AudioCrunch

For these who haven’t heard of Acoustic energy they are a well respected British hi-fi manufacturer and they bring a great deal of that expertise to these speakers. They have innovations such as a cone to remove unwanted sound from the back of the driver; the satellites are made from cast aluminium to reduce cabinet vibrations; the speaker cable is flat rather then round to improve the magnetic field strength which means that less of the signal is lost down the cables and the amplifier has better control over the drivers.

The satellites are high excursion due to there small size; reviewers have often comment that the mid-range sounds unrealistic, which I agreed with until recently however after about 6 months they do start to improve massively as a result of run in and system changes which I will talk about later.

Only until recently I had placed them straight on a table. However now they are on top of something soft to prevent it from vibrating the table, this gave an all together more coherent sound and improved the sound staging due to the treble improvement. On well recorded music I could pick out where the singer was and also where the saxophone and clarinet where coming from, something I didn’t expect in this price range.

Another alteration was the additional current a change in my sound card offered. This helped to fill out the mid-range and make it sound allot more realistic.

To conclude these are an excellent upgrade to the cheap speakers often thrown in with most PC purchases. Another product worth consideration is the B&W Zeppelin, however it is around 300 compared to the egos £120, but I would recommend auditioning them both and then make your mind up from there.

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When I initially received these headphones I was very unimpressed, they sounded very cheap and I considered returning them. However, since that day they have gone from strength to strength. I have noted 300 hours  is often quoted for the total run in time,  but they continue to impove long after this  and even now, 6 months later, the sound continues to improve. If you’ve ever wondered why headphones and speakers need such long run in times, the reason is due to a phenomenon in metal, whereby as the material is subjected to a strain in becomes stiffer.   This property is used in industry for cold rolling. I won’t go too deeply into this subject, but any good material science textbook should provide interesting reading.

These AKG’s provide an extremely detailed and cohesive sound. The high frequencies are extremely natural and was the opposite of the overly aggressive or hard treble often found on most systems:   This also helps to produce an incredibly open sound-stage.

These headphones will change the way you perceive music. The difference between the AKGs and other types of speakers and headphones is that music flows naturally and as a result it never becomes fatiguing.

Noticeably, the headphones are extremely comfortable and together with the quality in sound i would recommend these headphones to all music lovers.

Verdict 9/10

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