Archives for December 23, 2020

Thursday: AKG N700 NC M2 ANC/Bluetooth Over-Ears for $120

Funny how “A Samsung Brand” is now a marketing point for AKG headphones now-a-days 🙂 But let’s start from the beginning…

In a sale of …Gifts Santa Forgot, as part of their Thursday 12/24/20 daily deals, Woot is offering the new condition closed-back over-ear AKG N700 NC Mark II bluetooth/ANC headphones for $120 with up to three per customer at the sale price. They come with a 1-year AKG warranty…

A carrying case, and USB-C charging [FINALLY!] and 3.5mm cables are included. The specs promise 23-32 hours of playing time (depending on which features you use (bluetooth and/or ANC), with 3 hour charging time.

They have ambient mode, multi-point, and you get a 3-month Sirius XM free trial too…

Note however that per the Samsung website these are bluetooth 4.2, and they only support the basic bluetooth profiles (A2DP V1.3, AVRCP V1.5, HFP V1.6), no apt-Xes, no AAC, no LDAC…

They too have the now almost-obligatory house-app, in this case, the “AKG Headphone App” available for iOS and Google Play and Samsung Play [ha!]…

Their formal name is GP-N700HAHCIWA 🙂

It is an interesting hodge-podge of specs, you go modern with USB-C, and ambient, and a custom app, yet they use the older bluetooth version and only the basic bluetooth profiles. It’s like someone went into the AKG/Samsung warehouse and pulled out whatever parts were available and built a headphone with them. Sort of like the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Lite smartphone 🙂

More headphones in daily deals, at Best Buy’s website they have the JLab Epic Air ANC truly-wireless going for $45, and for your PADs/DAPs a 64GB SanDisk EXTrEEmEE micro-SDXC for $20, and a 1TB SanDisk USB-C portable SSD for $125…

Thursday: Shure SE-846 IEMs for $549 (with both BT5 and wired cables)

You want quality name-brand IEMs but can’t decide between bluetooth and wired audio? Well, you can have both until Thursday 12/24/20 at 11:59pm eastern, because B&H Photo is offering as part of their daily deals the new condition Shure SE-846 in-ears for $549 with free US shipping in the “Clear” and “Black” color schemes. The other two color options are NOT on sale.

This Shure kit includes THREE Shure cables:

  • Shure RMCE-UNI universal mic/remote cable
  • Shure EAC-64 MMCX cable
  • RMCE-BT2 bluetooth 5.0 cable

The nice thing with these is that if you have other Shure earphones, you can mix and match their cables, so you could bluetooth-ize an older pair of Shure IEMs [as long as the connectors as compatible]…

The kit also includes a carrying case, the Shure Fit Kit with different types of eartips, adapters and such, a microUSB charging cable, and a 2-year warranty…

Massdrop X E-MU Purpleheart Closed Over-Ears for $75

Knock, On Wood, Baby! If you love wood (no pun intended) in your headphones, you can get the new condition wired closed-back over-ear E-MU Purpleheart headphones in the “Massdrop X” edition at the Massdrop website for $75 with free US shipping and free US returns.

This is an “in-stock drop” or as today’s Massdrop kids like to call it, a “Ready to ship” item, so it will ship quickly. With the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, the shipping estimate is slightly longer than the usual two business days, as of the time of writing the shipping estimate is January 4 in 2021.

Being a Massdrop collaboration, this comes with a 1-year manufacturer warranty.

This is the most spartan package ever, you get the headphones and nothing else. The cable is glued-in, so no accessories included 🙂

PS: if the look is familiar, yes, there is a “Fostex the people” connection. Here’s a blast from the past video from Tyll with engineer Chan Ming Tat talking about the creation of the E-MU wood line…