....It is easy to verify, if like me you play with equalization at the source and with the 2 tone controls of my Sansui amp at the same time, playing on precise frequencies and large band levels modification at the same time ...

This headphone drink high frequencies and eat bass and metabolize them together with minimal damage for the body....And "excreting" almost no distortions for my ears....

I used this amazing album to verify :



The tuba timbre and timbre of the french horn mixed with 2 trumpets and one trombone timbre are very hard to be done right by any headphone....

Enough bass quantity is not enough here , the headphone must give a clarity and extension in bass that few headphones are able to give, if an headphone cannot do that, all is confused and resemble a "soup" where mids frequencies are like big frogs cadavers in a dead pool....

With the K340 you have a beautiful kaledoiscope of interacting distinct sounds.....With many headphone here with this album , you have a soup and with some others, very bright or analytical headphone , you have sand paper sound with no life and you lost the tuba impactful deep notes for sure....

AKG K340 is after the pyramid my best loved design...

Yes i exagerated here about the pyramid, oups, excuse about the K340 for sure.... But it is my best loved headphone in life.... and my last love but mainly the only one headphone i ever loved....

The main reason is a balance of all acoustic aspects of what a good headphone can be.....You will pay for many costly headphone superior on one or 2 counts, you will not discover at so low price a balance between all acoustic cues coming from one headphone.... And there is some aspect, unique one, the K340 do better than almost all headphones.... Holographic 3-d volume of space for each instruments when the recording is audiophile and make it possible....After that we must buy a Smyth realizer to exceed it ....I will keep the K340 at his price used....

 

[richard51]

I will give an exemple of the way this headphone can affect our listenings acoustically.... Not musically.... Because music is NOT sound....It is an other story when we speak of "music".... Speaking about headphone we speak about sound or acoustic and psycho-acoustic more than about music in itself...

I was just listening Marie Claire Alain stupendous Bach organ integral....One of the best in my 5 good integrals works about Bach organ, one of the best in recording mastery and especially in interpretation...

Listening to some piece , i was hearing the entire organ playing "out of my head" in my room, virtually transported in the church acoustic where the great interpret was playing.... Thanks to the recording engineer....

Imagine the sensation of listening to an headphone but the sound dont comes from the shells cups and dont transform between your ears at all, this is like a dead silent zone between your ears, you hear everything, fooled or enlightened by your brain and the design of the K340 , you hear, no you "see", something filling your room virtual space like in a church the real organ fill the real space .... Now you know why i love this headphone....

And remember, we feel the bass here with our feet by resonance transmitted from the maxillary to the legs and feet,"fooled" to feel the vibrations coming from the floor... The bass being so deep and clear reinforced this sensation....




For sure all recordings are not recorded this way in a church acoustic... Some old jazz favorite of mine recorded on the spot for example sound "between my ears" or coming from the right shells cups and the left one .... But the power of the K340 make them more interesting because even in the worst case acoustically, you feel something more 3-dimensional about the instruments relation or between the soloist and the other recorded one....

 

[richard51]

When in audio, any component benefit of a cult-like status after 30 years and more, among all contenders, that does not means that this component is the best... No....

But that means that it is in no case in the worst components crowd or in the bottom end....This is the reason why i finally bought the 2 Sansui which had a cult like status too....

But that means something especially in the case of headphone, because this market is particularly rich in innovations , sometimes many revolutionary one....

I will like to ask to a specialist in audio if headphones are not the audio component that was going through the more numerous metamorphosis, and the more impactful ever.... In AKG history and ascension , for example, we can read that AKG was a pioneer in microphones technology, then headphones evolution is on par with the speakers history deep innovations trends .... More than others components like amplification or dac technology, or turntables which are also themselves rich in history for sure ....

The reason i see is that what are the last components between us and sound, like headphones and speakers, matter the most, then they are the one which suffered or passed through the most numerous partials or completes revolutions in design periodically....

For example so deep was the digital revolution in dac tech, here, it is mainly psycho-acoustic which directly play most of the main role with electronic design , but in speakers and headphones particularly, not only psycho and neuro-acoustic and electronic design are important but physical acoustic too is at the center of focus ....

Anyway i am not an audio engineer at all and i only speculate with friends here.....And perhaps i love the k340 too much to be "objective".....

 

[Krassi]

I really love all those interesting long K340 insights you did in the short time!
It really is such a gem (i have them on my ears right now and luke vibert is slamming the crap with some dope acid tracks out of them, bass is deep as the Mariana Trench)

I also use some Eq lift up in the bass region and a modified autoeq setting but nothing fancy. But its really a bit night and day when turning it on.
a nice addition is a cheap 5 meter cable extension wich now makes them wearable far away from my nad amp. and also a new leather cushion for my sofa.. well sounds stupid but the k340 is like a plastic deathstar and can really be annoying on the sofa with the wrong seating position

well K340 is no cult for me it simply is love on the first sight.. i mean sound
i am glad that i bought so much strange hifi stuff out of pure curiosity and they convinced me totally. whatever stuff i try.. they sound the most pleasant. and with good amplification they blow crap away

interestingly when i press them more towards my head the sound gets more surrounding. i have some 2cm thick super cos< leather pads that might degenerate the sound a bit.. but the comfort really is the winner here in the trade off .

 

[richard51]

Thanks for your generous kindness toward me....

For the pad i already tried the leather pad and the bigger protein skin one.... The "vented holes " pads are really the best, all the other degrade the sound more.... At 10 bucks on aliexpress you must try them...I will never come back to leather or protein skin.... i was never satisfied with these two pads, the vented holes one keep the bass clean and deep and give the high air and equalizing them is more easy....

The vented holes are almost the same for confort .... It is ony a suggestion for the best.....

i have some 2cm thick super cos< leather pads that might degenerate the sound a bit.. but the comfort really is the winner here in the trade off .

 

[richard51]

A few more observations:

-----About the low volume level listening....

Especially if you have tone controls in the amplifier and not just an integrated relatively simple and basic equalization tool integrated in the dac , which are the 2 basic tools i used, you can increase large band bass and highs frequencies and not only precise frequencies , then you can give to the 2 cells of K340 plenty of bass and plenty of high frequencies without detoriorating the mids frequencies clarity or beauty.... You may then listen at low volume with an increased bass and highs quantities, witouth loosing any details in the mids frequencies and without damaging your hearing.... I say that because the perceived distortion levels are very low on this miraculous headphone then we are tempted to increase the volume to insane level ...

----- About the so call "neutrality"....

Yes the K340 are "neutral" if by neutral you means no emphasis on highs frequencies to support an illusory perception of "details" and no emphasis on bass to create a warm atmosphere.... The K340 has nothing to do with analytical headphone at all even if the k340 miss no details at all.... And even if his bass are subterraneans and clear, they are not bassy headphone at all.... The K340 are not lighter or darker, colder or warmer, they are not neutral either at the end even if they tend toward neutrality, they are natural sounding, not analytical but not the opposite, and they are too livingly moving to be neutral, they are unique and pertain to no usual scale classification between headphones....

Why? because all classification use some frequencies scaling to describe , dynamic, electroacoustic and planar which are all SINGLE membrane non hybrid headphones, and with no internal resonators either, they all are able to be compared on a common scale of qualities based on some qualitative description of frequencies linear distributions .... This is not possible with an hybrid headphone using 5 internal passive resonators.... The sound of the K340 is not neutral, it is a 3-dimensional sound which include, light and cold and warm and dark and neutral in a new combination, a combination impossible to put in words where polarities are used against each other in the marketting of audio 3 main single types of headphone ....And neutral is a too much 2-dimensional word to qualify them... I hope i was suggesting rightfully what they are here and it is not easy to describe....

----- About the soundfield

The soundfield of these headphone is unique....It is relative to the recording process pertaining to each different albums for sure.... No other headphones sound so much different from one album to an other in spatial terms...They are able to really create a soundfield completely "out of the head" if the recording make it possible, but even when they stay "around the head" mostly, in many recordings, they gives us some feeling "out of the head"....And in the case where old recording put us "inside our head" only they give us a minimal sensation of 3-d holography.... This is unique to this headphone...

---- About the voice timbre

They give a so natural voice timbre for a simple reason... The mid frequencies being alimented by 2 different cells, dynamic and electroacoustic, at the right crossover point ,4KHZ, where is the human voice "presence" they stay "neutral".... There is no mid frequencies emphasis at all relatively to bass and highs.....Many other pleasing headphone give marvellous voice timbre, the best i ever heard is my Stax SR-5 gold model .... Incredibly beautiful....More seductive in a way than the K340 because the feeling is more intimate and less spatial and less realist....

But when we listen much and compare the mids of the K340 they resemble much to reality than the Stax one .... I think that it is because there is no relative independence of the lows and highs which are all created by the unique electrostatic membrane of the Stax....In the K340 there is some independence of the mids which resemble more live reality than a recorded paradise, the mids are neutral, before being beautiful ....In the marvellous Stax SR- 5 gold, the mids are beautiful before being neutral and realistic....And when this voice is accompanied with an orchestra, with plenty of bass and plenty of high sounds, here the Stax is at lost to recreate reality of this voice singing in the same acoustic theater than the orchestra....The singing voice will be but forward by the Stax limitations at the expanse of the orchestra presence ....




Right now, i am immersed in my numerous fado albums....I am stunned by the realism and simple direct beauty without affectation of the K340....More than that the bass notes and high notes of the 2 portuguese types of guitars in Fado style are to die for....It is the first time i focus my attention to the guitar sounds and not only on the female voice in all fado albums....No other headphone i ever own was so powerful and clear in all the bass range and in the high range at the same time ...I say this because one of the beauty of the fado genre the tradional fado, is the sublime complementarity between the 2 types of guitar playing together , something much difficult to perceive with a less resolving headphone at all frequency scale or with an headphone like the Stax SR gold focusing mainly on the mid range and putting the guitars sound behind the female voice and not beside ....







Here i must ask to other AKG K340 owners to correct me if they feel i am wrong or not enough clear.... I am not a specialist in headphone nor an engineer... Just a dude in love....

 

[richard51]

One important remark:

There is no relation between this headphone sound out of the box, unmoded, and in the wrong synergetical link with am-plifier, dac and cables, and my own, modified and in a relatively good relation to other chosen components.... I was not enthusiastic so much when i receive them the first day , they were another headphones to modify among my others one, neither please me really to the point of forgetting about speakers/room acoustic experiments anyway even after improving modifications on all of them ...

All that changed with all modifications made, vibrations controls, the vented holes pads, the cutting of the plastic grid hurting ears and sound, and after equalization and tone controls with the right "clean" and powerful amplifier, for me the Sansui Alpha....And a dac, not a warm one like my last , with minimal equalization tool....

Now i will not go back ever, even if it was possible to speakers/ room acoustic.... Why? Because after listening a truly great headphone i am able to sense my speakers limitations, so good they were, in a room dedicated to them acoustically, but the cost to upgrade the speakers will be astonishingly high and hard to do for many reasons...And the complex job of tuning my room for the speakers and my ears takes me months of work with listening experiments non stop.... Tuning mechanically hundred of resonators of different types...

Then the advantage of the K340 is his cost: a bunch of peanuts that exceed in quality most affordable headphones and let behind most speakers under few thousand dollars or more, especially if these speakers are put in a non acoustically treated room like a living room....Most people buy speakers, put them in a non dedicated room, and have no idea about the power of acoustic, at most they buy ready made acoustic panels which are not enough at all to create a 3-d surrounding soundfield out of the speakers plane....

I enjoy that 3-d soundfield and details with one headphone and it is enough... I dont want to invest 10,000 and 100000 bucks like some in these times for speakers ... I could not ....

I am retired and i speak too much.....

My best to all .....

 

[Davidzak64]

One important remark:

There is no relation between this headphone sound out of the box, unmoded, and in the wrong synergetical link with am-plifier, dac and cables, and my own, modified and in a relatively good relation to other chosen components.... I was not enthusiastic so much when i receive them the first day , they were another headphones to modify among my others one, neither please me really to the point of forgetting about speakers/room acoustic experiments anyway even after improving modifications on all of them ...

All that changed with all modifications made, vibrations controls, the vented holes pads, the cutting of the plastic grid hurting ears and sound, and after equalization and tone controls with the right "clean" and powerful amplifier, for me the Sansui Alpha....And a dac, not a warm one like my last , with minimal equalization tool....

Now i will not go back ever, even if it was possible to speakers/ room acoustic.... Why? Because after listening a truly great headphone i am able to sense my speakers limitations, so good they were, in a room dedicated to them acoustically, but the cost to upgrade the speakers will be astonishingly high and hard to do for many reasons...And the complex job of tuning my room for the speakers and my ears takes me months of work with listening experiments non stop.... Tuning mechanically hundred of resonators of different types...

Then the advantage of the K340 is his cost: a bunch of peanuts that exceed in quality most affordable headphones and let behind most speakers under few thousand dollars or more, if these speakers are put in a non acoustically treated room like a living room....

I was not enthusiastic so much when i receive them the first day , they were another headphones to modify among my others one, neither please me really to the point of forgetting about speakers/room acoustic experiments.

That's too bad you received a defective K340 that had to be modified.
I loved my stock (green driver) 340 from the first time I heard it and wouldn't change a thing about it.

 

[richard51]

I bought a bass one....


It was never defective and i did not say that i hated it.... But i was not in love the first day....I was interested and guessed his potential....

It was not a defective one, if it was, i will never enjoy the sound i have now.....

The bass type must exist, some say that at the end there exist no differences between the K340.... I think reading all reviews that there are differences in tuning types...

Why?

Because of the effect of this bass tuning of my version....Without vibrations controls and with the wrong pads they sound like some described : a flowing of the bass into the mids....
It is less a defect of the headphone than the wrong choice of pads, and the uncontrolled vibrations , and the wrong components around it....

Probably the non bass version, the green one, is easier to live with without modifications...

But after the mods this headphone prove to me that it is the king of all headphones i ever listen to.... Then it would have been impossible to reach this S.Q. with a broken or damaged headphone for sure...

Also think about that: why so many reviews criticized this headphone?
I think beyond personal taste, that the reason is the bass tuned one especially, need the right amplifier and more than that need modifications.... For example put the wrong pads on the bass version, it become easily very wrong... The only pads that sound right with them for me is the vented holes pad version... Night and day difference....

That's too bad you received a defective K340 that had to be modified.
I loved my stock (green driver) 340 from the first time I heard it and wouldn't change a thing about it.

 

[richard51]

Some people say that some headphones are better for some musical type and some other headphone are better in another style of music ....It is not false.... We can understand that in our own experience....

But i listen to many musical genres and i think a well designed headphone must good for all genres.... For me the AKG K340 excel in all genre and anyway i am interested by listening ONE headphone, even if i have bought 8 others because none ever satisfied me , i dont touch them anymore now .... And i will not after the K340.....


It is a bit sad that this design will not be improve and thinking anew....Hybridation solve many problems in tone polarities , bass versus higher frequencies, and the 5 passive internal resonators are the secret helping the brain to compute a better spatialization of the sound from ears A and B cues in the K340 case....All audio company try to create his own original ground for sure, but none had look at the past success with the goal to reinvented it on a higher level.... I dream about a new K340..... So good it is now, we can imagine what it will be only with a better designed shell cup for example and with improved damping....

 

[richard51]

3 more observations:

---- About the equalization process...

The goal here is not to play with the parameters by chance or by caprices for each new musical album there is.....
The goal is learning how to listen to our headphones to optimize the relation between the two cells and the shell cups resonance of this headphone with our specific ears strenght and weakness and compensate for this wedding between an headphone and a pair of ears.... When this is done, i dont touch or play with the parameters anymore... Save sometimes decreasing bass levels with my tone controls if some recording has too much bass....Thats all....

The idea that we must plays with equalization for each albums or genre is a misplaced idea for me or a non sensical one for me and reflect our ignorance of the tuning process.... I dont want to modify the recordings but the relation between the headphone structure and my ears structure to improve the headphone working for me, when it is done, i dont touch it anymore.... Then to optimize by equalization we must learn how to listen to acoustical very well known acoustic non amplified instrumental timbre and human voices and use them as recognized sign posts toward an improved S.Q. and musical experience .... We must learn how to listen , and the equalizer is a tool in this process, not a toy....


----- About the "veil" attributed to the AKG K340 sometimes....

This is not false.... But this is not true either.... Before optimizing my K340, i was feeling an unconfortable "veil" between me and the sound.... But this perception was the results in my non optimized headphone of this 3-d spatialization of the sound ability or capacity with this headphone , capacity which was not delivered optimally at this moment and was perceived as a "veil", especially with some bad recordings.... This "veil" is the distance in space of the various 3-dimensional sound forms as recorded in their acoustic environment, in the original studio or theater; this so called "veil" is a spatialization artefact wrongly characterised so to be a "veil", by people used to 2 dimensional artificially "detailed" or analytical headphone, where all sounds used to stay static on a surface....This veil disapear and only localization of sound stay when the headphone is optimized....

Well optimized, we are able to feel with the K340 in an improved way the timbre of voices or instruments dancing in a 3 dimensional volume, scintillating like a flame, then pulsating toward us or distancing from ourself, anyway all flow of sounds in the K340 are never in "our face" and coming forward toward us only, they are "distant" in some way always,in true 3-d space, inside the head, around the head or outside the head, according to the recording quality.... This is part of the magic realism of this headphone... There is no veil, there is when the original recording process is clear and perfect only a relatively distant space with complete clarity and details of the sounds phenomenon .... But all recordings are not perfect and this headphone reveal it with his spatialization ability....... Each sound live in his own volume and when not optimized, each sound is less clearly perceived compared to some other headphone...But really there is no veil now but i can perceive more the level of quality of any recording in a better way ...


----About the incoherence in sound between bass and mids and highs apparent difference in speed resulting in the opinion of some people of a "bad" design of the K340...

This spatialization power of the K340 results from this hybridation and crossover chosen point... Concretely the same instrument, for example a violin, will slightly vary his position in space relatively to high note and bass notes....This is not a defect, save for people used to other type of headphone without this holographic power....This is part of the magic of this marvellous headphone... Then there is no more incoherence perceived when this headphone work optimally, but only a better and magical living localization, as if the musical sound was a dancing animal going forward or back or beside us.... When non optimized, this spatializing power can be perceived as an incoherence between bass and highs and in incoherence of speed... It is not....This is precisely the synesthesical association between light, high, higher frequencies and speed and respectively between low ,bass, and dark,and inertia which is a universal quality attribution which is reinforced by this hybrid headphone and make it able to deliver a holographically dynamic 3-d image of sound.... But if the AKG K340 is not well optimized, this could be perceived as incoherent in speed instead of being perceived as a position in 3-d space....

 

[richard51]

I want to remind all of you that these posts of mine are only "subjective opinions" not truth....Feel free to correct me or challenge what i say, doing so you will reveal the two sides of a coin.... And i like to discuss politely.... The climate is very good here indeed .... Thanks for your patience with an old fool in love.....

 

[richard51]

For sure all taste are in nature....

I just read a review of headphones by Steve Guttenberg, an audio writer who is very friendly by the way, and he said that the Hifiman He 400 is one of the best headphones he had measured....

I paid 400 bucks long time ago for these after raving reviews.... I try for years to love them.... After 4 or 5 years they break in two parts on my head because of their horrible design....

I give this headphone in exemple to say that they dont even hold a candle for me to the K340 , like the K701 of AKG too for me dont hold a candle to his older brother, because of their unnatural timbre sounding.... I pay the K701 100 dollars used and they are always with me, i used them no more like my other headphones....I will use some for my computers..... Not for music....

 

[richard51]

-----An observation about the revealing power of this headphone and the difference between other headphones revealing power:

When we speak about "the revealing power " of an headphone A in relation to an other headphone B , we generally means, speaking of A, his power to give details and more details than B ....

This is not the specific revealing power of the K340 relative to most other headphones .... The K340 dont lack details but it is not an headphone specialized like a microscope to "reveal" only and mainly details of sounds ...

"The revealing power" of the K340 is about his naturalness and realism, in instrumental timbre reproduction, and in their 3 dimensional specific interelated acoustic volumes of space... What i means is that the revealing power of the K340 is his ability to reveal to us the defects and/or qualities of the original acoustic recording conditions in the way the timbre and the localization is affected...

Then it is not about frequencies "details" per se on a 2-d surface of frequencies physionomy , as measuring tools reveal it to us analysing the frequency response of dynamic, electroacoustic or planar membrane, but about a 3-d volume of space for single instrument and for all instruments together, as our ears give it to us, through the chamber shells of the cups not only determined by 2 different membranes but also by 5 resonators then making us able to perceive in a greatly improved way something about the original recording acoustic conditions themselves... These original conditions are erased in a great part, some of the original acoustic information is hidden or not transmitted by the "colored" single membrane of most headphone in their passive empty shell, be it dynamic or electroacoustic membrane or planar one....



To conclude: No album sound the same with the K340, in a more powerful way than with most other headphones, because the K340 impose less his own colored atmosphere than it reveal the initial colored acoustic of the recording...

Is the K340 more neutral then ? No, not so much neutral than able to reveal by virtue of his hybridation well chosen crossover point and the 5 passive resonators the "acoustic" cues , this way more than a chosen set of "color" specific to each headphone by the singurality of a chosen SINGLE homogenuous membrane, be it dynamic, electroacoustic or planar.... Anyway, what most people call "details" are often the results also of an accuentuation of the higher frequencies in some range....It is more artifact than a real acoustic cue...

For me this headphone is not perfect, no for sure , but it is a magical one, absolutely ....And it is the only one which make me able to forgot my extraordinary speakers/room acoustic in his spatialization power ... And this headphone even revealed to me the limitations of my very good speakers in the 2 extreme set of frequencies, bass and highs.......





What headphone is perfect anyway ?

Name and price please!