I should finally have the Magnums on Monday or Tuesday.
I've been able to spend some decent time with these ALO K702's. I've also been doing some burn-in with benefits already quite apparent. My comments will be pretty general rather than too detailed since I'm beginning to appreciate how personal these listening experiences are.
I find the K702's to be comfortable since they're light and do not clamp with excessive force. I'm not at all bald and this may be of some benefit in protecting my scalp from those bumps in the head band.
I find the headband adjustment mechanism to be overly complicated and with those plastic strips and bits of cord to help with the headband adjustment, I see potential breakage on the horizon. Be that as it may, I've noted that AKG has been using this mechanism with a lot of its production cans, so it's either that it's a reliable mechanism despite its apparent frailty, or AKG wants to maintain its business by encouraging the purchasing of new phones when the previous ones break. I'd like to think it's the former.
My ears are completely engulfed by the large cups. I'm pretty sure that this adds to the general airiness of the listening experience. They aren't that great for listening while lying in bed since, when using a pillow, the bulkiness of the cups get in the way. However, they're just fine on my high-backed chair with my legs up.
The music that I listen to varies in recording quality. I listened to mp3's that I haven't yet gotten around to re-ripping to lossless, lossless ripped red book cds, and my growing collection of 96|88Khz/24bit music in apple lossless format (all obtained via HDTracks.com). With my UltraDesktop amp and optical output from my iMac, I can listen to these latter recordings in their full glory.
I write my listening impressions while reflecting on my experience while listening to Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, Metallica, Black Eyed Peas, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Massive Attack, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Paradise Lost. I also listened to classical, jazz and some world music in high definition recorded formats.
The ALO K702's offer a generally easy listening experience. Except for a spike in the upper mids to highs, the sound sort of comes to you, rather than it being in your face and your having to adjust by turning down the volume, doing some eq'ing, avoiding some recordings, or just plain acclimatizing. When the music comes to you, it makes for a non-fatiguing listening experience that I really, really appreciate. There's a clarity to the K702 sound that comes from more than just it's airy sound. There's a transparency to the sound and with that comes added spaciousness to the sound presentation. These two traits combine to make it quite easy to hear details. They aren't really more detailed than other phones I've heard, for example, the Ed8's, HD650's, D5000's. It's just that there's less that gets in the way of the details so they are easily heard. The balance is very much to my liking since I haven't felt the need to EQ the sound in any way.
The ALO K702's really shine with high definition recordings. Real first class sound reproduction across the spectrum. A time comes when you just know in within your listening heart and mind, that things are just grand. You're now having a whale of a time.
With these high defn jazz and world music recordings, the bass is very well presented in depth and resolution. I effortlessly hear the details and extention. Voice reproduction can be just stunning at times, but NEVER disappointing. The best I've heard really.
With contemporary recordings, my experience has been up and down. The spike in the upper mids to highs is nicely demonstrated with Metallica's album '.And Justice for All'. The rhythm guitar manages to be synergistic with the AKG's frequency spike. This makes the guitaring in 'One', quite strident to listen to. The bass response varies quite markedly across recordings. It's nice with some, and surprisingly flat with others. While some may give the benefit of the doubt to the K702's by ascribing this to the recording's bass reproduction, I'd personally be cautious. I think that there may be a roll-off in bass response within a narrow margin of the frequency response. As a result, recordings with bass that uses that frequency range a lot will sound a tad anaemic. Please note that though this is noted, it isn't a crippling experience at all. It's just that if you have another pair of cans that does better, then you'll find yourself reaching for them.
While I could use these ALO K702's as an all-rounder, I do prefer my Ed8's for most of the contemporary stuff that I listen to. However, for world, jazz and classical, the ALO K702's either equal of exceed the Ed8's. Yes, IMO, the Ed8's actually do very well with classical and jazz. However, the K702's will likely be my default for those genres.
The ALO K702's are great value for money. I'm
very happy I purchased them. Though the ALO cable leads a more effortless and articulate bass extension with a fuller sound overall, this is not by a very big margin and I'd still go for these cans without the cable upgrade. OTOH, for maximum benefit, I'd recommend the recable.... not to mention good amp'ing.