[cactus_farmer]

The 3 headphones in the title used to be considered the trifecta of 'high' end headphones before things started getting crazily expensive.

The K702 has most of its energy in the mids and treble, the HD650 has most of its energy in the mids and bass, and the DT880 has most of its energy in the bass and treble.

Those are all pretty differend sound signatures, so if you own those 3 headphones, do you pretty much have most sound signatures covered? (Barring comedy headphones hyped to the extreme in one direction like extreme basshead headphones).

I'm guessing the Grado sound isn't really covered by those 3. Yet, Grado is hyped in the mids and treble just as a K702 is, so a Grado can kind of be considered a K702 without the soundstage?

 

[Audio Aficionado]

Ah I remember the days when the K702 was king! (at least it was to me anyways, lol). I've owned several K702's in my time as an audiophile (10+ years), an HD600 (never an HD650) and also a 600 ohm DT880, and of all of them, I preferred the K702 by miles. In my opinion it had the best bass,mid's and treble of them all, and it was the one that scaled best with my equipment. K702 is a true classic, and today can be had for less than $100 brand new! I've also owned other AKG's such as the K712, Q701 and the K612, but I still preferred the K702. I've only owned one Grado (the SR325e) and it sounded nothing like any of the AKG's i've owned, I didn't like it. I'm not a fan of Grado at all.

 

[Sefelt103]

I am sure there are many more sound signatures than covered by these three. Headphone manufacturers have been outputting large numbers of headphones with unique sound characteristics for years. I would say Beyerdynamic's DT 880 has all its 'energy' in the treble.

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

How about planars/nighthawk/estats/k1000/F1/Ultrasone/etc etc for different sound presentations?
Even headphones with similar looking frequency responses can sound completely different from one another. That much becomes evident when you go from planar to dynamic and back...even if they sonically on paper look the same.

 

[sikki-six]

I'd say the HD600-series came out victorious in terms of still continuing sales and high respect in the community. DT880 has made somewhat of a comeback (on these hp forums at least), K700-series not so much. Used to own K701 and found it simply inadequate in the bass department. Pretty looks though.

HD600 and HD650 remain as the "common ground" yardsticks for multi thousand dollar TOTL models, that says something.

 

[Audio Aficionado]

I did not own the K702, DT880 and HD600 at the same time, but I had the same equipment (amp's and cd player) during ownership of all three, and what I can say is that the K702 scaled the best with the equipment . It was capable of of a deeper bass than the DT880 and HD600 (HD600 had terrible roll-off in the bass, was pretty limited when it came to scale-ability) and was the most detailed/ technically able headphone. I think that AKG has sold far more K702's than people here on Head-Fi realize, there is plenty of evidence to back up my claim,- for example, on amazon UK, the AKG K702 has around 560 more reviews than the Sennheiser HD600. The HD600 seems to be without a doubt the more popular/more discussed headphone of the two here on Head-Fi though.