AKG K701 Headphone Reviews (China and Austrian Made)

[Atratusnex]

It shows almost 2.5dB imbalance at 300Hz.

It does but is nearly 0 between 30 and 60 hz

 

[solderdude]

Fresh pads vs somewhat compressed pads.

I am guessing the e-bayer just wanted to get rid of them. 5dB channel imbalance is quite audible.
New pads are about € 20,- each. You would need to buy 2 of them (sold a piece)

No idea if that will fix the channel imbalance.

 

[solderdude]

So we are to assume that everyone i have seen was extremely lucky or amirm extremely unlucky? if oratorys k702 does show up similar to amirms k701and both use the same measurements rig, others that dont show this dont. Maybe that is the difference?

I suspect driver differences (production spread).

Amir's test fixture is a flatplate with a pinna. When pads are worn they generally seal better.
AKG pads, when new, are very firm which may cause some leakage but these pads were old.

I think the e-bay seller just wanted to ditch his K701.
Maybe the foam disc on one side is missing ? Maybe one of the drivers was replaced ? Amir could swap L - R pads, these aren't angled.

I'd have investigated the headphones myself had I found such channel imbalance. Amir most likely does not have the time for this.

 

[Robbo99999]

Maybe this was intended by manufacturer, for a so called "better imaging" on some songs, although I do hope I am wrong on this one. I did EQ-ed my Austrian K701 (over 10 years old) to match my personal profile, otherwise I couldn't listen to it due to the rather poor sub-bass.

I doubt it's intended, I can't really see how it would help imaging to have an imbalance. I EQ my K702's too, I do enjoy them after EQ, nice soundstage and good resolution, but neither the K701 in this review nor the K702 measured well. (I voted the K701 in this review as "Not Terrible".)

To quote him directly from his AKG k701 review, "Channel matching is excellent." here, But then we have the question: why are the measurements that much worse here? What does solderdude do that armirm doesn't or are we to assume it's all just product variation?

It's pretty normal to assume it's unit to unit variation, if you look at my earlier post I showed the same kind of channel imbalance in the K702's that were measured by Oratory.

Thanks a lot Amir, great review as always!!

I'm more concerned about the channel imbalance (Which I'll probably be able to hear) than the distortion.

I'm planning to keep the Austrian version and fix the channel imbalance with APO Equalizer.

Ah, you were the one that sent them in to Amir? Thanks for doing that, good to see them measured. I have a couple of K702 that were measured by Oratory and I used his measurements to fix the channel imbalance too. Interestingly I wasn't aware of the channel imbalance in my headphones until they were measured, it's not something I had noticed. Having said that though, after matching the channels accurately throughout the frequency range I was able to notice a general improvement in clarity, and I was able to recognise blind if I had channel matching activated or not - so it does make a positive difference to have close channel matching even if the image is not obviously shifted to one side or the other before EQ.

 

[Luke Lemke]

I suspect driver differences (production spread).

Amir's test fixture is a flatplate with a pinna. When pads are worn they generally seal better.
AKG pads, when new, are very firm which may cause some leakage but these pads were old.

I think the e-bay seller just wanted to ditch his K701.
Maybe the foam disc on one side is missing ? Maybe one of the drivers was replaced ? Amir could swap L - R pads, these aren't angled.

I'd have investigated the headphones myself had I found such channel imbalance. Amir most likely does not have the time for this.

Probably it was a seller in bad faith (although he had positive scores in general). All I can do now is to give the seller a bad review once I investigate the unit myself.

Ideally I should send a brand new unit to Amir, but brand new Austrian made AKG's are hard to find, and when you find them it's pretty expensive. I couldn't hear them before sending for a review since I'm in Brazil.

I'll now import both, sell the Chinese version in my country and keep the Austrian version. I'll do some investigation in the pads and foam disc once it arrives here. Buying stuff from US and selling them in Brazil is my side job so I'll definitely not sell a "defective" unit.

My conclusion based on the comparison is that the Austrian made AKG is a little bit superior due to lower distortion and the channel imbalance is an issue with this specific unit.

 

[Nathan Raymond]

I recommend younger people to not be like me and avoid dancing close to the speakers for hours at a time and take a fifteen minute break every hour or so to limit the damage. YMMV

Decent advice, though I would suggest to anyone going to a live music event always carry a set of reusable high fidelity earplugs like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Etymotic-High-Fidelity-Earplugs-Standard-Packaging/dp/B00RM6Q9XW/

Unfortunately I didn't realized these existed until I was in my late '20s, but I've enjoyed live music so much more with them (especially shows like Nine Inch Nails). No quality loss like foam plugs cause, just brings down the dB getting into your ear.

 

[Tomio]

The Austrian Headphone must be at least 5 to 6 years old. The production in Vienna was closed in 2016.

 

[Luke Lemke]

The Austrian Headphone must be at least 5 to 6 years old. The production in Vienna was closed in 2016.

Yes. But it is possible to find Austrian made brand new units on Ebay (assuming they are really brand new) for around $400...

 

[DrZingo]

A disaster for sure… How could this even happen?

"We'd like you to make a copy of this headphone, please."
"Here you go. We're particularly proud of how we managed to duplicate the channel imbalance and 2 kHz resonance."

 

[Zensō]

The relatively extreme channel imbalance is a non-starter for me. It's disappointing to see, but thanks for bringing it to light!

 

[Robbo99999]

Probably it was a seller in bad faith (although he had positive scores in general). All I can do now is to give the seller a bad review once I investigate the unit myself.

Ideally I should send a brand new unit to Amir, but brand new Austrian made AKG's are hard to find, and when you find them it's pretty expensive. I couldn't hear them before sending for a review since I'm in Brazil.

I'll now import both, sell the Chinese version in my country and keep the Austrian version. I'll do some investigation in the pads and foam disc once it arrives here. Buying stuff from US and selling them in Brazil is my side job so I'll definitely not sell a "defective" unit.

My conclusion based on the comparison is that the Austrian made AKG is a little bit superior due to lower distortion and the channel imbalance is an issue with this specific unit.

Don't give the seller a bad review, how are they supposed to know what the channel matching is like, and also it's been proven there's quite high levels of channel mismatch in both the K702 & K701 (they're pretty much the same headphone in physical design and frequency response). Definitely don't give the seller a bad review - unless he said he measured the channels and the distortion level and told you it met a certain criteria - which I strongly doubt he did. Not sure how you came to that conclusion re seller? None of the headphones measured here today were "defective", so feel free to sell the one you don't want to keep.

EDIT: read solderdude's post in more detail.....well for sure check the foam discs are there, but beyond that I don't see any reason to blame the seller, what we see in the measurements is inline with what we've seen from K702 measurements which is practically an identical headphone.

 

[zepplock]

I used to have an original pair of these and the bass side of things was very poor.
Supposedly there's a bass port on the driver that had a sticker over it. There's a mod to remove that sticker, which I did and it improved bass to the point where it was audibly better. I wonder if these cans have the same port/sticker and if this mod was applied.

 

[beagleman]

The variations in level, seem to be mostly in the bass region only.

 

[CedarX]

I have a Q701 and never particularly liked it.
One comment regarding unbalance: my ears are not well balanced at all… It does not mean that I perceive the sound image as always shifted to one side—my brain has somehow learned to compensate for it—but the point is that headphone unbalance, even as large as these K701’s, may or may not be an issue for me… it all depends on the frequency bands! Ideally, I should use differentiated L/R EQ.

 

[Robbo99999]

I have a Q701 and never particularly liked it.
One comment regarding unbalance: my ears are not well balanced at all… It does not mean that I perceive the sound image as always shifted to one side—my brain has somehow learned to compensate for it—but the point is that headphone unbalance, even as large as these K701’s, may or may not be an issue for me… it all depends on the frequency bands! Ideally, I should use differentiated L/R EQ.

I also agree that you don't need to correct for hearing loss unless you wear hearing aids or something, at which point your headphones would replace that functionality (assuming you didn't wear hearing aids whilst wearing headphones - I'm assuming that would be non-ideal). The only thing with headphones vs speakers is that you don't get the crossfeed from left to right with headphones, so that might play into a hearing imbalance between left & right a bit more (at which point if you have very large hearing imbalance it might need to be corrected in headphones to some degree)......but I think I do agree that your brain learns your hearing deficits from everyday life, so generally those hearing deficits don't need to be corrected in EQ.

 

[lewdish]

I kinda wanna get the Austrian version for nostalgia's sake. I always thought it looked gorgeous, and the hype it got off that K-On episode is what got me into hi-fi.

View attachment 186555

Saaaame, thats why I got them in the first place, honestly even w/ the measurements done here I still think they sound great, I really love mine and own both the Chinese & Austrian made variants. I don't really think they need the EQ personally and like the sound of them as is.

 

[PuX]

I have a theory.
Is the weaker channel always the left one?

It could be some kind of issue related to how the cable is attached. Beyerdynamic DT250 has a similar problem, one side is always not as loud in some of the frequencies (without mods).

Or it could be just poorly matched drivers of course.

 

[Thomas_A]

A bit odd find for both headphones. This kind of channel imbalance should be very audible.

 

[amirm]

Thanks for the great review!

Would it be possible to have the EQs for the Chinese version too? I think most people have a Chinese made version (also 702), that would be useful for many people.

The frequency responses are close enough that it would be the same for both versions.

 

[amirm]

Thanks Amir.

Help me interpret the data... is the Austrian one the bad one or is it the Chinese one?

If we trust the measurements, then the Australian one seems to have less of that 2 kHz resonances/distortion.