[478773]

Just got 'em! - haven't listened, will do later tonite

1) Anybody using them with an Asgard 3? - Impedance makes me think could use in low gain mode, but people have mentioned there are not sensitive - if you have an Asgard 3, what mode are you using?

2) Got them from Thomann.de - they took a while to get here - but damn, $230 with shipping! - In the USA the price is $499 everywhere - not sure what is going on, but I am grateful for this thread, where someone recommended to get them from Thomann

Thnx!

v

 

[478773]

Well,

1.- Never got a reply on the Asgard 3 gain setting - so trial and error. On low gain setting, had to turn the volume to a little further then 2 o'clock for a decent listening level - not unreasonable, but decided to go high gain. Wow - to my surprise, same settings for listening level as the 250 ohm DT-1990 Pro.
The K712 pro are hard to drive - which boggles the mind after looking at the specs. Thinking need to go back to my electronics books, because I don't get it why.

2.- I should not have read so much about these cans - it influences your mind (I am a full on skeptic - of everything, including my own hearing). Sounds like a moving sound signature - I think my mind is jumbled from reading so many contradictory opinions about them. But when I like them, I like them - I was worried about the bass, but when is good, is good - is sharp and present. But I guess nothing but to do but continue using them until the mind settles.

I think these cans will be keepers - unlike the Grados - I have owned so many of them because the good comments make me curious, buy a pair, get disillusioned with the sound, sell them, read good comments again, repeat - I have gone thru SR80s, SR225, SR325 and haven't found a Grado that is a keeper - FOR ME, of course.

v

 

[jdowne04]

Guys i read everything that i could possibly read online for the past few weeks i'm a MAJOR AKG Fan and i would really love to know if the AKG K712 Pro sound different then the K7xx.

Does the K712 use a different driver i know the ratings are the same?

What sounds more analytical but with the AKG sound signature? Currently own the K7xx and at times i find it a bit boomy just at times i have it paried with the Objective 2+Odac Rev b combo.

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

I recently went through an AKG binge. After getting hold of the K712 a little while back I rekindled my love of the design, the brilliant ‘open’ and ‘airy’ sound as well as the unsurpassed comfort that goes along with it.
So I got the K7XX..and the K612..and why not the old K702 to boot?
Which basically rendered me with a chocolaty warm affair (K7XX), a warm detailed a somewhat strangely balanced one (K712), AKGs most neutral offering in this design series (whilst a tad bright on top, K612) and last but not least a bright and airy concoction that sounded terrific with stellar recordings..though not so much with less than great ones (K702).
I initially wanted to keep them all. They’re not expensive...but then again my apartment was beginning to look like some old radio-operator’s hide-away shed. So I came to my senses and...drumroll...landed on the K712 The seacaptain’s choice, He-Man’s favourite and the national headphone of Bhutan. In short: the bee’s knees.
I still think it is a wild and weird can...but in a highly addictive and pleasurable manner. It’s one of those cans where you look at the frequency response and ask yourself what kind of shrooms the engineer behind was doing, because it genuinely looks that strange.
Then you throw it on your head and most likely succumb to it’s slightly warm embrace. Music gets BIG and it’s a (smallish) event instead of something that takes place between your ears.
I especially love the bass because I can hear everything from here and down to Mordor’s basement..detailed no less. Sure my HE500 is better in the lowest of lows, but the K712 still seems so effortless in the way it comes across.

I’ve been playing around with the idea of throwing money at an Arya or a Clear. Even found a way to a/b these suckers with whatever I brought along. Thing is I really don’t want to run around with my baby (HE500) so I merely took the cheap AKG with me.
This little decision has effectively ended my lust for something “better”, because what I found was more in the ballpark of “different”. The Clear had a more linear presentation whilst the Arya extrapolated on the Sundara/Ananda tuning with a tad better resolution whilst brighter?...Not entirely sure but I did time and again think to myself whilst wearing the Arya that a) ‘my HE500 sounds better and way more natural’ and b) ‘is this REALLY better than the K712..or just different? Nope it’s the latter’.

This is my favourite AKG. I even prefer it over it’s big brother, the K812.
And now back into the music I dive.
Hounds of Love it is! Wouf wouf!!

 

[jdowne04]

Thinking about buying these as i find the AKG K7XX to be almost perfect but i just want a tiny bit more treble and a little tiny bit more emphasis in the mids i also own the DT 770's and they are more comfortable but the sound i don't know it just bothers me a little i mainly own them cause sometimes i want a closed back to drown out noise.I can keep the AKG K7XX's on forever and listen to music at lower volumes and it just blends almost perfectly in the background reminds me when i owned my Polk Audio Monitor 70's and would listen to music and do homework, the DT 770's just seem to keep doing peaks in the treble and bass that i don't care for and its distracting.


I keep hearing the HD600's are king at this price range but i do NOT want less treble which people keep telling me that's what they sound like compared to the AKG's K7XX i feel like it would be to analog sounding to me(sorry if that doesn't make sense not the best at this).

Been playing around with APO equalizer settings but all the K712 Pro profiles just don't sound right and they don't have one for the K7XX.

Anyways that's my reason for buying the K712 Pro in a few months after i save some $$$. Plus my right earcup makes this squeaky sound sometimes when i barely move lol still less anoyying to me then the peak treble and yes sometimes lose bass on the 770's.

Edit plus i started with AKG as a kid(28 now) i had barely a bit of cash and always loved music and audio and had crappy off-brand headphones and cheapo sony's then i saw the AKG K44's at guitercenter and they where 35$ and i was like WOW way better then any other pair of headphones i ever had haha. Then AKG K553's WOW again and then AKG K7XX and i felt like i was almost in perfect audio heaven and decided to just buy a decent AMP+DAC to keep for a LONG time and that was the O2+Odac combo. Figured with more $$$ i'd buy more headphones anyways.

Speakers sadly is my go to for audio for sound seperation but can't have that anymore do to life
i've never been a bass head but love some bass AKG's never let me down on that end the K7XX again feel a tiny bit to bass heavy around the 60-120hz range.

On page 189/305 on the K7XX(Trying to read all the comparisons) form and so far i feel these might be the sound i want in all regards, i'll probably just give the K7XX's away to a friend that never gets to experience much once i buy the 712 Pro's. Wish there was more of you guys here who had both and have very good ears or picky ears i guess like me, i don't call myself a audiophile or anything but who knows maybe i am i always could hear very well!

 

[bequietjk]

I love having both K712 and HD600. HD600 imo are midrange BEASTS and the K712 are like taking the midrange of the HD600 and smearing it to the bass and highs, opening the soundstage and coming off as more airy.

 

[jdowne04]

I love having both K712 and HD600. HD600 imo are midrange BEASTS and the K712 are like taking the midrange of the HD600 and smearing it to the bass and highs, opening the soundstage and coming off as more airy.

I really have to give them a try i know being more of a speaker guy i really don't want less of a sound stage sucks not having any place to actually listen to them first.

Man it sucks how dead the audiophile place is compared to other tech forms i go to i guess this is a dying thing i wish more in my age group would care more about sound quality vs portable mono boom boxes for $100 and beats for $200 that sound as good as a $80 pair of phones.

 

[jdowne04]

Pros: Sound Stage
Comfort
Accurate treble
Tight Bass
Cons: You probably should grab a AMP with these.
AKG K7XX vs AKG K712 Pro

I’ve been listening to music on speakers and headphones since I was in the 1st grade. I always loved music and always had pretty good ears! I remember I could always hear the bus streets away when others couldn’t and I could always tell when and who was in the driveway based on the car sound and we didn’t have loud cars and I'm not a car person.

I’m a person who likes to have a pretty natural sound where nothing is over emphasized. I’ve been enjoying AKG headphones since my first pair as a kid that i saved for months and it was just the K44’s that i got to listen to in the store which were night and day compared to the cheapo headphones that i heard from the dollar store and Walmart.

Now i’m 28 and had quite a few pairs of cans nothing like others here but more than anyone i know of. AKG K44, DT 770’s 80ohm, AKG K553, AKG K7XX, Polk Audio UltraFocus 8000’s(Not bad BTW). When it comes to the type of music that i listen to well, I pretty much listen to everything besides metal and what some would call “Hard Rock”. I do however love oldies and music like Elvis and the Beatles and pretty much everything from the 60’s and 70’s. I also love Pop and Rap and Country. I game as well and love having a 3D style sound stage as i have to wear headphones now instead of having 5.1 speakers(Due to life) which is my preferred way of listening to everything. The speakers i used to own are the Polk Monitor 70’s as my fronts and Polk Monitor 40’s for rears and a CS2 center with a BIC 12 inch sub but again can’t do that anymore lol.

Brings me back to these headphones which i will only be comparing to the K7XX’s as i found almost no one who really did this at least very few. These now cost $330 on Amazon compared to $200 on massdrop for the K7XX. I’ll compare the things that i noticed first and to me it was pretty apparent as soon as i put them on my head and listened to them, i owned the K7XX for 2 years BTW and the K712 Pro’s for only a few hours.

First thing that I immediately noticed was the sound stage! Which was way more 3D sounding. With the K7XX it seriously sounded like i had a left and right speaker on my ear and a center up front with NOTHING in the back and not a lot of space in the front. All the sound was left-right-center and nothing else. Still miles better than most headphones under the $300 range from what I heard from my friend’s place who collects over 20 pairs of headphones(I will one day slowly getting there). However with these K712’s i barely even hear sound coming from the driver itself its instead just in a separate environment all together. Absolutely amazing with no complaints at all it's basically like I got my surround sound back!

Second thing that I noticed was just how much more comfortable they were. The K7XX just always moved around on my head with any movement at all. Oh and lets not forget the plastic creaking sound that always came out of my right ear cup every time you barely make the slightest movement. Had these on now for 4 hours and they don’t even feel like anything and I wear glasses too.

Third thing that I noticed was a superior treble response. The K7XX’s always sounded too warm to me like the tweeter in the speaker was paper with very little precision. I feel this is why the sound stage was so weak in comparison to these. Adele’s voice sounds way more authentic with these compared to the K7XX’s for example and the violin in Lindsey Stirling’s music actually sounds like a violin who would have guessed? I even thought Pandora was the worst audio I ever heard with the K7XX as everything sounded to mufflied turned out it was the K7XX the whole time, sure we all know Pandora isn’t the best or anything but it seriously sounded bad to me. Now i’m listening to “Stand by me” by Ben E. King and it just sounds so beautiful as I type this.



I guess the one other thing that I noticed was smoother and tighter bass. I find it to be extremely fast and quite accurate and it doesn’t distract you from the other pieces in the music like the DT 770’s that I have. The K7XX’s were pretty decent too but the mid bass kind of sounded too thick and not realistic at all.

Leaving me to volume, with these i have to turn up the volume on my Objective 2+Odac combo more than I did with the K7XX’s still have plenty of power left and i still only use the low gain on the unit but i might be upgrading to the ATOM AMP+ATOM Dac which is coming out very soon.

I want to say something about this industry and why I respect JDS labs and NwAvGuy who to me was basically a hero in the industry, google his name and read his blog he is the reason why we even have such great AMP’s and DAC’s in this price range.

I got out of audio for quite some time as i got sick of all the snakeoil. I’m a very logical person and to me a AMP or DAC shouldn’t alter the sound in any way and you should be hearing the sound the way the engineers made it. There’s a lot of snakeoil in this industry from people who think a 2000$ dac sounds better than a great engineered 100$ dac when measurements say otherwise. Audiophiles in general I feel seriously hurt this industry and that is why many never get attached to it. I feel that many audiophiles have no clue what diminishing returns means and fall for crazy things like $2000 cables and 1000$ power strips(not even making this up google it they exist and yes people on this site buy them).

Things like “synergy” are nothing but BS. If you buy a bright pair of headphones and pair it with a tube amp to warm the sound you will not only be trying to change the very pair of headphones that you bought but you will be introducing distorition into your music which is very measureable over the tubes. How does that make any sense if you don’t like bright headphones then don’t buy them? We have like 100’s of pairs to choose from for under $500 pick one that you enjoy. Bright-Bassay-Neutral, big and small sound stages everything why pick a pair to just use a tube amp to change the sound or a EQ(unless you need a EQ for the flattest response).

To others here I will give a decent guideline in terms of pricing before diminishing returns heavily kicks into action and I will list the components that make the biggest difference to sound in order.

Source yes this is the most important part to any quality music or sound if you are only listening to free online services with low bit rates like Pandora and Youtube or worse you are never going to improve that sound much go find high quality sources like MP3 320kb’s or FLAC files.

Headphones - After the $350 range diminishing returns kicks in super fast and you have to start spending 5X that amount to get a big difference in sound. Even then my friends HD800’s aren’t even a complete upgrade from these somethings aren’t even that noitcable and that is on his crazy DAC/AMP combo which cost over a grand alone(I know shaking my head too).

AMP- $100 right now the ATOM amp from JDS labs and the magi 3 Hersey from Schiit is more than enough power for even 600ohm low sensitive headphones. Both these amps have a flat frequency response with extremely low distortion levels(can never get rid of distortion 100%) that you can find online with measurements at AudioScienceReview.

DAC- $100 is really it you can find the MAGI 3 not the multibit(measures terribly) but the standard one for just $100 it doesn’t alter the sound but it does recreate the 1’s and 0’s into what the sound engineers created, and does so with crazy good measurable performance too, Atom DAC might be worth looking at too once it comes out. Other good options are the Topping E30-D30-D10.


Don’t let anyone talk you into spending more on a dac or AMP if anything the above equipment is overkill and thankfully you can get this quality of sound for much cheaper than anything you can on speakers. External DAC/AMP isn’t even necessary in all cases if you have sound from a PC then yes i do recommend both as a computer is a terrible place for audio to be in and NO sound cards are not any good and terrible for performance per dollar(check out AudioScience reviews for this) and if your a PC guy you know what performance per dollar means! If you need a AMP you will probably notice it quite quickly due to not having enough volume even in sources where the media is quiet it should still get loud enough for you due to the AMP if not you should think about getting one and I highly recommend getting that first before buying a DAC.

Also avoid buying too cheap as some dac’s and amps aren’t even worth it like anything there is a happy medium and what i listed above are great choices.

Lastly, do i recommend these headphones? They are superior to the AKG K7XX’s in every way but price. Don’t let my comparisons scare you, the K7XX’s or even the sennheiser 6xx are amazing products for the $200 range but i feel the K712’s Pro’s are worth the extra cost to me, superior comfort, soundstage, sound frequency. In fact for a while they will be my last pair of headphones for probably anouther 5 years or so and I'll probably stay out of this industry once again after I get my new DAC/AMP from JDS labs. I’m thankful for sites that are starting to pop up and finally put an end to this snakeoil in this industry but still too many here fall for it and have no idea what ABX comparisons are. Best thing about PC hardware is it's not really subjective and it's all measurable down to every component. Truth is i can’t tell you what sounds good to you only you can answer that!

Good places to go for research include AudioScieinceReviews+NwAvGuy you will think me later after you save $$$.


My review i'm not the best at reviews when it comes to this but i got everything that i wanted to say

 

[478773]

2) Got them from Thomann.de - they took a while to get here - but damn, $230 with shipping! - In the USA the price is $499 everywhere - not sure what is going on, but I am grateful for this thread, where someone recommended to get them from Thomann

Thnx!

v

1. - Just an update - because I felt like sharing - so indeed, I tried to clear my head of influence and opinions. Stopped reading this thread, listened to nothing but speakers for a couple of weeks, then came back to the k712 Pro. Well, I like them. IMHO, crisp, and sharp, bass is there, just exactly in the quantity needed. [Bifrost 2| Oppo 205| AT-LP7 w/VM740SH -> Mani 2] -> Asgard 3 ( high gain) -> K712 Pro. These cans are exactly what I hoped the all those Grados I tried would be - please do not get me wrong, not saying they are similar, I am saying this is what I was looking for, and mistakenly thought Grado would provide. All in all, a keeper.

2.- I am still very curious on why these cans are $500 around North America ( Guitar Center, Sam Ash, the AKG website and other retailers, all list it at $499) and around $250 from Europe. Anyone knows? Are all these 200 Euros k712 pro in this thread gray market items?

That is assuming they are not knockoffs....

v

 

[478773]

2.- I am still very curious on why these cans are $500 around North America ( Guitar Center, Sam Ash, the AKG website and other retailers, all list it at $499) and around $250 from Europe. Anyone knows? Are all these 200 Euros k712 pro in this thread gray market items?

That is assuming they are not knockoffs....

v

Bump re: my question on price difference between europe and america

thnx!

v

 

[SSandDigital]

Thinking of ordering K712 pads from Yaxi. Has anyone tried recently?
The cheap pads from Amazon are horrible, the treble are out of control and the bass is just tossed into the abyss never to be heard. Horrible pads.

 

[jbarrentine]

Audiophiles in general I feel seriously hurt this industry and that is why many never get attached to it.

You came to headfi to bitch about audiophiles, then talk about how the budget Schiit dac is all anyone needs?

LOL.This isn't reddit.

 

[Maximiliano Campo]

Would anyone be able to tell me how the K712pro compares to the HD600 in sound quality, please?

 

[Maximiliano Campo]

I find the K712 Pros sound incredible after removing the sponge foam between driver and ear pad.

Anyone else tried it?

 

[carlosgab]

I just want to share my experience with the sheepskin pads I bought online. At first look it may seem to be pleather but the post description stated its sheepskin. The inner part isnt as presentable as the stock pads. Installation is a bit difficult since the width isn't as fit as the stock. As for the sound, oh my, it sounded more tinny as if the upper mids is lifted even more, its unpleasant and the soundstage, that K712 is known for, has become narrow. It took me 3 songs to convince I made a mistake. Just sharing.