AKG K-701 Reviews

Ignore the rest - these are the best!

After all the fun of making your own music, producing a final mix can often seem a thankless task. Especially annoying is to fine tune everything to perfection, only to find it becomes a totally different piece of music as soon as played on any other sound system, like home audio, in the car, or worst of all on your phone!

We don't all have acoustically perfect rooms or speakers to mix with, and this was my solution - step up the budget a bit and see what I can do with a decent set of reference headphones. What a difference!

Basically mixing in these cans creates a soundscape that almost always sounds near identical, even on tiny laptop speakers, and definitely recognisable on anything better. No more lost instruments, fuzzy, boomy tracks caused by trying to get a great bass sound in inferior headphones etc.

Pros:

Great value for the price.

Very comfortable to wear for long periods.

No feeling like your ears are sealed in a plastic bag.

Strong cable attachment if you stand on the cable while moving around.

Fantastic results for mixing down complex tracks.

Cons:

They're white - doesn't stay white long in my environment.

The case they ship in is like an altar to bow down and worship in front of. Super sturdy, but made me feel I could have saved 20 bucks if they came in a normal box.

Best phones in this budget range

Use these mainly for hifi in combination with a Vincent KHV-1 preamp, Excellent sound quality for this price. I've tested better headphones but always 3-4 times more expensive than these. Open back so only suitable for quiet rooms!

Very bright

Used them for monitoring. They are definitely too bright, but with a little bit of EQ probably the best sound for the price.

Great headphones for mixing

As a sound engineer I listen to my mixes through these headphones for a second reference. I find these headphones to be very detailed, and they do not colour a mix as much as other headphones do. I guess they will never have a headphone that is completely flat, but this one comes close enough to flat. It hasn't got and exaggerated bass response like most models. It has a little bump in I think around about 1 1/2 - 2 K and that I learnt to get used to by listening to a lot of mixes, and the bass response is a little bit on the cautious side, but like every sound engineer you will have to get acclimatised to the headphones you are working with, these headphones are my choice because of the clarity they deliver, and they work perfectly for me as a second reference.

Very comfortable, sounds is very details but lacks a little of bass

There is a small lack of bass and sometimes the sibilance can be aggressive. But this is the drawback of having a very detailed headphones where you can enjoy your music and hear everything

Will be happy with a good DAC but can be used with phone thanks to the low impedance but at max or almost max volume.

above 4/5

I ordered the headphones for mastering and music production at my home Studio. Sound is Really good (Good low and highs, rich sound), they are super comfortable(i used them for four hours in a row and forgot that i wore them) and the quality of the materials is also good. I think that they are VFM.

hype vs reality

There are many hyped reviews about this model in particular.Headphones are classified as reference level which in reality means if your all chain wont be in reference level you wont hear what you expect to hear.First time I heard them in 2012 y. when they were still made in Austria and easily fell in love with silky sound and decaying notes.So when headphones arrived last week I was ready for eargasm but it couldn't be so far from the truth.Sound was painfully lean with no signs of bass or at least mid-bass.Were was nothing like that.High frequencies were annoying and irritating.So I decided to left them on their own for at least 50-60 hours connected to portable player.Yesterday after few days I tried them again and situation improved a bit.Bass reminded about his existence,less emphasis on higher frequencies- more balanced sound.Still not sure if its a keeper.Already tried 3 different sources and not happy so far.Wearing comfort is great hands down here.Sound is more spacious in compare with AKG 240,probably because of open design,Feels good,looks great but sound is with big question mark.Headphones are very unforgiving and abnormally lean.Im guessing that only tube amp would be able to put some meat on bones here :)

Best in price range

Hi,this a great product for mixing beside your reference speakers and unbelievable results with this price tag.Very detailed and not colouring the sound,highly recommended.No cons.

The string tensioners are worn

Sound is good, comfort is OK except during a hot summer with no air-conditioning.

The disappointment is the string tensioners, used to hold the headphones in place.

These string get slack with time and they render the headphones useless. They simply don't stay in place.

Getting these strings replaced is a very costly process, DIY is fiddly, so better get a new pair of headphones.

Great Reference Headphones

They are comfortable, they have a really good frequency response and are detailed enough to complement a good pair of studio monitors.

But since they have an open back design, they are not good for working in a noisy or reverberating environment and definitely not good for recording overdubs. I have been using them for 5 years and they are still as good as the day I bought them. Back then they cost twice as much and they where still worth it, so at this price they are a no-brainer.

A gorgeous pair of headphones with precise sound!

I've had this pair for years now and absolutely fell in love with the design in the first place. It was said to be very comfortable and I wasn't disappointed, even though the bumpy headband could cause some pressure at times if not properly adjusted.

The soud definition was asounding, and the frequency response great, even if it sometimes felt like the lows could benefit from a small bump.

My major concern was the lengthy, undetachable cord, which I replaced with a detachable custom one at some point.

It lasted me 7 years before one of the drivers failed, but for the money, I'm happy and I WILL buy the same model again.

Mixing Headphones

Great sounding headphones, great flat response, very comfortable to wear.

Excellent sound quality!

I'm using the AKG-701 on a Scarlett 2i4 with no amp and I can say that this headphones have an excellent sound quality and very loud volume! You can cleary notice the different sound nuances and discover hidden textures that you never noticed before.

Bought them in 2011, it's now 2019. Used every day. Taking the grill off the speakers is a bit tricky, I think they may have been glued on because my local repair shop broke one doing a simple repair. Fortunately the headphones still sound excellent.

Great value

brilliant reference tool for studio use and more, nice and lightweight too.

Wonderful

I will confess that I've not used any other posh headphones, but, these ones certainly are good. They give an incredibly detailed account of the music. At first, it was a little unpleasant to hear things with such clarity, but now, a couple of years later, I'm so accustomed to it, anything else sounds muddy and wrong. I'm agnostic about the "burning in" theory, but at first they did seem quite shrill. Not any more - just really detailed, and there's plenty of bass if it's there in the mix to begin with.

They're extremely comfortable even for longer sessions, and the cable is nice and long. Really well made, I've dropped them several times and they don't complain.

Be aware that, in order to achieve their sound, they are open-backed, and hence not suitable for recording, because they leak a lot (you end up recording what you're playing along to, which is a problem if it's a metronome). With a guitar on high gain, you can actually take them off and use them as speakers in a small room (if playing alone, I mean).

Anyway, for what they're intended as - mixing headphones - they're fantastic.

I love these headphones

They are perfect for mixing without monitors. The open back does a very good job of giving the mix space. I liked them so much a bought a close back pair of AKGs for tracing as well and am going to buy lots of other AKG stuff too.

No comfort and poor sound for mastering

Some bass and mid (low treble) frequencies resonate together and distort the bass... that's weak... The self adjusting headband thing is a hit or miss, and on my head head its a miss.. and i cant adjust manually there's no secondary way to adjust or override the self adjustment.. Weak..

Simply amazing

Enough said.

(used in a studio for mastering, no cons, extremely crisp sound)

Good quality

Got this for checking my mixes on earphones as a extra reference after reading a lot of reviews on these for how good they are.

Unfortunately I can't really use these cause I don't hear any bass. Clarity is great but also need to hear bottom end.

Pros:

Good clarity and very nice looking.

Cons:

No bottom end and can't hear any bass.