AKG K371 Review (closed back headphone)

[watchnerd]

Well, that dip in the presence region, plus extra bass, explains why I found them to be a bit dull sounding and lacking detail.

But for the price, no complains on my side.

(except physical: I have a hard time getting a good ear seal)

I expect they'll be my travel headphones...whenever travel resumes...

 

[amirm]

BTW, on use of glasses, I forgot to measure with or without. But did try it during listening tests and I could not detect much if any difference. I find that my actual head/face are more softer than any measurement fixture so I suspect the measurements in this regard may exaggerate the effect of glasses.

 

[pwjazz]

BTW, on use of glasses, I forgot to measure with or without. But did try it during listening tests and I could not detect much if any difference. I find that my actual head/face are more softer than any measurement fixture so I suspect the measurements in this regard may exaggerate the effect of glasses.

FWIW I wear thick rimmed glasses and they definitely reduce the bass, but I actually prefer that bass level to the one with a perfect seal.

 

[Daverz]

The 901 sounded perfect ?

I'm sure Labjr was being sarcastic.

 

[amirm]

FWIW I wear thick rimmed glasses and they definitely reduce the bass, but I actually prefer that bass level to the one with a perfect seal.

That's a good point. My regular glasses have ultra flat sides. The ones I use on the computer have oval shaped sides but still quite petite.

 

[mshenay]

These, indeed do not have the 'warmth/midbass hump'.
Also there is another thing to consider with closed headphones and that is seal
Below the K371 with the seal being different

perfect seal, thin armed glasses, thicker armed glasses and a 6.3 plug wedged between the earpads and rig.

This is the kinda of measurement content that I think we need more of! My impression of these sits in between the Perfect/Thin Armed Glasses curve and I do have thing curved glasses

Either way excellent to see this great headphone getting some awesome converge and even more measurements, big thanks @amirm and @solderdude

 

[Robbo99999]

Last Summer this headphone was in my shortlist of closed back headphones to buy, but I opted for the NAD HP50 instead due to the better behaved treble of the HP50 (no dip) whilst still having the great bass extension down to 20Hz....also the reports of good soundstage from users of the HP50 (perhaps related to the RoomFeel "technology" as marketed). HP50 is the smoothest headphone I own, and the soundstage is pretty good, better than that of my Sennheiser HD600 for instance, I think I made a good choice with the HP50 as a closed back headphone.

K371 shows itself as good headphone here though, for a closed back headphone I think it would be #1 on my list for headphones that can still be purchased today (NAD HP50 is discontinued).

(All my recommendations are based on EQ'ing my headphones to the Harman Curve, I don't use them stock).

 

[Frank Dernie]

FWIW I wear thick rimmed glasses and they definitely reduce the bass, but I actually prefer that bass level to the one with a perfect seal.

Do you find it uncomfortable though?
I had to wear pit to car radios during practice, testing and race at work and found the headset caused serious discomfort after a while by pushing the arm of my spectacles into my head.
It made so much difference I ended up choosing glasses with very slim arms.
Mind you, now I don't need to I hardly ever use headphones but still can't stop myself buying them. Bonkers.

 

[Dealux]

If you mean the relative brightness, keep in mind that it is different from person to person.

No.

 

[Feelas]

No.

View attachment 108100

Please read this and by then we'll probably agree.

 

[Dealux]

Please read this and by then we'll probably agree.

I don't know that my hearing differs so much from the simulator's response in practice. If you compared them side by side, you might agree that the K612 sounds more balanced overall but less bassy. I've owned both at some point.

 

[Feelas]

I believe I would agree that there's less variation; it just begs to keep in mind, that in practice it might end up being different, with different peaks and so on.

 

[Dealux]

The graphs I posted were made by oratory on standardized gear.

 

[Feelas]

The graphs I posted were made by oratory on standardized gear.

Which makes sense from engineering standpoint, yet doesn't translate onto variable head anatomy. One might have different response when using any of the pairs, depending on the head shape and so on.

 

[pwjazz]

Do you find it uncomfortable though?
I had to wear pit to car radios during practice, testing and race at work and found the headset caused serious discomfort after a while by pushing the arm of my spectacles into my head.
It made so much difference I ended up choosing glasses with very slim arms.
Mind you, now I don't need to I hardly ever use headphones but still can't stop myself buying them. Bonkers.

My glasses can cause issues if headphones clamp too hard. With the K371 it's not bad. My comfort issue with these is mostly due to insufficient pad/cup depth and lack of airflow.

 

[jae]

I expect most of the headphones near the top of the autoeq list (https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/RANKING.md) will be potential golfing panther candidates if the harman target is one of the biggest criteria, so it's just about finding the ones with low distortion that also fit well in the respective price points with good comfort and other metrics of performance. I'm a bit more interested in the headphones (especially the "premium" ones) that aren't exactly near the top of the list but may have even less distortion and perhaps EQ much better to satisfy a variety of target preferences, including harman.

 

[ILovePhonon]

I would love to see the Shure SRH-1540 measured. I believe its freq response is even closer to Harman curve than that of the AKG K371, particularly above 1 khz.

 

[solderdude]

SRH-1540:

There are compression issues starting at 85dB so when Amir measures this one at 114dB SPL expect huge amounts of distortion in the lows.
It is a lot warmer/bassier than K371 and mids are a bit 'boomy'... not so with K371.
Comfort of the Shure is really good but it is 4x as expensive.
Horizontal trace = audible 'neutral' and close to Harman but not the same.

compared to K371 (on the same rig):

 

[bobbooo]

When I saw the subbass in the FR plot. I would have wagered my life thesr were going to have bass distortion through the roof. I couldnt believe my eyes when I saw how low the bass distortions are for a headphone this cheap with a boost of that kind and virtually no roll off.

Talking of distortion, I see there's no absolute distortion vs frequency plot for this headphone. Bit of an odd omission considering all the previous vitriol and furore over other reviewers only posting 'misleading' percentage distortion plots...despite them being commonly used in academic papers (log scaled no less) by leading acoustic scientists in the field of headphone research such as Dr. Sean Olive.

 

[bobbooo]

This is the kinda of measurement content that I think we need more of! My impression of these sits in between the Perfect/Thin Armed Glasses curve and I do have thing curved glasses

Rtings measure frequency response consistency (deviation from average response, bass measured using in-ear mics on actual people, including with glasses). Here's the K371:

That's a 7.4 dB range in response at 40 Hz, which is huge really. The K371 has been known for a while to have poor frequency response consistency and seal variation.