[SecretKashi]

What are some good songs to listen to that shows how good the sound stage is with these headphones?

 

[Blackmore]

Its not about soundstage only, its more complex, simply the way they are handling the tracks where space and depth making a huge part of the whole, so, if you dont mind, try these:

Arild Anderson album "Hyperborean" track no.2

Buddha-Bar IX 2CD's by Ravin, track no. 1 Sospiro by Bardo State

Buddha-Bar IX 2CD's by Ravin, track no. 8 from CD1 "Heart Beat Of Life" by Existence.

Let us know

What are some good songs to listen to that shows how good the sound stage is with these headphones?

 

[Primetime86]

Problem with the 702 is the soundstage is not very large. It's wider than it is deep so it's like a sheet of paper. They are so detailed though but dull for music. Still for there purpose they are great.

 

[Acix]

Problem with the 702 is the soundstage is not very large. It's wider than it is deep so it's like a sheet of paper. They are so detailed though but dull for music. Still for there purpose they are great.

 
In my experience some amps can cause this problem, but most of the amps keep K702 sound stage depth equal to  his own sound sphere.

 

[cehowardNote3]

  It seems the AKG K 701 and K 702 along with the AKG Quincy Jones K 701 are giant killers that compete with the likes of the Sennheiser HD-800. I just saved several hundreds of dollars. Yipee!

Fast forward about 12 months.  

 
Which is the better of the 3??
 
Q701
K701
K702
 
???

 

[lawrecedent]

Just got a pair of these faulty from eBay working in only one ear. Figured its likely to just be the cable that meeds replacing. Can't wait to hear them after rwading this thread and a few reviews.

 

[andydb1]

Well.. my first pair of full size headphones. Have bought both K702 and Sennheiser Momentum recently. Trying to find headphones that are better than my in ear Klipsch X10....K702 achieve this and I am just running portable sony cd player via FII06.
 
I think they sound really good. Probably can get much better but so far so good! Might get full desktop amp to power soon.
 
X10 extremely good by they way - recommend them.
 
Momentum - returned - can not get close to X10 or K702. Disappointed with these especially after reading reviews.

 

[lawrecedent]

Momentum - returned - can not get close to X10 or K702. Disappointed with these especially after reading reviews.
[/quote]
There's a whole load of fake momentums doing the rounds at the moment. Is there a chance they weren't genuine? Saying that though, I did demo a pair briefly and was bit exactly blown away.

 

[andydb1]

I doubt it (and hope not) as they were from Amazon Germany (not reseller). I don't think they were bad but the treble clarity and mid range from x10 and k702 are exceptional (to me) so I couldn't get used to them (also returned M50x). My uneducated view is that good headphones show themselves in midrange like vocals. Just a subjective view as these all are....
 
Now looking to choose an amp for k702. Does not seem an easy task!

 

[Cream]

Just received a pair of 702's.
 
[size=12.8000001907349px]Very comfortable.[/size]
No sign of the AKG bumps on the headband that I had been reading about...
 
 
Love the single detachable cable, the left can on my Grado's had just died - twisty horrible mess that they were - hence this purchase.
 
Sound:
 
Tame Impala, innerspeaker:
 
Some serious panning on this album, phasers flying left and right etc
I feel like I'm riding on the back of a unicorn, being drenched in pearl hued jelly beans. 

 
[size=12.8000001907349px]Analogue synths are particularly prominent, not intrusive, just [/size]beautifully[size=12.8000001907349px] present and correct.[/size]
 
All of that with no 'burn in' and listening straight out of my laptop's headphone jack, no amp, no DAC... 
 
...had heard that I would need an amp to power them. In fact I've LOWERED the volume I usually listen at, and I normally love huge volume.
Grew up with my head stuck to the side of the family stereo at full blast. 
 
Everything I had heard my Grado s60i's would be, coming from crappy earbuds, is true/r of these headphones:
wider sound stage, much greater detail, ability to enjoy music at lower volumes (that never really happened with the Grado's).
 
Bowie, Hunky Dory:
 
Something I had noticed earlier is more pronounced here, a sort of gap in the middle and a low end that's somehow lacking.
A less cohesive listening experience.
 
Still very, very good but the sparser instrumentation/production is seemingly not as suited to these headphones - for rock music at least.
 
Maybe I need to mess with the eq settings (my usual smiley face setting had been getting gradually flatter during Innerspeaker...)
 
Next step is some classical music and an afternoon of perusing the internet for a dac/amp and we'll see where we go from there.
 
Early impressions: Wow. 

 

[amigomatt]

I have just received a pair of used K702 from ebay and am giving them a preliminary listen over my morning coffee before work.  I was really excited to get these having recently raved over the vast open soundstage and treble of my recently purchased Sony MA900s and bought these on the recommendation that they do just about everything the MA900s do but better.  I am also searching for neutrality and realism and was prepared to sacrifice bass response to get this.  I produce music too, so after much reading, I was expecting these to work as a tool in the studio and maybe be a bit clinical for enjoyable listening.  However, my first impressions are not very good.  I understand these may take some getting used to and I shall persevere but they sound very wrong to me at the moment.
 
I should mention that I am playing them from my PC through an HRT Microstreamer.  This may not have the juice required to get the best out of them but I'm sure to be still getting a reasonable taste of what I can expect out of these headphones.  First off, the soundstage, although wide, sounds artificial on everything.  It's 'almost' like they are wired out of phase, like that hollow, strange effect you get when speakers are wired out of phase.  The bass does go deep but is was too recessed to call neutral.  Gosh, my K240 DF have more bass than these!  The treble, despite reveaing detail, does so in a way that is skewed in a number of ways to my ears.  The upper end details of instruments in this range are more present than the 'body' of sound.  For instance, the 'tizz' of brass instruments is more present than their 'core' of sound, lending them an unnaturally thin and strident tone, nothing like the warm and round sound you would hear in real life.  I know this because I'm a professional trumpet player and have played for nearly 30 years - I know what orchestral instruments should sound like.  I It's like someone has thrown the 'treble' control right up and the 'bass' control right down to show you all the 'flaws' in the recording at the expense of presenting the music in a natural way.
 
I'm now listening to Ray LaMontagne and the sound picture is a bit more balanced now.  Still, the string 'plucking' sound is taking pride of place over the warmth of the guitar's body of tone.  His voice has come in now and the airy roughness of his timbre is almost unlistenable to me.  Sorry to be so down of these cans, I am trying to find something positive to say.  I've just had to turn the volume down due to ear fatigue within a minute of this song.  Some may say I'm just not used to this sound signature or that I'm used to darker cans (which I most certainly am), but I must say that these are far from being 'reference' to my ears.  They don't do a great job in showing what a record sounds like.  They shine a great, lit up microscope onto the top end.
 
Please bear in mind thhat these are my very first impressions of these headphones, coming from cans of which some have very different sound signatures.  So, I'm not just beating down on these in an unthinking way.  I also know that I have had this initial aversion to headphones before and they have grown on me over time, so I will most definitely persevere with these cans and give them due listening in all sorts of scenarios.  I shall also remix a couple of my old tracks with them and really give myself a chance to understand them.  I may very well find a 'place' for them in my collection.
 
I also need to try them with my Bravo Audio Ocean tube amp as I don't feel they are being given enough juice at the moment.
 
These don't have their reputation for nothing and I must be missing something presently.  On a more positive note, I love how they look and feel on my head and I'm realising to, as I type, that these sound 'much' better at lower volumes.  I look forward to reporting back, hopefully with better impressions!

 

[Liu Junyuan]

I have just received a pair of used K702 from ebay and am giving them a preliminary listen over my morning coffee before work.  I was really excited to get these having recently raved over the vast open soundstage and treble of my recently purchased Sony MA900s and bought these on the recommendation that they do just about everything the MA900s do but better.  I am also searching for neutrality and realism and was prepared to sacrifice bass response to get this.  I produce music too, so after much reading, I was expecting these to work as a tool in the studio and maybe be a bit clinical for enjoyable listening.  However, my first impressions are not very good.  I understand these may take some getting used to and I shall persevere but they sound very wrong to me at the moment.

I should mention that I am playing them from my PC through an HRT Microstreamer.  This may not have the juice required to get the best out of them but I'm sure to be still getting a reasonable taste of what I can expect out of these headphones.  First off, the soundstage, although wide, sounds artificial on everything.  It's 'almost' like they are wired out of phase, like that hollow, strange effect you get when speakers are wired out of phase.  The bass does go deep but is was too recessed to call neutral.  Gosh, my K240 DF have more bass than these!  The treble, despite reveaing detail, does so in a way that is skewed in a number of ways to my ears.  The upper end details of instruments in this range are more present than the 'body' of sound.  For instance, the 'tizz' of brass instruments is more present than their 'core' of sound, lending them an unnaturally thin and strident tone, nothing like the warm and round sound you would hear in real life.  I know this because I'm a professional trumpet player and have played for nearly 30 years - I know what orchestral instruments should sound like.  I It's like someone has thrown the 'treble' control right up and the 'bass' control right down to show you all the 'flaws' in the recording at the expense of presenting the music in a natural way.

I'm now listening to Ray LaMontagne and the sound picture is a bit more balanced now.  Still, the string 'plucking' sound is taking pride of place over the warmth of the guitar's body of tone.  His voice has come in now and the airy roughness of his timbre is almost unlistenable to me.  Sorry to be so down of these cans, I am trying to find something positive to say.  I've just had to turn the volume down due to ear fatigue within a minute of this song.  Some may say I'm just not used to this sound signature or that I'm used to darker cans (which I most certainly am), but I must say that these are far from being 'reference' to my ears.  They don't do a great job in showing what a record sounds like.  They shine a great, lit up microscope onto the top end.

Please bear in mind thhat these are my very first impressions of these headphones, coming from cans of which some have very different sound signatures.  So, I'm not just beating down on these in an unthinking way.  I also know that I have had this initial aversion to headphones before and they have grown on me over time, so I will most definitely persevere with these cans and give them due listening in all sorts of scenarios.  I shall also remix a couple of my old tracks with them and really give myself a chance to understand them.  I may very well find a 'place' for them in my collection.

I also need to try them with my Bravo Audio Ocean tube amp as I don't feel they are being given enough juice at the moment.

These don't have their reputation for nothing and I must be missing something presently.  On a more positive note, I love how they look and feel on my head and I'm realising to, as I type, that these sound 'much' better at lower volumes.  I look forward to reporting back, hopefully with better impressions!

I am writing from a puny iphone so Ill keep this preliminary response brief:

1) I enjoyed reading your write-up. You seem to be a strong writer and possess an impressive knowledge of instrument presentation and the timbre of your headphones.

2) I think there is a real distinction between natural and neutral-sounding headphones. AKGs are neither. They are analytic insofar as they excel at separating instruments from the whole. A natural headphone, on the other hand, may equally defy a perfectly flat frequency response but would excel at rendering music more realistically. A neutral headphone would ideally have a flat FR but could come off as artificial and sterile.

Many headfiers here believe the Sennheiser HD- 600 is the king of natural reproduction. Given what you've written above, you may find these more to your liking. Some have said the Beyerdynamic DT-880 is more neutral apart from its treble peak and slight attenuation of the mids.

3) Yes, you really do need an amp to appreciate what the AKGs do well. They scale up with gear well.

4) As you recognized, you really cannot judge a headphone based on only initial impressions. That goes without saying. I hated my Sennheiser HD 650 at first. I actually thought something was wrong with them, trying to reconcile the rave reviews they received with their seemingly dull sound. Fast-forward five years later, and I can affirm I really appreciate their sound signature and would never consider selling them. And headphones that initially wowed me no longer have a place in my rotation.

Best wishes to you,

 

[cdma2k]

2) I think there is a real distinction between natural and neutral-sounding headphones. AKGs are neither. They are analytic insofar as they excel at separating instruments from the whole. A natural headphone, on the other hand, may equally defy a perfectly flat frequency response but would excel at rendering music more realistically. A neutral headphone would ideally have a flat FR but could come off as artificial and sterile.


3) Yes, you really do need an amp to appreciate what the AKGs do well. They scale up with gear well.
 

can not agree on "A neutral headphone would ideally have a flat FR but could come off as artificial and sterile"
Yes one needs a decent dac + amp o appreciate what the AKGs could do

 

[Liu Junyuan]

  can not agree on "A neutral headphone would ideally have a flat FR but could come off as artificial and sterile"
Yes one needs a decent dac + amp o appreciate what the AKGs could do

Okay. Fair enough. Why can't you agree? I don't want you to agree if you don't agree: don't misunderstand me. But a reason for your premise that you don't agree would give us some material to talk about. Hehe.
 
So I'll provide some reasons to back up my point, and you are very welcome to do the same on your side. This is an intelligent discussion, so no need to feel uncomfortable with the fact that people actually do not always share opinions: if you listen to an instrument being played in front of your face, it will not always register as neutral on a graph that records frequency response; the same is true, actually, for an instrument not played in front of your face, perhaps several rows back or maybe a few metres away. 
 
Quite arguably, the HD-600 excels in fact at being natural, true to life, actual and realistic, to the ways in which instruments render themselves in front of an audience.
 
The HD-880 DT, on the other hand, emphasizes streamlining instruments into neutrality, according to some, yet nevertheless gives the edge to detail retrieval by accentuating the highs slightly and by attenuating the mids, also slightly. 
 
I believe that both headphones are amazing. I really want to try the 880s over the 600s because I already have the 650s.
 
The AKGs work on a different level than this, a level that is indispensable to professionals and indeed to me. I love AKG and what their headphones do. If you don't, that's completely fine. Really. 
 
Hopefully I have convinced you that neutrality is distinct from natural, but I would love to discuss this more if you do disagree with me. Hehe. 

 

[cdma2k]

  Okay. Fair enough. Why can't you agree? I don't want you to agree if you don't agree: don't misunderstand me. But a reason for your premise that you don't agree would give us some material to talk about. Hehe.
 
So I'll provide some reasons to back up my point, and you are very welcome to do the same on your side. This is an intelligent discussion, so no need to feel uncomfortable with the fact that people actually do not always share opinions: if you listen to an instrument being played in front of your face, it will not always register as neutral on a graph that records frequency response; the same is true, actually, for an instrument not played in front of your face, perhaps several rows back or maybe a few metres away. 
 
Quite arguably, the HD-600 excels in fact at being natural, true to life, actual and realistic, to the ways in which instruments render themselves in front of an audience.
 
The HD-880 DT, on the other hand, emphasizes streamlining instruments into neutrality, according to some, yet nevertheless gives the edge to detail retrieval by accentuating the highs slightly and by attenuating the mids, also slightly. 
 
I believe that both headphones are amazing. I really want to try the 880s over the 600s because I already have the 650s.
 
The AKGs work on a different level than this, a level that is indispensable to professionals and indeed to me. I love AKG and what their headphones do. If you don't, that's completely fine. Really. 
 
Hopefully I have convinced you that neutrality is distinct from natural, but I would love to discuss this more if you do disagree with me. Hehe. 

Thanks for the explanation of neutral and natrual. According to your interpretation, I tend to rephrase your statement as "A neutral headphone could come off as artificial and sterile". and "A natural headphone would ideally have a flat FR". not sure if you agree or not?
Regarding "AKGs are neither", it might be true for Q701 and K712, but K612 is pretty nature IMO, true to life, actual and realistic, according to your interpretation.