Its something how much you have to pay to top older high end headphones.
And with some well known mods the older AKG stuff is far better them most new sets.

Only real down size is the need for lots of juice. I had a set of k340 and they pulled so much that I ended up cutting off the end of the cable and wiring to a speaker amp. Even then I had problems. They pulled so much that some of the newer AV amps/receivers I used them on would shut off and give a overload error or blow fuses. 😠 Never seen that with headphones before.

I used an amped auzen bravura sound card with the k340, worked well enough. Things cost so much because of so many dimwits in the headphone audiophile scene. May sound harsh, but that's why I got out.

vvbee wrote:

May sound harsh, but that's why I got out.

Not harsh so much as pointless and dumb.

I agree, that's why I left. I actually never thought about using vintage headphones with retro computers. Maybe since you need a separate amp and the sound is kinda modern anyway.

vvbee wrote:

I used an amped auzen bravura sound card with the k340, worked well enough. Things cost so much because of so many dimwits in the headphone audiophile scene. May sound harsh, but that's why I got out.

I have a very hard time believing the first part. What version did you have? You must of had the newer non bass heavy version. I had the much older late 70's version with the red/orange membranes.

And yes the price on the k340 is insane, they don't sound all that good and yet nuts pay upwards to 300$ for them. I sold my set completely worn out, split head band and no ear pads for a little over 100$

I snagged a bunch of empty modern cases from local craigslist and the guy gave me a Logitech Z680 setup. Have yet to test them, are they any good?

Jade Falcon wrote:

I have a very hard time believing the first part. What version did you have? You must of had the newer non bass heavy version. I had the much older late 70's version with the red/orange membranes.

And yes the price on the k340 is insane, they don't sound all that good and yet nuts pay upwards to 300$ for them. I sold my set completely worn out, split head band and no ear pads for a little over 100$

Can't remember what the innards looked like. From the pic and freq response I took and measured, probably newer (80s). That's not accounting for acoustic changes due to wear, equipment specs, ear type, etc., i.e. I'd be wary of claims of different versions until the distinctions between them are solidly argued, and I'm guessing they haven't yet been. In any case, the bravura drove harder things, like some old planars with -15 db of eq, if only just.

I didn't like the sound and wanted to sell them, then put on the velour pads and thought about not selling them, but hesitantly did.

I owned a few 340's in the past and there are defiantly two versions. But I never been able to tell them apart on the insides. All I know is that the bass heavy versions take more power to drive and have more bass.
I never seen any with red cones other then the last set I owned, I do know that a good class A tube amp really works well with them.

That all aside I don't think many have messed with the insides of the k340 enough for us to know what all is different.
They aren't the k240's witch have been well documented inside out left and right.

Difficult to know with decades old headphones, you need a considerable sample to up the confidence. I think potentially the 240 are overcategorized. People say there's three versions but acoustically a fair opposing guess is akg produced only two, first targeting free field and later diffuse field equalization. No doubt cost-cutting would enter the picture but I think with smaller effects which you can't reliably detect now unless your sample size is in the hundreds.

On this occasion, I agree with jade falcon, there are two versions of the k340 (I have both, and a k4 and k145, so all the electret/dynamic cans that akg produced). However since the drivers and passive radiators in the k340 are the same as the sextets there is a chance a k340 could be modded with dynamic drivers from one of the sextet varieties. I attempted to mod a previous pair I had with grey drivers an red passive radiators, but they still sounded a tad anaemic to me. The bass was tight, albeit a bit thin. The k340 has some of the smoothest mids and highs you can get and an awesome sound stage, but yes bad seals and zero head clamp give little consideration to the back wave which could be it's downfall in the low end.

Never had a problem driving any of them with a fiio e17 tbh, no need to go to speaker taps o.0. In fact while we are on the subject of tapping straight into speakers output there is only one non electret that I have ever had to do this with and that's the wharfedale isodynamic (check out the vital statistics for those cans!) Categorically the best headphones I have ever heard (and I have approx 70 pairs of vintage cans, about half are planars... if only I had that many pairs of ears o.0) although not auditioned audezes 🙁 which incidentally were originally conceived when Alex what's his face listened to some wharfies 😀. The wharfies can be driven by the e17 too and have a slightly elevated low end (some of the only planars I have heard with bass, and not bass bloat, pure tight bass as it is in nature and they go sub (I can hear down to about 17 hz, and they deliver). The wharfies have been on my head pretty much every day in the office since 2013, bloody comfortable too, sound as good as they did in 1974, the membrane is made from the same stuff they did the electronic traces on in the space shuttle.

Dynamics are good in'all but once you hear planar you don't go back IMO. Not a stax fan either, again pure highs, but I struggle to listen to stuff when the bottom half of the range is non existent. I like dnb 😀

Headphone collectors are no different from collectors here and caused the prices of a lot of vintage planar headphones to skyrocket about 4 years ago (you can blame the "orhthodynamic" and "show us your vintage cans" threads on head-fi for that!), a k340 is almost the equivalent of a voodoo5, they come up every now an then but you will be paying more than 100 quid at least for them in any condition... once I found the wharfies I got out of that game so stopped following 'vintage headphones' in my ebay search a number of years ago. Gawd knows what the prices are like these days o.0

badmojo wrote:

Very nice - speakers are fun! I was using these AudioEngines for a while with my retro machine but decided they were too modern - nice speakers tho, my wife uses them now for music and they fill the room really well.

I've read the reviews for the Audioengine A2 and apparently they're really good for their size. Plus they are shielded so it makes them ok to use next to a CRT - this seems increasingly rare these days as most manufacturers don't bother with magnetic shielding anymore.

spiroyster wrote:

Headphone collectors are no different from collectors here and caused the prices of a lot of vintage planar headphones to skyrocket about 4 years ago (you can blame the "orhthodynamic" and "show us your vintage cans" threads on head-fi for that!), a k340 is almost the equivalent of a voodoo5, they come up every now an then but you will be paying more than 100 quid at least for them in any condition... once I found the wharfies I got out of that game so stopped following 'vintage headphones' in my ebay search a number of years ago. Gawd knows what the prices are like these days o.0

My favorite old ortho to look up on ebay every now and then is the east german kwh hok 80. They're not pretty, they sound bad, and at least five years ago they were somewhat obscure to the casual person though still mentioned every now and then on the forums. Back then, you used to get them for $5 easily on ebay, and looking at the listings now, I'm glad to see $10 is still possible. I modded mine fairly unconventionally and they sounded very nice, they measure with an extremely quick decay in the mids though still have issues in the bass. So for a few bucks it seems you can still have a decent ortho ride if you're looking to tinker and don't mind trying new things.

vvbee wrote:

Difficult to know with decades old headphones, you need a considerable sample to up the confidence. I think potentially the 240 are overcategorized. People say there's three versions but acoustically a fair opposing guess is akg produced only two, first targeting free field and later diffuse field equalization. No doubt cost-cutting would enter the picture but I think with smaller effects which you can't reliably detect now unless your sample size is in the hundreds.

Indeed, there are so many small changes that could have been made to cut cost over the years and without having 100's of the one model or a statement from the manufacturer one can't be truly sure what all is out there.
Looking at the 70's k240, some say there are 2, 3 or even 4 versions. Its all down to how nit picky you want to me.
I say there are two, the sextets and non sextets models. Witch a few changes being made of the two over the years, like the head band and color of the membrane cones.

On a side note, if you want some really neat headphones to mess with look up the Stanton Dynaphase Sixty.
They're basally small bookshelf speakers in a head phone housing. You'd think they sound like crap and they do without a few simple mods like replacing the cross over cap and putting some insulation on the back wall of the cans. But the bass, sound stage and shear volume is insane. I used them inplace of speaker in the past and even been asked to turn them down before. They even weigh about 2-3lb 😲

Hi, I am wondering if any of you could help me identify the speakers in this picture? It's from my childhood and I am trying to figure out which speakers we had on our family computer.

Advent AV370 speakers with subwoofer and Yamaha YST-15 with subwoofer.

i have a set of Creative T40 but tbh i think they're crap and i dont really use them often. they are cheap and get very distorted at anything over medium volume. the plastic housing is thin and light and doesnt make them sound good either. they look nice though.

i listen to pretty much everything through a wireless headset - hyperx cloud flight. a slight step down in quality but so handy not to worry about getting cables caught under chair rollers / being able to walk n talk.

i just run a 3.5 stereo lead from my retro pc(s) to the line in on the motherboard, somehow it stereo mixes into the usb sound card running the headset. theres a tiny delay running thru the headset vs the speakers but its not as bad as like, Bluetooth.

I used to have these Saturn speakers

but they were not in a good condition and started to distort and buzz a lot so I replaced them with these Edifiers

and they're pretty ok. Heavy on the bass as I like but not too much highs so i will eventually switch to something better.

Reviving this as I'm having a hard time choosing between the following:

- Bose Video Roommate
- Bose Mediamate
- Roland MA-12C

Aside from aesthetics (they all have their qualities) and sound quality, there is a very obvious price difference between the MA-12C and the two Bose models. I have heard both the MA-12C and to a lesser extent the MA-8 and they are both excellent speakers.

The Bose I don’t know much about but they have rarely made a poor speaker unit and there is something so perfectly graphical mid-90s about the Roommates.

Tough choice.

I have 2 sets of speakers - ginormous NEC monsters that came with the Ready 9522 and have an EQ and the whole nine yards, and a set of Altec Lansing speakers that are bassy as heck but sound amazing otherwise (and have a headphone jack). I use the Altecs because they have a headphone jack. I might have access to some more options eventually - I've been tempted to try the NECs out though lately.

On my laptops, I mostly use a pair of old 90's Sony headphones I put a replacment Neutrik jack on when the original broke, or I use the built-in Versa Speakers because oddly they sound really good (and get really loud) despite sharing the PIT internal speaker audio on the P/75 and M/75. The M/75 is loud as hell - I almost want to run my guitar into the LIne-In backstage at a show - kind of like Billy Gibbons on the old gray whistle test who was playing through an AM radio he found backstage that sounded cool. The M/75 is louder and sharper, but the P/75 is very rich for a mono setup.

I use the same I'm using for my daily driver:

Decent sound for a fair price, has two imputs, so I could use one for the retro stuff and one for the main rig. My only issue that it doesn't mute the one you are not using so I'm thinking whether I should pick up some basic mixer. I just found an old Karma MX-3055 which looks cool and it's tested and only about $40.

The one I'm using for my consoles, though not yet vintage, those are X360S and PS3 Slim, doesn't have the same problem, but the sound quality is noticeably lower than the Edifier.

But it's grown on me. It was a birthday gift to myself when I turned 18 and we live together for close to 15 years.