"The phone sounds very spacious and sometimes a little bit hollow and (to my ears) has a slight emphasis on the upper midrange. Sound is non-aggressive and easy to listen to. Little coloration for a closed system. In my opinion a fine headphone, although not outstanding."The only negative critique that Jan makes of the AKG headphones is that they are "a little bit hollow" and have a "slight emphasis on the upper midrange". Those are both very minor problems IMO. I don’t see him calling them "kinda good" anywhere. He calls them a "fine headphone". I took this to be fine as in a fine wine... I guess you took fine to be average. He says they aren’t outstanding, but what is outstanding? Perhaps the Ultrasone is, perhaps not... he does not say here. And which Ultrasone are we talking about anyways? The edition 7? I should hope that it is better with its price tag. If you are talking about the 650, from what I have read elsewhere they are both good, but different. Some people like one and some like the other. The following rating was posted by bangraman on head-fi. It compares the 271 to the 650 and the sennheiser hd25's. (He does say that all three are good)
Sound (including bass) definition unamped: HD25, HFI-650, K271
Sound (including bass) definition amped (with META class gear): HFI-650 <> HD25, K271
Sound (including bass) definition amped (with above META class gear): K271, HD25, HFI-650
General 'audiophilic' marking: K271, HFI-650 <> HD25
Sibilance (worst first): HD25, HFI-650, K271
Comfort (Team Titanic Noggin disclaimer, your results may vary): K271, HFI-650, HD25
Portability: HFI-650, HD25, K271
His comparison aside, the gist that I get from reading other posts on the topic is that the AKG 271 Studio has a more balanced sound and better bass and the Ultrasone 650 Trackmaster are more detailed. However some find the Ultrasone's to be 'sibilant' (I'm not even fully sure what that means yet) and some people just seem to love them.
I like my AKG's, but don’t have a set of Ultrasone's to compare and am not yet fluent enough in the headphone lingo in any case. 
[Edited by philodox on 12-30-2003 at 11:02 AM.]
posted 12-30-2003 10:59 AM CST (US) 
