AKG K240

(not photo of actual unit)

Make / Model: AKG K240
Year: 2000
Purchased: Mars Music, 2000
Price: $89 (new)

Build Quality

Eh

Sound Quality

Problematic

Impressions

Oh my god. I hate these things.

Which is the exact opposite reaction to how I was when I first bought them.

The problem is, these headphones lie. And like a relationship with a liar, at first your like, ‘thats so kind of you to say!’, but then you start getting hits back from reality, alerting you to the fact that something is off. In this case, mix translation.

What is going on in the k240, I have no idea. I doubt even NASA could figure it out. All I know is, there are just chunks of spectrum not happening in here, yet for some reason, they sound good. Too good. And like B&W, they have a sound.

So folks buy these things and are like ‘OMG, this rules!’ and it’s great, so long as you have a proper headphone amp to drive them, and aren’t making decisions of frequency levels on them. If the latter, these things will gaslight you, lie to you, like the worst psychopath.

I get a little bitter, because I spent months, as a new engineer, trying to learn to mix, while using these things, and fuck, so much self-blame, so much delayed learning, all because the monitor was lying, through it’s little velvety Austrian teeth.

If it wasn’t for the TLII, I’d probably wonder what the fuck AKG was actually aiming to do in audio.

They are, however, pretty decent to give to members of a band that are tracking. Decent for that. But they kind of leak into vocal mics, and they do break. So I don’t know.