Absolutely. This is one of the main topics of the linked (excellent) white paper. And based on that, they had adequate number of sample units, and their method to determine the reference target is sophisticated, beside the developed proprietary measurement method.
I quickly read that White Paper that was linked earlier about Sonarworks, and there were some areas of vaguery where it wasn't clear exactly how they executed the various stages of their process, so you can't really assess how valid the work is, and besides the impression I got was that there could be scope for large variance given they use a panel "of experts" (for listening) as part of their process of evaluation for each headphone (most specifically their "process of calibrating headphones to baseline flat") - so I can see a lot of subjective variation coming into play in their process too. For me there's too many unknowns and what is known looks like there's too much variability & scope for interpretation included that would influence the final outcome. I'm not sold on it all.
Understanding the criticism, but despite their "subjectivity" they still want a common, industry standard, "win-win", target base. (But the industry thinks otherwise.) And in the end every EQ is a compromise (headroom loss, distortion, etc.), just like every product, and every sound produced by audio technology.
Just now evaluating K702's sound without EQ and/or with crossfeed only. I'm not excluding that I just end up with small fixed-band corrections here and there on the long run.
Hi, like the title says, Oratory measured my K702 I sent him, I've got two pairs and I sent him my old pair from year 2015 (made in China, not Austria). Yes, so Oratory published the result today:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/033kxyf8a0o3iv6/AKG K702.pdf?dl=0
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index/list_of_presets
View attachment 127401
I've tried his EQ & I do like it, previously I was using my own EQ from a measurement by Crinacle.....he uses a GRAS measuring device too, so both Crinacle & Oratory measurements are compatible with the Headphone Harman Curve that we know & love (some hate though!)
Oratory measured my headphone both with the old very worn pads from year 2015 vs new pads which he put on for me, and here's the result of worn vs fresh pads:
View attachment 127402
Oratory advised me to ignore the increased bass roll off of the worn pads, as he said he "only did the quick measurement type, which doesn't give as accurate measurement results below ~50 Hz", so he said to assume for the worn pad bass frequency response it should just track the same shape as the fresh pads in the sub 50Hz, rather than paying any attention in the graph that the bass decrease accelerates faster than the fresh pads...so you should assume that those two lines won't cross over each other in the bass. Yes, so that's not bad, that's quite easy to correct the frequency response for old pads.
Oratory also did some distortion measurements of my K702 at different input voltages, with the maximum level being the equivalent of 104dB, and here's the results, (I have asked if he'd send me through graphs showing measurements at individual levels as the following graph is a bit congested to read, so I might update the graph if he sends me through what I've asked for):
View attachment 127403
So we can see that distortion in the bass is not bad, not an issue. There are a couple of distortion peaks at 1250Hz & 2000Hz, which seem to vary significantly depending on playback volume.
Oratory also measured Channel Matching of my headphone:
View attachment 127404
We can see that channel matching is not perfect here! Oratory did say that our hearing sensitivity in the bass area is quite low so the increasingly large difference in the bass as you go down into the subbass is not as bad as it looks. When I get my headphone back I'll be doing Channel Matching EQ on them so I'll be able to flip channel matching on & off whilst listening to Oratory's EQ, thereby I'll see if I can recognise any benefit of channel matching.
Group Delay:
View attachment 127407
Excess Group Delay:
Not sure on significance of difference to above graph.
View attachment 127440
EDIT: Oratory did say he'd have a go at finetuning the EQ some more, so it's possible that the EQ will be updated in the near future, so I'll edit this post if anything changes. I may also add my own personal tweak(s) I've added to Oratory's EQ. I'll also probably be editing this post to further to put the distortion measurements into better perspective re the dB values rather than the input voltage, and that graph may be updated with seperate graphs done for each level so it's more readable. I'll also try to see how those distortion measurements equate to Amir's standards that he sets, for instance the graph where he draws the +40dB threshold line on his 94dB distortion graph, or this may come to light in the discussions in this thread. I'll also update this post as more is learned through people's comments & analysis in this thread, and I may include a K702 EQ I've done from Crinacle's measurement too, so this may become a K702 EQ thread as well as initially displaying Oratory's measurements which he did just this week.
Finally, I'd like to say thanks very much to Oratory for measuring my headphones & the great work/contributions he makes to the headphone community....nice one Oratory, you're much appreciated!
@samwell7 , @Ravix , @bobbooo , @jhaider , @thewas , @Nango , @Seta Seta Pop , @Jimbob54 , @Bob-23 , tagging you all as you either have the K702 or expressed interested in Oratory's measurement & EQ of them.
EDIT 8/7/21: Oratory has measured my second (newer) K702 and results located at this post:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...as-been-measured-by-oratory.22992/post-819729
Yes, Sean Olive's is very different to everyone else's measurement. He's had one of the newest serial numbered K702 that anybody I've seen has measured, he got it directly from the warehouse I think he said. Yeah, if your unit measured like Sean's there it would barely need any EQ, but I think his result is more of an outlier currently. Sean's unit he measured was even newer than the latest one I bought off Amazon a couple of months ago (you can tell by the production number printed on the headphone). I'd be surprised if all the new K702 measured like that, I think we have to treat it as an outlier currently.
About clamping force on K702, it slackens a lot over the years as you wear them, the elastic gets looser, so you can't really compare a newly bought set vs a multiple year old set if you're wanting to compare the clamping performance between them when they were both new.
Rob do you know if I can I use this EQ for my K701? I only use the Oratory which is better from the default sound clearly.Hi All, an update on Oratory's EQ, he's released another updated measurement & EQ of the K702 which he released back in October, I've only just realised he's updated it, here's the link to the file:
Basically the new measurement is showing the K702 to have more bass and be a warmer headphone than the previous published versions, so I'm guessing he's measured a few more K702 and therefore changed his published measurement. Therefore his new EQ will make your K702 sound noticeably brighter. I imported his latest measurement into REW to compare against one of his older published measurements, here you can see the difference:
View attachment 247701
The brown line in the above graph is the latest published measurement (named in the graph as "K702 v4 normalised"). You can see the main change is below 555Hz, where you can see he's described the K702 as now having more energy below 555Hz - so he's basically saying the K702 is a warmer headphone than previously thought. Of course this will make your EQ sound brighter if you use Oratory's latest EQ, as he's not boosting the bass as much and is also providing a bigger cut in the muddy regions of 100-300Hz. He's also decided not to boost the bass all the way down to 20Hz so he's got rid of that silly 24Hz Low Shelf Filter he used to have in there, so now he's only boosting parts of the bass area by +5.5dB rather than the silly +10dB he had before - (note: he was only boosting the very low subbass areas by +10dB before rather than the 5.5dB he's doing now so the audible difference between the two is not quite as large as it seems on the surface). I recommend you try out his new EQ as it is significantly different! (because he's changed the energy below 555Hz in a broad & significant manner) Here are his latest filters and a link to the file directly again:
View attachment 247702
Hi, it's probably better to use the K701 EQ that Oratory has done because even though they're similarities between K701 & K702 I don't think we can call them the same headphone at this point, following is where you can find the K701 EQ:
www.reddit.com
The post you quoted was not my EQ, it was Oratory's EQ of the K702. I do have my own EQ I use on my K702's, because I have 4 units of them and I've measured them myself, it's a bit complicated but I outlined it at this post:
www.audiosciencereview.com
That's really good. I was looking for motivation to buy a 702 to have next to my 560S just like you.
I've never seen any K702 measure like the one Sean measured, but he did measure a newer one (higher production number) than any of mine, even though my latest one was bought pretty recently (and well after his measurement was published), my latest one is 224865. I bought my latest one in February, just checked. So if you buy one now I don't know how you can guarantee it's not gonna be an older one than the one Sean Olive measured. I feel that there are large stock piles of this headphone. I also feel that Sean's measurement was a one-off, but obviously I can't be sure of that.....it feels like an aberration to me. However, it would be very cool if the newest ones did measure like the one he showed, albeit we'd need to know from which production number upwards it occurred.....I think it's a one off though, something up with that measurement or headphone......I'd like to see future measurements of newer K702 though to see how they stack up though. @oratory1990 , if you ever get your hands on any newer K702 than the one Sean measured it would be very interesting to hear if it measured like the one Sean measured.That's really good. I was looking for motivation to buy a 702 to have next to my 560S just like you.
But we don't know if he just got really lucky or if the headphone is just better now?
Which model number does he have? I'll see if the one I'm getting is younger or older. I sadly can't measure it but I can at least tell you if it comes with flat bass or not.
241706 is the number of the headphone measured by Sean. I posted this up back in February, found the post:
www.audiosciencereview.com
