I think it's important to put it into perspective - with EQ you can fix a lot of headphones, and certainly in my experience with my K702. Now, how Amir would measure & rate the K702 I'm not sure, and it's possible he would shoot it down, but that doesn't change it being a good experience for me. Whether or not this would have been the case if I had owned this K7XX that was tested I can't say......but EQ will fix out of the box tonality. Distortion measurements from Amir are pretty tough on the headphones, and are more extreme than my use cases, so I know for my listening levels & usage I really only need to focus on the 94dB line, and that would only be relevant for bass distortion for me, not the rest of the frequency range (unless major major defects at 94dB in other parts of frequency range).I'll agree to disagree. I honestly never understood this technique of putting lipstick on a pig, the so-called pairing approach of audiophilia. Premier quality equipment should get out of the way of the signal chain as much as possible, never requiring special distortions or radical shifts from natural response to conceal its flaws. Hearkening back to that era you speak of, the setups I heard that made the K701 sound "good" always sounded fuzzy, bloated and warm to me, obscuring inner recording detail. That to me bespeaks of a severe problem because when I am paying a substantial sum of money, I want to hear the source material sing and not the playback equipment ring. Thankfully, we are confirming here more and more here that retail price and series placement is most certainly not necessarily commensurate with real-world performance. I would gladly take one of AKG's cheaper studio headphones over this overrated mess.