A lot of people criticize the akg 700 series for plasticy mids and bad imaging but I think both of these issues are heavily exaggerated. For the plasticy mids, I always tried to hear it but couldn't and actually became biased against my q701, but later on found out that it was exaggerated by people who don't like forward mids and that's when I began to appreciate my q701 even more. And the imaging of the q701 is actually pretty good, it's great for directional audio and it doesn't sound unnatural for classical music, and the instrument separation is truly one of a kind. It only starts to fall obviously short against imaging kings like the hd800, but anything within that under $500 price point, the q701 is hard to beat. That's also one of the reasons my q701 was replaced with the hd800; the imaging is obviously better rather than just a hint, the soundstage and instrument separation is better by a good margin, transparency in the mids is quite a bit better even though it has less mids, and the bass has much more quality and a better "3 dimensional" feel to it rather than quantity. That's what made the hd800 a "successor" to my q701.
The hd700 is a very rare headphone, with most v shaped headphones subduing the 2khz area while the hd700 does it in the upper mids, so male vocals were not affected as much as female vocals which was quite different for me. I immediately loved the soundstage and imaging of the hd700, it did it better than the T1 without sounding as bright to my ears. The extra bass prowess is just right and it never sounds dark and muddy like I have come to expect from bass heavy headphones. Me being a mids-head, unlike most people being bass head or treble head, from that reason alone I never thought of the hd700 as better than my q701, but believe me when I say I hate v shaped headphones, I absolutely abhor them. The hd700 is a very rare headphone that falls within that category that actually gets pretty high praises from me, and really shows its capability with a bit of EQ, and which in that case is better than the q701 in just enough categories to surpass it