The AKG K1000’s have a somewhat of a legendary status as a unique pair of headphones. They are more like “floating” speakers than typical headphones. These are a fairly old model which was produced for a fairly long time, but it was discontinued some years ago. Many people still own these, but as all things, they do need some TLC over the years. In this post I’d like to briefly share my comments on these headphones along with some pictures to describe the work that was needed keep my pair of K1000’s in proper working condition.
Tag: headphones
β22 Balanced Stereo Amplifier Build
The β22 from AMB is one of the most highly regarded DIY headphone amplifiers you can meet around the web.It gets plenty of excellent reviews from plenty of people who have built it. Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to listen to quite a few headphone amplifiers, including DIY builds, and I ran across a β22 more than once. I’ve even had an opportunity to repair one for a friend after it got damaged due to an accidental short on the output. The β22 always sounded good to me, although I must admit that its one of these amplifier that didn’t give me that “wow” factor on our first encounter. In my book that can actually be a very good thing, as many of the amplifiers (and any other stereo component) that give a “wow” feeling at first, prove to be too fatiguing and unrealistic sounding in the long run. The β22 is one of these amplifiers that you appreciate more as you spend more time with it.
I’ve been thinking of building a β22 for a fairly long time, with the cost being one of the factors against it. Just like with any other DIY project, and I’ve seen quite a few, the builder has significant wiggle-room regarding quality and cost, as well as functionality. However, I wanted to build one that could serve multiple functions, perform well, and look good. I wanted something I could be proud of building and owning, and to be happy with it for years to come. Eventually, I’ve decided to pull the trigger on this build. In this post I’ll share the steps and some of the technical considerations that came into play during this build.
M³ Headphone Amplifier Build
This post will briefly describe the M³ amplifier I’ve built to drive my headphones. Over the years I’ve had an opportunity to listen to quite a few headphone amplifiers, some of which I really liked, and even built a few of. These included the Pimeta from Tangent, and a few of AMB’s designs, including the M³ I will describe in this post. The M³ is meant to be a DIY amplifier, with boards being sold by Ti on his website. The M³ is based on a 3-channel topology, in which the output ground is also created by an amplifier channel. There has been significant discussion about this topology over the web, with opinions going both ways. However, like with all other audio related things, I prefer to let my ears be the final judge, and in the case of the M³ I always liked what I’ve heard.
Some years ago a friend of mine asked me to build one of these for him, with the power-supply sitting in its own case(Fig. 1). When it was complete, I’ve had some time to use it before he picked it up, and I really liked what I’ve heard. It was driving my AKG K1000 headphones to sufficient volume without much distortion, and the overall sound signature was much better than I have heard with many other amplifiers. The conclusion from this experience was simple, I should build one of these for myself 🙂