I had the pleasure of sampling the great AKG k702 from it's box just last week (it's a hard knock life) which really put my music into context.
As for this headphone, well it certainly looked and tasted 'typical', offering both the good and the bad bits of old AKG all rolled into one. Firstly, the bad - volatility. Obviously a well structured system is the key to old fortifieds, but whether the research that went into this particular headphone were topped up regularly enough is somewhat up for contention. Simply put, it's got volatility a go-go, with treble so searing that it feels like your ear passage is melting. Ok, so it's not quite that bad, but suffice to say it's volatile.
Beyond the take-no-prisoners entry, the headphone itself is genuinely attractive, rich with chewy caramel flavours that've been intensified over the years, with the vanilla etched influences then continuing through the dry and savoury finish, ending warm and dry and with that trademark varietal tang and savouriness.
In many ways then this is a stunning fortified, showing all the caramelised richness and complexity that 40 years of intense research will deliver. Yet it still falls short of the sort of endless viscosity and mind-blowing length of the comparable RS-1 I tried last week, a notion which - when coupled with the distracting volatility - marks this as a very good, but not quite great, fortified (lovely with a pear and chocolate tart though).
8.2/10
