[Kevin Brown]

You get old, and your tastes change.
 
Mine do anyway.
 

 
I had K701's a few years ago.  Didn't like them much at all.  Just not enough low end.  (Yes, I had enough power to drive them properly.)
 
Sold them.  Got the Q701's.  Burned them in for about 20 hrs of 30% louder music than I usually listen to.  Yeah, if it's really 200 - 300 hrs of burn in that's necessary, count me out.  I don't have the patience for that.  But I did feel the 20 hrs helped compared to right out of the box.
 
1) I have been away from this question for a bit, but I remember the K701's being identical to the K702's except for the detachable cable?
 
2) IMO, I did think the Q701's had more low end than the K701's I had.  (So I did like them more than the K701's.)  Is there any forum consensus on this now?  Seeing as how my tastes have possibly evolved

, I always kept the Q701's in mind as a pair maybe I should give another shot.  But if they really are identical to the K701's, then maybe not.  Unit to unit variation?  I was the 3rd owner of the K701's, so I assumed they were burned in, but still, I just could not be happy with that headphone.  Or maybe the Q701's really do have more low end than the K701's?
 
Thanks !!
 
 

 

[Eric_C]

Quote:

2) IMO, I did think the Q701's had more low end than the K701's I had.  (So I did like them more than the K701's.)  Is there any forum consensus on this now?  Seeing as how my tastes have possibly evolved

, I always kept the Q701's in mind as a pair maybe I should give another shot.  But if they really are identical to the K701's, then maybe not.  Unit to unit variation?  I was the 3rd owner of the K701's, so I assumed they were burned in, but still, I just could not be happy with that headphone.  Or maybe the Q701's really do have more low end than the K701's?

Growing opinion on that conclusion, afaik. See MLE's gaming thread? He and Chicolom are in agreement that the Q is bassier than the K's.

 

[KG Jag]

More to the point (I think)--do you like the Q 701?  What's your mini review of them?

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

Growing opinion on that conclusion, afaik. See MLE's gaming thread? He and Chicolom are in agreement that the Q is bassier than the K's.

Are you sure the Q's are truly bassier than the K?  I haven't tried the Q's but despite AKG's reputation as being bass-light, I find the K702 to have very impressive sub-bass, much more sub-bass presence than the rolled-off bass on HD650.  What seems to give them the appearance at first glance of being bass light is either a slight dip or a deadpan neutral mid-bass response where the more bassier presentations tend to have a hump right at the top of the bass into the mid-bass.  Even with the exact same sub-bass quantity that gives the impression of "more bass" (orthos and closed back exempted, that's a whole different thing.)
 
I'm wondering if, along with the rumors of Q being "warmer", I wonder if they added a slight mid-bass hump to make up for that perception.  That would both warm them up versus the neutral/analytical K's and provide the sense of greater bass.
 
By the way, it's nice to run into one of the coffee klatch over here.   I haven't been at CG in a little while (under a different name of course

)

 

[tdockweiler]

My Q701 definitely has more bass than the old K702. Not by a huge amount though. My older K702 was kind of cold and analytical, with just a slight touch of warmth. Warmer than the DT-880 for sure.
The Q701 is less thin and analytical and much more musical (for me) and a little warmer. The mids are MUCH fuller sounding out of ANY desktop amp.
 
I'm hearing much better sub-bass and you can even hear those low bass rumbling sounds in movies and games. My Q701 even has better sub-bass than the HD-600! I would say it's warm, but not as warm as the K601 or HD-600. It's not even as warm as the HD-598 I think.
 
Another big difference for me was the treble is a little smoother, but the soundstage does seem very slightly smaller. I think it definitely seems much more accurate, especially with gaming.
 
BTW I still think the K601 has better and more bass. Just doesn't have the detail and sound clarity of the Q701. K601 also has much more mid-bass than the Q701 too I think.
 
 

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

My Q701 definitely has more bass than the old K702. Not by a huge amount though. My older K702 was kind of cold and analytical, with just a slight touch of warmth. Warmer than the DT-880 for sure.
The Q701 is less thin and analytical and much more musical (for me) and a little warmer. The mids are MUCH fuller sounding out of ANY desktop amp.
 
I'm hearing much better sub-bass and you can even hear those low bass rumbling sounds in movies and games. My Q701 even has better sub-bass than the HD-600! I would say it's warm, but not as warm as the K601 or HD-600. It's not even as warm as the HD-598 I think.
 
Another big difference for me was the treble is a little smoother, but the soundstage does seem very slightly smaller. I think it definitely seems much more accurate, especially with gaming.
 
BTW I still think the K601 has better and more bass. Just doesn't have the detail and sound clarity of the Q701. K601 also has much more mid-bass than the Q701 too I think.
 
 

Interesting.  Now, it's only fair to keep in mind that my K702's are new, so if they made any universal changes to all the drivers, mine may compare more to Q than to older K702s.  Although they did note tuning changes for Q in marketing materials. 
 
Still, I'd be really surprised if there was more sub-bass than the K702's.  I think they get a bad rep based on the psychoacoustics of the thin mid-bass.  If you were to play a fequency sweep from 10Hz to, say 70Hz, and ABX between K and Q, I wonder if the impressions of sub-bass would turn out to be the same.  Freq graphcs of the curves show 702 to have a pretty linear bass as well.
 
I don't doubt they did some tweaking to mid-bass, or rolled the treble off a little to make it more pleasing and less analytical (I happen to like my analytical 702's though!).  Maybe a hump somewhere in the mids, though I'd guess it's subtle.  But K702 has a lot more sub-bass presence and extension than people give it credit for.  It often takes me by surprise.  It's the mid-bass that's thin.  And a thin mid-bass tends to lead to a perception of thin bass overall, so if they bumped mid-bass, it may "connect the dots" as a mental queue for the sub-bass and make it more obvious.
 
I'm not saying they didn't tweak the tuning, I'm just saying that my theory is the part of the tuning that was tweaked may not be the one it may seem like but a psychoacoustic affect tweaking a different part of the response may have.

 

[Kevin Brown]

Quote:

My Q701 definitely has more bass than the old K702. Not by a huge amount though. My older K702 was kind of cold and analytical, with just a slight touch of warmth. Warmer than the DT-880 for sure.
The Q701 is less thin and analytical and much more musical (for me) and a little warmer. The mids are MUCH fuller sounding out of ANY desktop amp.
 
I'm hearing much better sub-bass and you can even hear those low bass rumbling sounds in movies and games. My Q701 even has better sub-bass than the HD-600! I would say it's warm, but not as warm as the K601 or HD-600. It's not even as warm as the HD-598 I think.
 
Another big difference for me was the treble is a little smoother, but the soundstage does seem very slightly smaller. I think it definitely seems much more accurate, especially with gaming.
 
BTW I still think the K601 has better and more bass. Just doesn't have the detail and sound clarity of the Q701. K601 also has much more mid-bass than the Q701 too I think.
 
 

Ahhh, this is great !!  I also thought the K601's had more low end than the K701's (and I further think the K501's had more bass than the K601's).
 
I can't remember if I directly compared the Q701's to the K501's when I had the former though.  At that point, I kept the K501's and sold off the others.
 
But usually when I keep something in my brain like the Q701's, there is a reason why.  But I don't remember the K601's have more midbass than the Q701's though.  I do remember the Q701's having incredible mids.
 
OK, I might have to give the Q701's another try then.
 
And then:
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/akg-quincy-jones-q701-sound-and-measurements
 
I think it's interesting that the author still says they are identical with those measurements.  To me, there is more low end to the Q701's, and they do go a hair deeper than the K701's.  Look at the vertical differences between the two headphones at 600 Hz vs 20 Hz.  The Q701's have relatively more output at 20 Hz vs 600 Hz, for example.