AKG K340 Mini Meet
Or, "I took advantage of Philodox's lack of an amp for his AKG 340 and made him come listen at my place". Everything except the K340 is mine.
Equipment setup:
Denon DN650-F CD player, DIY IC's
DIY tube amp, mini Gilmore Dynalo (Subsonic designed board)
Senn 580 /w Oehlbach cable, Grado 225, modded AKG K340
I had things set up so the signal from the CDP goes to a splitter & is fed into both amps at the same time. I first tried out the K340 on the Gilmore, but found it didn't have enough gain to drive the 'phone to a decent volume, I'd set the gain on it to 2 so I could use the volume control with my Grado. So the K340 got plugged into my tube amp where it stayed for the rest of the night.
First priority of the night, does this thing groove? Stuck in The Tea Party's cover of "Paint it Black". While it doesn't have the bass impact of the 225's, it was as good as the Senns while having better detail & separation, yup, it grooves & it rocks. Drums are solid, bassline is good, so far, so good.
Next I played a few Tori Amos tracks from "To Venus & Back". Lots of detail, good bass extension, but was really amazing was the soundstaging & imaging. The 340's have a perspective that's somewhere between my Senns & 225, closer to the front than the Senns but not upfront in your face like the Grado, probably around row 8-15, right in the sweet spot of the concert venue. Grados would be about row 1-2 and Senns maybe row 20 or so in this imaginary venue. Back to before, on "Not Tonight Josephine", the opening drums on every headphone I've heard to date comes from dead right, it's clearly coming from the headphone driver & nowhere else. On the K340, it comes from the right & a bit to the front, I've never heard this done on headphones. The mid & lower piano notes are a lot richer & more detailed, I hear a lot more of the body of the piano instead of just the notes like I do on my own headphones. Tori's voice is also warm & full of goodness, among the best I've heard on headphones.
Next for a change of pace, played a couple tracks from "My Roots are Showing" by Natalie MacMaster, this is traditional fiddle music. And there was detail galore, it nailed down the sound of the violin really well. I heard the scrape of the bow against the strings & the slight buzzing sound this makes, all the various resonances & sounds of the violin's body, and it was all balanced & pinpointed in space in front and a bit to the right or left of me depending on the track. There is lots of fast & fancy bow work & fingering and the K340's always stay ahead and keep things separated and in their place. This I think was the K340's best strength, solo violin, the best of any headphone I've heard. For reference, my 225's keep the pace but lose a lot of details & tend to blend notes together, while the Senns lost the details and sound like they're constantly falling behind the beat. Stax 404 & O2 have the detail but seem to fall behind the beat, and the sound isn't as rich & full, the wood tones on the violin aren't quite there. The RS-1 has the details & drive but doesn't pin the sound in space as well, though that might be partly due to the up front presentation.
"Before You" by Chantal Kreviazuk has been the end of several headphones, so I figured it might finally do something bad to the K340, which so far has excelled at everything. Opening acoustic guitar intro, whoa, had to go back and listen to it again a couple times since I'd never heard it that way. What I thought at first to be a colouration was actually the sound of the wooden guitar body, can't say I've heard that before either. But there was a bit of weirdness which I couldn't place, when the piano & drums come in at the same time about half a minute into the song, there's a bit of blending phasey effect which is really hard to put into words. A couple seconds later and even though the same instruments are playing the effect is gone, and everything's back to normal.
Just for fun I tried the funky bass track that's linked to from
this thread over in the music forum. No problems with bass here, good and solid to below 30Hz and no "one note bass", nice.
And it was back to more Tori Amos, "In the Springtime of his Voodoo" to be exact. Cymbals were clear and airy, well placed in space, and as before the piano had a good full sound to it. When the piano bass notes come in fast along with the electric bass, the instruments stay separate from each other and the fast piano notes, though they blend together a tad are still a fair bit more distinct than on my own headphones.
Back to grooving, "The Lemon Song" by Led Zeppelin, slow to mid-tempo intro and then a nice solo with a fast bassline. My own headphones get confused a bit and start blending & losing some of the notes in the bassline. Again, the K340 keeps the notes distinct and manages not to lose any of them as well as having more complete & detailed cymbal & guitars.
I'll probably add more later but I'm trying to keep this to a more manageable length. To summarize, the K340's are a lot more detailed than my 580 or 225. The highs are natural & extended without becoming harsh. Mids a nice & full, and while the bass doesn't slam like the 225's, they are deep, balanced, & fast. The soundstage has better depth, width, & height than my Senns, and the perspective is right in the sweetspot. The K340 does all those cool "audiophile tricks" while still being fun & musical, a very rare combination IME.
