[PelPix]

Hey guys, I just corrected the irregularities in the k701's psychoacoustic frequency response.  It sounds really great.  I only have a general model right now, but if I can find some royalty-free music, I can give you example files.

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

Public domain recordings from the 1920s:
 
http://www.pdmusic.org/1900s.html
 
Have at it.
 
(Some classical at the main site, http://www.pdmusic.org/, if you'd prefer!)

 

[music_man]

well that is good news. because these are pretty much now the studio standard and i want green ones! the good think is they have the detachable cable to boot. not that we change cables for that purpose we just kill 'em

 

[bbophead]

Quote:

well that is good news. because these are pretty much now the studio standard and i want green ones! the good think is they have the detachable cable to boot. not that we change cables for that purpose we just kill 'em

AND, you get a 20' extra (green) cable to boot.
 
 

 

[PelPix]

http://soundcloud.com/kylebloss/sets/akg-k701-2-psychoacoustic
 
I believe both Beethoven and this recording are royalty-free.  If not, I'll take it on down.
Select the files below the waveform display.  The first is the source, the second is the correction based on my model.
You can download them both using the down arrows to the right of the file names.
 
The goal is to make the k702 completely flat.

 

[reginalb]

The Q's don't seem to come with a stand. At first I thought that maybe I had counterfeits (my first pair of "decent" cans were HDJ-1000s which are counterfeited like crazy). But they were shipped and sold by Amazon, they were just $250 at one point, but I got them right from Amazon at $280. I really would like one of those stands from the K701s.
 
Anyway, I thought this would be a good first thread to post in. My AKG Q701s have been burning in on my desktop (with a pink noise program I downloaded). But tonight I took them off for a while, and listened to some Renee Olstead, an FLAC rip of Skylark loaded on to my HiFiMAN 601. Wow. I mean...just blown away. I had heard about things like soundstage on here (I have been lurking for a while) but I had never actually experienced it. The sound was absolutely beautiful. I just went from a ZuneHD with HDJ-1000s (or Thinksound Thunders for traveling), to Q701s with a HiFiMAN MP3 player. A slight bump in quality for my jazz music.  
 
I think my next pair of headphones will be Pioneer HDJ-2000s, from what I have read, I think they will complement my AKGs very nicely. I can listen to my jazz, and some of my rock with the AKGs, and the pop and other bassy types of music with those. I will be pretty happy.
 
I know some people aren't huge fans of these headphones, but MAN, with a good recording, they just sound so beautiful.
 
 

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

Quote:

http://soundcloud.com/kylebloss/sets/akg-k701-2-psychoacoustic
 
I believe both Beethoven and this recording are royalty-free.  If not, I'll take it on down.
Select the files below the waveform display.  The first is the source, the second is the correction based on my model.
You can download them both using the down arrows to the right of the file names.
 
The goal is to make the k702 completely flat.

You have my attention, what'd you do there? I've taken some pretty aggressive parametric EQ and mild multi-band clipping to peaky frequencies but this... is... impressive. Care to share?

 

[xjaynine]

Quote:

http://soundcloud.com/kylebloss/sets/akg-k701-2-psychoacoustic
 

What recording of the 9th Symphony is that? The psycho acoustic changes are subtle, but I feel that it makes the sound stage wider.
 

 

[Mochan]

Quote:

The Q's don't seem to come with a stand. At first I thought that maybe I had counterfeits (my first pair of "decent" cans were HDJ-1000s which are counterfeited like crazy). But they were shipped and sold by Amazon, they were just $250 at one point, but I got them right from Amazon at $280. I really would like one of those stands from the K701s.
 
Anyway, I thought this would be a good first thread to post in. My AKG Q701s have been burning in on my desktop (with a pink noise program I downloaded). But tonight I took them off for a while, and listened to some Renee Olstead, an FLAC rip of Skylark loaded on to my HiFiMAN 601. Wow. I mean...just blown away. I had heard about things like soundstage on here (I have been lurking for a while) but I had never actually experienced it. The sound was absolutely beautiful. I just went from a ZuneHD with HDJ-1000s (or Thinksound Thunders for traveling), to Q701s with a HiFiMAN MP3 player. A slight bump in quality for my jazz music.  
 
I think my next pair of headphones will be Pioneer HDJ-2000s, from what I have read, I think they will complement my AKGs very nicely. I can listen to my jazz, and some of my rock with the AKGs, and the pop and other bassy types of music with those. I will be pretty happy.
 
I know some people aren't huge fans of these headphones, but MAN, with a good recording, they just sound so beautiful.
 
 

Glad you love them. The soundstage is in my opinion the greatest strength of the X701 series, some people disagree and say it's an unnatural soundstage, but I say bollocks to that.
 
Interestingly, I am able to enjoy the K701 with bassy music like chillout and house. It's not a bassy can, but I disagree with calling it bass-light. With the right amp the bass is very enjoyable even for bassy music. I listen to Kaskade, various Hed Kandi and Ibiza beats on my K701 out of the X02 amp, which is very warm and has wonderful bass.
 
There's a lot of thump in this setup, even for the K701. The bass is just fine!   Though if I really want to thump it out with the bass my other cans like the LCD2, XB700 and modded Grado really excel in bass thump.
 

 

[PelPix]

I have improved further on the method, matching it more closely to the functional opposite of the K702's psychoacoustic frequency curve.
This test: Accurate representation of stringed instruments.  The k702 never did it QUITE right.  It always had this edge to it.
Not anymore!
 
http://soundcloud.com/kylebloss/sets/more-tests
 
First is adjusted, second is source.
 
The more I work on this, the more I believe that the k702 might have the potential to be one of the best dynamic cans ever made.  I only wish I had a better DAC so I could continue this project.  I have an asus Xonar right now.

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

What's the end goal of the process? Will you be releasing some method to share the adjustments? I am interested in why you refer to them as psychoacoustic, since, like psychovisual, that specifically refers to something inherent in the methodology which takes advantage of the flaws in human perception that can allow something imperfect to pass muster. E.g. Compression artifacts even on BD-ROM movies that you won't see unless you know specifically how the encoding fools the eye into seeing more information than is actually there. If you just mean a process of EQ of more or less complexity I'm not sure if that's the same thing as psychoacoustic alteration, except insofar as "people will report phenomenological improvements when using this method." Lossy or mixed compressed audio employs psychoacoustics, shaving away data that shouldn't be missed...
 
Where's the illusion here?

 

[PelPix]

You misunderstand.  I am not referring to my solution as psychoacoustic.
The mid-highs do not come out glaring from the k702.  They are made that way by the ear structure and the human interpretation of sound!  The illusion part is the problem, not my method for solving it.  My method for solving it is quite analog.
Basically, what I'm doing is I'm hooking the k702 up to a head rig to find out what it sounds like by the time it reaches the inner ear and then compensating for any deviations from neutrality (equalizing and otherwise, but when you're correcting for psychoacoustic problems, you can't use a normal EQ.  It mutilates the audio.  You need something more organic, like a dynamic EQ) on the source end by adjusting them in the opposite direction.
 
Basically, it's just like when people EQ by ear, except I'm doing it with science and very expensive, perhaps even eventually custom, EQ methods.
 
Also, my reasons for doing this are just to create an enjoyable listening experience and to create a neutral chain for mixing and mastering with.  And to share it with my friends here, once it's done! 

 

[reginalb]

Glad you love them. The soundstage is in my opinion the greatest strength of the X701 series, some people disagree and say it's an unnatural soundstage, but I say bollocks to that.
 
Interestingly, I am able to enjoy the K701 with bassy music like chillout and house. It's not a bassy can, but I disagree with calling it bass-light. With the right amp the bass is very enjoyable even for bassy music. I listen to Kaskade, various Hed Kandi and Ibiza beats on my K701 out of the X02 amp, which is very warm and has wonderful bass.
 
There's a lot of thump in this setup, even for the K701. The bass is just fine!   Though if I really want to thump it out with the bass my other cans like the LCD2, XB700 and modded Grado really excel in bass thump.
 

Thanks for the tips. I am still a noob, so I like suggestions for equipment to give a try. I love good music, and slowly acquired good home audio equipment when I was in college, but I am getting more now that I am out in the working world. The HiFiMAN and 701s were a good choice for me, I think. I think that in my noobness I still like powerful bass with some music, like hip hop, and some of the pop that I listen to (did I mention that musical tastes are very eclectic?) Any way, thanks again for the amp tip, I plan to check it out.

 

[Mochan]

Quote:

I added more dampening to the topmost ring of the cups.  This resulted in even cleaner sound than before.  Tone is at its "purest" now, if that's the way to put that.  I tried covering up part of that ring to see how the bass is affected - so yes, covering it up will bring out the bass a little bit, but you should still leave one of the two larger holes uncovered so you do not get a closed-in sound.  Well, painter's tape is definitely not the right stuff to use, so what is?  I don't know.  I'll try epoxy putty later.
I tried using the headphone with the topmost ring removed on one side.  That resulted in a loss of control of the sound and even more bass roll-off.  So with that big wall in the middle of the ring, it seems like the headphone functions as both an open headphone and a closed one, so closing it up more will give more bass, just don't close it up completely.  Partly closing it up will not result in mild reduction of the sound's openness or treble extension due to the cups also being open at the bottom.  With most headphones, the cups connect to the back of the baffle (and create a seal, though some will not fully seal, leaving bass reflex(?) ports), but in this headphone, they do not.  Instead, they stop a bit short of the baffle and give way to the perforated shell, which might be partly why there is bass roll-off.
Just covering up two of the four holes of the top ring resulted in the low bass beginning to appear, lol.  The bass overall had mildly more presence.
 
 

 
 
Safety pins are a good way to remove the grill without scratching it.  I should have done that the first times - instead, I used a pair of scissors like cotdt uses in his recable thread and I scratched the grills as you can see below.
 

My K701 has already been recabled to a Jena Cable (actually it has a detachable cable option now so I can roll it to whatever cable I have on hand) and I'm finding that I still want to tame the highs a bit. The K701's highs are too sharp and really have a bite. They are smooth overall but if you have cymbal crashes and other really high pitched sounds it can be tiring.
 
I am gonna open it up and try putting blue tak to damp this portion, I'll see if I can get some improvement.

 

[PelPix]

Hey guys.  I exported it to Voxego GlissEQ (Only EQ that can do it right, due to its dynamic feature) settings and managed to get it running as a DSP in foobar, so it applies to all my songs now.  Sounds great!  Will release the FXP for those of you with GlissEQ as soon as it's done being tweaked.