Headphone Amplifier question

Ok I can't make my mind up K701 or K702? I'm right in thinking these are identical apart from the colour and the fact the K702 has a detachable cable and doesn't come with a stand?

The K702 can come in a mod-mic bundle but if I got the K701 & mod-mic it still comes in £20 cheaper. I don't really think a detachable cable appeals to me, I've never had them before.
 
Almost identical, the K701 has a very slightly larger sound stage than the K702 but marginally less bass and lower mids, there is very little in it though to be honest. They use the same drivers, chassis and pads. They used to come with the torture bumps on the headband but the photo on OcUK shows it to be flat, so maybe AKG followed the change they made to the K702 and adopted a flat band instead (far more comfortable).

Not sure what stand you mean though, unless TwST is bundling them.

ps. Both the K701 and K702 will neeed a powerful amp to drive them properly. Although they both have an input impedance of only 62 ohms they are not very sensitive and need quite a lot of current to drive them and allow them to perform optimally.
 
trejo. said:
Right i've gone for the K701, also picked up the B grade STX, thanks for pointing that little gem out!
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Good choice, the STX will drive them easily.

Be sure to use the full size 6.3mm headphone socket on the rear of the card for the headphones to get the full benefit of the headphone amp. I run a short extension cable from the socket to sit on my desk for convenience when I want to plug my headphones in - it's easier than rummaging around behind the PC all the time.
 
rids57 said:
Almost identical, the K701 has a very slightly larger sound stage than the K702 but marginally less bass and lower mids, there is very little in it though to be honest. They use the same drivers, chassis and pads. They used to come with the torture bumps on the headband but the photo on OcUK shows it to be flat, so maybe AKG followed the change they made to the K702 and adopted a flat band instead (far more comfortable).

Not sure what stand you mean though, unless TwST is bundling them.

ps. Both the K701 and K702 will neeed a powerful amp to drive them properly. Although they both have an input impedance of only 62 ohms they are not very sensitive and need quite a lot of current to drive them and allow them to perform optimally.
Click to expand...

This video shows it comes with a stand (of sorts) it's nothing special

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OWxa2mlVPw
 
Well I received the bits today, i'm struggling to get the soundcard to work...

At first it wasn't detecting it, so I re-seated everything and all was well it detected it installed, I restarted then it booted in to windows and my system just froze completely on me. Thinking it may be an on board audio conflict I disabled that in BIOS then it wouldn't boot at all!

I'm sitting here with the card out and all is well. Ideas?
 
Tried to install drivers again after uninstalling and putting the card back in and its saying it can't detect it. Going to try a different PSU cable.

I have a Super Flower 650w Leadex Gold. I'd assume it'd have enough power to run this alongside a GTX 970?
 
that will run it easily.

what slot do you have it in? Just making sure it's not sharing resources with the GTX970.

You could always try the Unified drivers...

http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

Failing that I suppose if might be a faulty card that someone returned under DSR rather than go through the returns process.
 
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rids57 said:
that will run it easily.

what slot do you have it in?
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PCIEx1 on an ASUS Z97 Gryphon board.

It's now working, I think one of the rails on the PSU is faulty by the looks. I still seem to have some system lag. Perhaps my SSD has begun to go on the blink at the same time of putting the sound card in?

However, it's playing sound! Which is more than it was doing before!
 
Yep many thanks for your help in choosing a setup. I'm blown away, music sounds fantastic and much more crisp & clear (could maybe do with a little more bass, but it's not a deal breaker)

Gaming wise, this is far superior to using my siberia with realtek audio. The game setting on the STX enables some odd surround. It makes voices sound weird on ts etc but in terms of pin pointing enemies in CS:GO it's spot on. Still get the accuracy with it disabled but it's a lot more defined with it on.
 
For games that only have generic audio features set it to 8 channel and hit the GAME button. For games like Battlefield that have their own headphone drivers use 2 channel and hit the HF button.

For music it's the HF button every time.

I did the bass port mod on my AKG K702s, it involves unscrewing the end caps on the ear cups and removing a sticky pad in each ear cup. The mod works on the K701, Q701 and K702. The result is more bass and more sub bass, they really growl after doing it and it doesn't affect the mids or highs at all and only reduces the sound stage a tiny bit.

eETs8sR.png


Here's how to do the mod...

 
rids57 said:
Connecting a headphone amp to a sound card is a minefield too. If you connect to the line out of the sound card you don't get the headphone surround processing and if you connect to the headphone out socket you'll be double amping, which degrades the sound quality.

If you can do without headphone surround processing then you could just use the FiiO E10K (£60), the Schiit Fulla (£75), the DacMagic XS (£100), Audioengine D3 (£100), Audioquest Dragonfly (£108) or any number of combined DAC/Amps, no need for a sound card.

If you really need the headphone surround processing then you'll get the best match with the Asus Xonar Essence STX but that's double the price of the U7.
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my xonar from the from front speakers out via my FiiO amp still gives me surround processing??????

Best of both worlds.
 
rids57 said:
For games that only have generic audio features set it to 8 channel and hit the GAME button. For games like Battlefield that have their own headphone drivers use 2 channel and hit the HF button.

For music it's the HF button every time.

I did the bass port mod on my AKG K702s, it involves unscrewing the end caps on the ear cups and removing a sticky pad in each ear cup. The mod works on the K701, Q701 and K702. The result is more bass and more sub bass, they really growl after doing it and it doesn't affect the mids or highs at all and only reduces the sound stage a tiny bit.

eETs8sR.png


Here's how to do the mod...

Click to expand...


Those peaks though! I think the Annie pads and the dense foam(with the K712) should help with those peaks. The graph looks identical to the Annie graph in the lows. I think you can really get a fantastic headphone with a few tweaks. The K7XX was the smoothest AKG I've heard and they seemed to add foam behind the capsules too.
 
I just EQ the 2k and 7k peaks and it sounds great, smooth but detailed and no sibilance (I hate sibilance)
 
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