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IFA 2005: Introduction - AKG - Beyerdynamic - Sennheiser - van den Hul
German public radio

Bad news (if you don't know it already) first: the K1000 is definitely out of production. I got this information from a company who ordered half a dozen headphone amps for a museum installation. Among othere criteria they were concerned about hygiene when so many visitors during several months would be using the same headphones. So they wanted to have the K1000 not only because of the sound but also because it dows not touch the listeners' ears. They bought the last twelve units directly from AKG. So everybody looking for a K100 will have to go to the used market or find some lost dealer stock.

Good news: AKG has come out with two new High End headphones, the K601 and the K701. These headphones were so new that the elastic head bands of the samples didn't fully work yet. But this will be fixed in series production. In their press presentation AKG compares the K701 with the K1000. That's quite a word at less than half the price of the K1000! Soundwize I cannot say much so far but optically I definitely liked the K601 better. The white laquer of the K701 was just too shiny white for my eyes. This is of course my very personal taste. I have two AKG headphones in my inventory (K240DF and K500) and still use them from time to time.

Above pictures from left to right are: K701, K601, Martin Giessauf who ist the Product Manager for Headphones at AKG. He is the one to deside what the engineers shall design and how it shall look.

What really struck me was the presentation of the noise cancelling headphones K28. There were two plane seats with those headphones connected. Then you could just take one of those seats and test the effect of the noice cancelling electronics with separate plane noise that was played through lodspeakers. I also did like the retail price of about 120,- EUR incl. VAT (German pricing) On the right side you can see a detailed picture of the K28 with its cardanically mounted earpieces.

No, I'm not into car hifi and this was no headphone setup either but I simply had to take a picture of that Viper with a complete JBL setup. AKG belongs to the Harman Group (AKG, JBL, Lexicon, Madrigal, Mark Levinson, Revel, Revox, Urei etc.) and Harman had a huge crowd of people working this hall. There were at least three cars with different setups.

Harman also equipped two DJ setups with Urei DJ mixers, turntables and the K181. If I got it right you could be your own DJ and audition the headphones while being in action yourself. Here are images of the setup and of the headphone. The K181 has not been displayed "in the wild" before I have been told.