A long while ago, I decided I would get some headphones. Because it wasn't a pressing matter, I gave myself some time to research, and I found the AKG K701 headphones. They seemed rather cheap for what they were supposed to be able to do, so I figured I would try them for my first real pair of headphones. I wasn't looking for anything special in my headphones, and since I already have a microphone, and my current pair of headphones had just broken, I figured I could invest some real money into my headphones. Reference headphones sounded fun, so why not?

Anyway, I ordered them from Amazon a little over a week ago. Because Canada really sucks some times, I had to have them sent to my step-father in New Jersey (they would have cost $500, had I bought them over amazon.ca, but on amazon.com they didn't even cost $250, plus free shipping). Anyway, they were mailed to me after they arrived last Friday (note: it's been only weekends since then), and they arrived before I got home from work today. I was really confused when I saw a huge box through my porch window, but at least it wasn't some trick of the eye.

I brought them upstairs, marvelled at them for a couple of minutes, then took a shower. I had been crawling through an attic all day, fixing some troublesome wiring inside the house I'm working at, so I was covered in nasty insulation and dust. There was no way I was going to put on these headphones that cost me just under $300, and get them covered in nasty.

The first thing I noticed was that they were massive. It wasn't quite as evident inside the box, as the window only lets you see half of them. But when I took them out and held them in my hands - and especially when compared to my old $20 headphones - they were huge. Like, really huge. The size isn't quite done justice in a simple screenshot, and even if you see a picture of someone holding them or wearing them, or with some other size reference. For someone coming from crappy $20 headphones (the most expensive audio equipment I've bought, aside from my sound card, was a $60 pair of earbuds), it really is quite surprising.

After I put them on, I was surprised again. For something this big, and this unwieldy to hold, they're surprisingly comfortable. I can feel them, but because I'm so used to undue pressure on my ears from my other crappy headphones, these are really quite hard to complain about. The cups felt somewhat hard, but again: compared to my old headphones they really are great. I'm also told that harder cups mould better to your specific head.

I also noticed that they were damn nice looking. The K701 is more of a silver look, but the Q701 is a solid white, with a green cable. It looks quite snazzy, with the black accents and the little bits of brushed metal. The green cable is somewhat meh, and is a little too tryhard for my tastes (reminds me of Razer, which isn't a good thing). I would have preferred a white or black cable. For the green headphones, by all means - send them with a green cable. But I wanted a pair of WHITE headphones, damn it! It's still hardly a problem. The cable also is made of something I've not seen before. Most cables are made of a crappy rubber, but these seem to be somewhat higher quality - two cables were included, and they are a little sticky to touch, and softer, so they won't hold a shape as well as other harder rubber cables. They also are generously long, and gold plated, because bitches love gold plating.

I haven't listened to enough, or compared anything yet, to make a proper sound judgement on, well, the sound (HEHEHEHE PUN LOL!). They definitely sound better than my old ones, but because I only really have 320kbps mp3s, I don't have much of a comparison. As soon as I ordered them, I tried to find some flacs of the albums I have, so I could properly compare and see for myself if the difference between 320k and flac (which technically could be 320k if it wanted to hehe) is worth it.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend getting $300 headphones, but if you wanted to, I also wouldn't recommend these, because I don't know shit about headphones. If you want to throw money away like I do all the time, then for sure buy something like these, but from what I hear, AKG's cheaper stuff is also damn good, and they even have a small (one pair AFAIK) line of gaming headsets.



In closing, these headphones are fucking huge. God damn...