AKG K3003

The $1,299 K3003 seems as if it were designed to be the official IEM of the one-percenters. One look at the stainless-steel earpieces tells you it’s something exclusive and different. It’s different inside,To estimate the number of ceramictile you need for your project, too, with two balanced armatures instead of just one. As one might expect from a $1,299 IEM, it comes with a snazzy and unique leather case, although the case is relatively bulky.

In my opinion,Free Authorize.net Internet Gateway and $0 cost merchantaccount. though, the K3003’s rich-guy touches are nowhere near as important as its interchangeable filters. These tiny filters screw on and off the ends of the earpieces easily,Read my best 10 tips for getting professional-looking results and never have another oilpainting crack again. with no special tools required. Filters labeled “high boost” and “bass boost” are included, along with the presumably neutral filters installed at the factory. With these, you can easily tune the K3003 to suit your taste. It’s a fantastic feature I wish more IEMs included.

Silicon ear tips in four sizes, instead of the usual three, give you a better chance of getting a good fit. An inline mic and volume/play/pause control works with Apple devices. The K3003 is also available in black, but why you’d want your $1,299 IEM to look just like all the other IEMs is beyond me.

Lauren found the K3003 reasonably comfortable, and liked its “really substantial” construction. They weren’t as kind to my ears, though — I felt part of the metal housing digging into my earlobes down around where the cable connects to the earpiece.

Sonically, the K3003 ranges from good to extraordinary,Take a walk on the natural side with stunning and luxurious floortiles from The Tile Shop. depending on your taste and your choice of filter. Overall, it definitely delivers on the promise of hybrid technology, with incredibly detailed treble and upper midrange superimposed over tight, perfectly defined bass lines. I loved hearing world-class bass but also getting the K3003’s super-spacious, airy highs. It was the only one of the hybrid IEMs tested here that really got the midrange right — that generally gave me a clear,Daneplast Limited UK are plastic injectionmoulding & toolmaking specialists. uncolored sound in which I heard no bothersome flaws. Its treble detail was superior to the others, and several notches above the B&W C5, which uses a single dynamic driver.

Lauren felt the K3003’s balance between bass and treble was about right with the factory-installed standard filter. I thought so, too — at least at first.

I noticed that the K3003 sounded a little sibilant on some material, so I decided to try the bass boost filter, because boosting bass tends to have the subjective effect of softening the treble. It worked! The only downside was, I found myself wishing for a filter that split the difference between the standard filter and the bass boost filter. On Holly Cole’s “Train Song” (from Temptation), the bass boost filter sounded nearly perfect. It allowed the K3003 to sprinkle the recording’s hyperactive percussion all around my head while capturing all the nuances of the deep, woofer-blowing acoustic bass line. In fact, it didn’t seem to boost the bass at all, just mellow out the treble a bit. The bass boost filter nicely portrayed the lush mix of Steely Dan’s “Aja,” sounding warmer although losing a touch of treble detail compared with the standard filter sound.

On Jeff Beck’s version of “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” (from You Had It Coming), though, the bass boost filter made the sound too soft; I lost some of the edge of Beck’s guitar. And when I was listening to the bass boost filter, I often wished for a little more treble presence no matter what the recording.

I thought the mids were some of the best I’ve heard from a universal-fit IEM. The level of the midrange vis-à-vis the bass and treble sounded about right to me, and all the singers I listened to sounded smooth and natural, with just an occasional and very slight emphasis in the upper mids/lower treble.

Lauren generally liked the sound of the K3003, complimenting its ability to sort out complicated, dense musical mixes. She did, however, feel that the midrange was a little underrepresented in the mix; unfortunately there wasn’t a “mid boost” filter she could use.

The mids and treble got a little more present, though, when I used my Motorola Droid Pro smartphone as the source instead of my iPod touch. That’s because the Droid has a high 75-ohm output impedance that reacts with the K3003’s rising impedance at high frequencies. This actually gave me a nicer balance with the bass boost filter, but sounded a tad harsh with the standard filter.