Thanks for your detailed impressions. The only other set I've read on head-fi talked about breaking down and weeping tears of unmitigated joy, and while I appreciate forthright expressions of lunacy, it's admittedly nice too have something a bit more restrained posted here.

Bass has never been AKG's strong point anyway, so I'm wondering how much of the issues in the report were due to amping and how much were just the K812. If these end up being somewhat picky, then it would be following their flagship precedent. Certainly the HD800 is a picky bastard, so no favors are being granted it using the M-Stage in this comparison. Shame AKG didn't have anything else on hand.

Thanks for posting your impressions Kyle. Some really good reference points you've provided for us familiar with the recordings and other headphones you've used.

Kyle's writeup has me more interested than I was before, thanks for posting it. 

A very interesting headphone from AKG for sure!  Fish, start saving!   

i think i'll wait until Tdock weighs in.

That's one dude who knows stuff but almost never meshes with my listening tastes and impressions, but I am also interested in what he has to say. He did help the community with his negative impressions of the K550. We didn't understand why he and Tyll had differing impressions at first but then it drove further exploration which uncovered manufacturing inconsistencies.

Tdock is all over the place. His impressions make zero sense to me most of the time, and personally I don't trust him (see his "performance" in the MA900 thread when Sony refused to give him a review sample --- suddenly Sony was the devil).

I'm pretty sure RhythmDevils was the one who did the most to point out the K550's flaws *and* offer people a mod to fix them. IIRC he was run out of the K550 thread because people didn't like him insulting their beloved product.

Does anyone have these on-hand so I can borrow the stock cable, or can anyone provide the pinouts?  Free DHC cable for whoever can answer this question.