TheSloth

I've yet to hear it for myself, but interesting HR actively don't promote their amps as being able to drive the K1K. I suppose though the K1K isn't THAT much less sensitive than the K340, it's a much more current heavy current:voltage ratio, and the modules are current limited.

Yeah but they LOVE HeadRoom Max Modules. Even single ended. Happily running along at medium gain, less than half way up the pot. Re. the 30W power amp, it doesn't really surprise me. These are 400ohm cans - it's unlikely your amp was designed to drive anything like that.

Well, I remembered that I had a pair of those JBL Creature II speakers sitting in the cupboard, do I hooked them up to my iPod dock and they really don't sound too bad. Far less offensive than the iPod Hi-fi (which is starting to make me thing that the hi-fi wasn't working properly...). They'll do for now.

It depends on whether you think the screen is part of the sonic design of the headphone or not. If AKG designed their headphone, and then realised they had nothing protecting the driver and so slapped this plastic screen in front, that's one thing, however they could have voiced it in the presence of that screen so that it would have the right frequency balance. You never know which it is - with the Sennheisers and K701's (the little circular foam under the earcup), it's clear that they were intended as part of the voicing of the headphone.

Thanks for all the details. Larry says he always does the mods as a package, so didn't want to comment on which part of the package affects the sound in any particular way. I think I might do without the rescreen, at least for now, because I am hearing good balance, and am very sensitive to upper mids/treble. I suppose the bass could do with a bit of tightening, so maybe I'll go with closing up the housing after all. I hear nothing wrong in the midrange, or with the overall tonal balance, so I'm not sure I'd want anything changed with the damping. Jay, do you have a picture of the new screen that larry makes?

Burn-in seems to have done it. They are sounding quite sublime, but only when I hold the head piece in the right place as the left elastic is too loose compared with the right one at the mo. These are fantastic headphones - they somehow manage to be more lush, yet also more resolving than my 650's. It's all down to that electret. It just has that electrostatic speed and sparkle, without being at all peaky - in fact this is one of the few headphones that has not one peak that my ears are sensitive to (it may have peaks, but my ears don't react to them wherever they are). Which does bring me to a few concerns about mods. Larry isn't very forthcoming about the actual effect of the mods he does on these headphones. At the moment, mine are to be recabled with BlackGold, bypass pcb, elastics replaced, 'rescreened' (?), and cable entry holes sealed. I'm a bit worried about the last two - rescreening, I presume changes the current plastic mesh for something more transparent. My experience wich changing screens to something 'more transparent' is an increase in treble response. Defoaming 650's for example makes the higs bright, tizzy and offensive to my ears. I wonder how similar the experience with K340's might be? Also, sealing up the cable entry holes turns it into a completely closed headphone, right? Listening to the back, there is quite a lot of sound leakage at that point which ought to be a good thing for reducing resonance and giving the drivers some air to breathe with. Maybe someone can give me a sense as to whether these mods affect frequency response in any obvious way, because at this point I don't have any major complaints...

I couldn't for the life of me work out the damn thing. I tried it in different positions, which did significantly change the sound, but not to the extent of removing that issue. I certainly gave it it's due, considering there was nothing else I could do with it. And I'm not getting into 'burn in' with an iPod hi-fi...! And I also don't think there was anything 'wrong' with it, as there was nothing else wrong with the sound per se and no obvious distortion or anything. Maybe there is just something in my room acoustic, but even still, my QUADs never had that problem. The low-fi sounded horrific. So I'm sort of at square 1, except that I have still decided to sell the QUAD's and stands (already had a good offer on the stands fortunately on audiogon). Suppose I'll just put some money in the bank! How un-head-case of me.

You'd think, wouldn't you? So did I, until about an hour ago. Decided to make use of the 24 hour city and went to the 5th avenue Apple Store. Just to check, I had a good listen there (as much as you can in such a setting) and continued with plan A - get iPod Low-Fi. Got the thing home, unpacked it, listened for a few minutes, used this smiley , moved it around, changed the source around a bit, and then repacked and boxed it. This was the worst sounding piece of audio equipment I have ever experienced in my life. And I'm talking worse than laptop speakers here. Why? This thing has the most weird-ass frequency response I've ever heard, with this massive mid-midrange peak that makes EVERYTHING sibiliant at ALL volume levels - it sounds as if the sound waves from the left and right side are colliding with one another in the middle (which is probably exactly what is happening...), creating this hideous resonance in my ears at least that I just can't bear. I kept turning the volume down to try and find a comfortable listening level, and found that the only comfortable level was 0. I had no expectations for this thing to be 'good', but I at least expected it to produce some reasonably pleasant (i.e. not headache inducing) noises at lower listening levels - nope, can't even do that right. Also, if you are sitting near the 'full range drivers' you can hear the high frequency distortion from the horrific amplifier. So bad, I initially thought it might be broken, but after enough listening I decided it was working just fine. MOST EVIL AUDIO DEVICE ON THE PLANET. Worse than the speakers in my MacBook Pro (as in it gives me a headache, the MBP doesn't), worse than a pair of JBL Creature speakers, MUCH worse than BOSE triports. I cannot believe Apple are selling this thing - it's as if it was purposely voiced to only sound good in a showroom with lots of other midrange noise so that in such circumstances it sounds 'balanced'.

Yep, I think I'm with you on that one. Though, they woudn't go in the closet, they'd be sold. Real shame that stands are so hard to sell - $200 and they weigh as much as I do, fantastic things, probably couldn't even give them away. The speakers really would only be for the most casual listening, and if I wanted to play something for someone, and I have a feeling the iPod will do that just fine.

Found it. Don't think that's what I'm after... I'm loosely considering the Lavry, which seems to be a balanced source that fits my preferences, plus the fact that I already have some nice balanced interconnects. WAY too expensive though. Not sure there is anything else though - really don't want digital volume control. My original source for these was a QUAD 99CDP, which has decent variable outputs and a DAC that's at least on par with the better HR DACs. They seem to be going for around $500 these days, which isn't so bad, plus it gives me a nice transport.

My only digital source is in my headphone amp (desktop DAC in the desktop portable), so whatever is feeding the speakers needs to have a DAC in the chain somewhere, and the headphone amp won't do the trick for the reasons in my posts above. What's a Yamaha 01V?

That's just more than I want/can justify to spend/spending, and there's the dilemma. But if it's got to be one of those $1k sources, what is the best one to go for (ignoring quality of headphone out) in terms of quality of variable line outs? The 12L's are just such fine speakers at that price point it's painful to sell, but they are doing abolutely nothing here...

Is everything OK over there? Please don't make me bring out that cookie picture again...

Taken from where? Ever look at the rear panel and circuit board for a Desktop Portable...? Even if it were possible, there is still the problem of location - the position it would have to be in to feed the speakers would be about 20' away from where I listen...

Actually there aren't that many choices which is why I am posting! Digital volume controls are horrible, and I hate the sqeezebox software - I did own one shortly after I sold the Balanced Home for that exact reason, but found the software glitchy, plus at the time it wasn't universal (MacBook Pro here...) (don't even know if it is now). My source and amp is the HeadRoom convertible, which is a Desktop Portable at heart, and that's not going to change in the near future (if ever). I tried using a 1/4" -> RCA adapter, which not only sounded terrible for some reason (I've used the preamp outs from the Destkop line and they sounded fantastic, so it must be to do with the connectors here), but I'd also have to go over and hook up the thing in this very awkward fashion every time I wanted to use the speakers. Not worth the hassle for the bad SQ I get from that hookup. So that leaves me with ?

Because I listened to them all, and after all the crap that Apple took for it, listening to classical music, it was so blatantly better than any of the other 1 box solutions that I was genuinely impressed with it.

I have a pair of QUAD 12L Pro Active speakers on some rather chunky and expensive stands that have sat completely unused since I sold my Balanced Home 3 months ago, which was also serving as a digital preamp. I have nothing to drive them with, and am not really too excited to purchase something, but if I did, it would need to be a DAC/Preamp w/volume control all in one. Balanced outputs would be great, but not important. So, my question is, what can I buy to give them a nice signal, or should I just get rid of them alltogether? Problem is, they are only worth abut $500 resale, and these biamped active speakers sound thousands of dollars better than that... Edit: I really barely ever use these, as despite their quality, the acoustics of my room are so awful that I can't get particularly great sound out of them. I was actually considering getting an iPod Hi-fi (no, that wasn't a joke) and calling it quits on the whole speaker thing...

As a fan of measurements, I'm also considering sending them to HeadRoom to have them measured. I have a hunch that they sound as good as they do due to a particularly linear and natural treble response. Take a look at the following graphs for the 'top 3' (for me anyway) classical cans: You can see that though there are differences, they have a relatively smooth and neutral response up to 2kHz, with no large peaks and troughs, at which point they deviate quite vastly from flat (even 'headphone flat'), and each other. This seems to be something of a limitation of current dynamic driver technology that none of these top 3 manufacturers can really get a very smooth response 'up there'. That's where the K340 comes in, as it's dynamic driver cuts out at 2kHz, just where things start to go bad. It then has a dedicated driver for this area that seems to be nearly impossible to get right with a fully range driver. Any thoughts?

Oh, I LOVE them. I never thought I'd find another truly great headphone for classical music, but once I put some velour pads on these it was clear I had indeed! In fact I like them so much that I'm already negotiating with Larry the mods to be done on them! I'm like that with stuff - I only believe in spending more money on something if you already love it, not to try to correct the fact that you don't actually like it. Like when I loved my Maxxed out Desktop so much I bought a Balanced Home! But then I'm a bit nuts...

Hmm, I must admit I'm intrigued... . I'm surprised you say there is an improvement from taping up the holes - I assumed that gives a slight openness to the rear of the driver, reducing resonances and suchlike. Recabling the circuit board is unfortunately beyond my skill level here. The cotton is possible, but actually my experience with the K701 which has a somewhat similar cotton ring (where the 501 doesn't) is that it's sound changes drastically (much brighter and thinner) without it.

Who says these are 'coloured' headphones? Sorry but I don't hear it - these are some of the flattest (the good kind) sounding headphones I've had the plasure of hearing. The only thing I am hearing to complain about is a slight resonance and therefore lack of clarity in the bass response. Otherwise, they are simpy fantastic (this is all classical music listening btw). Makes me wonder what AKG could do with these if they did a reissue with their latest dynamic driver technology.

I just put on the velour pads (what a bitch!) and it's made a vast improvement - everything is much more in balance (the bass has arrived!), they are comfortable, and seal well against the ears even with the current elastics which I'll therefore leave alone.

How do I go about replacing the elastics, and what did you use as a replacement? I'm such a K340 virgin!

It seems that the contact and seal against the side of the head is very important. Just by pressing slightly on the outer ear cup (not moving it enough to really move the driver closer to the ear), the seal is much better and the bass is improved. I have ordered the velour pads (those are the ones for the 271, right?) so I'm looking forward to the improvement. I think however that I'm going to be keeping these headphones, which is something I haven't said since my 650's 2 years ago.

12 o'clock on high gain, in balanced mode? That scares the hell out of me! Single ended medium gain at 12 o'clock is too loud. Wouldn't balanced high gain at 12 o'clock be about 3 times as loud, at least? Edit Sloth is supposed to know about HR Amps! The stepped attenuator in the Balanced Max has very small steps towards 12 o'clock, which get progressively bigger after 12 o'clock so most of the volume range is actually after that point.