[size=x-small]Hello Dinesh,
I shall answer your questions one by one. First of all, I will try to portray the sound of the K701. I shall draw your attention to the quirks of this headphone and also suggest means to use them optimally and hear them at their best. The K701 is a circum-aural, open-back headphone.
This means:
1.You need a quiet environment to enjoy them. Using them in a moderately noisy environment will kill the experience and also hurt your ears. (As you would probably step up the volume to drown out the ambient noise.) I listen at night and turn off the window air-conditioner and the ceiling fan and this helps me to pick the intricate detail that the K701 resolves.
2.The ear cups are large and the ear-lobe can rest in a variety of positions inside it. Believe me… the placement of this headphone on one’s head makes a subtle difference to the sound. I use a mirror to place it correctly by ensuring that:
a.My earlobes are fully inside the ear-cup and not resting against its periphery.
b.The headband is placed along the relatively flat part of my head. (not too back or too forward, nearer to my forehead)
c.The headphone uses spring loaded ear-cups that can move vertically. I never pull them excessively downwards. I align it in a way so that the lower-most tip of my earlobe just touches the inner periphery of the ear-cup.
d.Once the positioning is right, I apply very mild lateral pressure to bring the drivers a wee bit closer to my ears. All right! Now to the sound.
The good:
The AKG K701 has won several rave reviews:
Link to the What Hi-fi review:
AKG K701 review – whathifi.com
Link to the Stereophile review:
Stereophile: AKG Acoustics K 701 headphones
Let me begin by saying that the AKG K701 has one outstanding quality- it portrays the start and stop of every note with staggering precision. As soon as the music stops, so does the AKG… no skid-marks folks. What does this mean? Let me exemplify. As you might be aware of, a grand piano has a damping pedal that controls how long a note shimmers before it fades away into silence. The beauty of piano music lies in the ability of the pianist to make a note ‘hang’ around while other notes are being played. Or it could be the other way round… where a note stops as soon as the key is released. The AKG preserves this sonic trait and presents a gorgeous piano, a piano that sounds wholly different from the one that is often heard on so many other speakers and headphones. I even heard an EPOS stand-mount, driven by a high end integrated amplifier. Even this setup failed to unravel all the elements of fine piano music.
Now to the midrange; simply gorgeous, but not without flaws! I will dig out the skeletons later, roses first! Put in a simple way, the K701 revels by resolving an extraordinary amount of musical detail across the frequency spectrum, especially in the midrange. The internals of a multi-layered, philharmonic orchestra are preserved intact. The separation of various instruments is good and the soundstage is huge, given typical headphone standards. The stereo image is immaculate. However, good speakers hold all the aces, when it comes to sound-staging. High end loudspeakers, if placed correctly, vanish instantly, leaving behind a glorious soundstage that reveals the exact location of each instrument. The K701 soundstage has impressive scale; however, locating the coordinates of various instruments in the mix isn’t as easy as it typically is with good speakers.
Treble reach again, is good, but not to the standards of high-end stand-mounts. My Wharfedale Diamond 9.1, which shares the same tweeter with some of the higher-end Wharfedale designs, has better treble extension. This is mostly noticeable with violins, which loose a smidgeon of ‘bite’ and ‘air’ on the K701… more on violins later! Still, the treble of the AKG is better than that of most headphones. My SHURE E4C delivers very little in the way of true, un-attenuated, treble and fortunately, the K701 is leagues ahead of it.
Cymbals shine on the K701 and go ‘BAAAAASHHHHHHHHHH’ and not ‘PSHH’!
Bass is good enough for classical. The bass reach is superior to that of the Wharfedale and I am happy with it. It is also better than the E4C in this regard; drum-rolls sound deep, fast, articulate and rigorously defined. However, lots of HEAD-FI-ERS complain that the bass of the AKG is too meek for hard rock and music full of synthesized bass lines. I do not listen to that genre and I am not the best person to offer my comments on this.
Now, the bad:
Good as the K701 is, some people grumble that it sounds overly analytical, instead of musical. I can see why. The sound is akin to that of a studio monitor, mostly accurate, albeit dry. It lacks a wee bit of warmth… let’s say that it does not add warmth like most speakers do in typical rooms. I am perfectly happy with this trait and it does not sound a-musical to my ears. Tip: Use the ‘high gain’ option on a beefy solid state amp, or get a powerful tube amp. (Suggested by HEAD-FI-ERS, I use ‘HIGH GAIN’ on my HEADROOM MICRO ULTRA)
In my opinion, the major fault of the AKG is the manner in which it renders violins. The sense of ‘wood’ and ‘body’ in such a fine, wooden, bowed instrument is somewhat missing here, especially at low volumes. Violins sound a bit more ‘romantic’ on the Wharfedale. However, the AKG does offer better resolution and transparency and you will still like what you hear, even though it is far from ideal. Tip: Listen at a slightly louder volume than usual and a hint of ‘wood’ and ‘body’ will return. However, in a piano-violin arrangement, the piano will seem to dominate the violin, so you will have to be careful with the volume knob.
Other than that, there isn’t much to nit-pick.
There is also a hint of the hollow ‘tube-to-your-ear’ effect as noted here:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/akg...6/index34.html
However, place it correctly on your head and this issue will not bother you.
I guess that the issue stems from the fact that the K701 resolves too much spatial information and reverberation in some recordings.
Now, specific answers to your queries:
1.Indian classical: LOL… Indian classical is not as complex as western… most often a couple of instruments will play in unison… at most three or four. The AKG is good enough for that stuff!
2.Western Music… I have discussed this at length.
3.My next upgrade would be the SENNHEISER HD800, if only I could afford one! But don’t JUMP for it, let more people buy and evaluate it!
4.SHURE E4C, SENNHEISER PX100.
I hope that I answered all your questions.
Regards,
Bhanja.
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