Recording - May 2015 - 36

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Audio-Technica has garnered a lot of attention with its recent additions to the M-Series of
pro audio headphones, and with very good
reason. The ATH-M50 and its refined descendant the ATH-M50x (reviewed March 2014)
are widely considered among the classic
phones in the studio world; with their clear
and honest sound, comfort, convenience,
and very manageable price, they've actually
become something of a viral sensation. Go to
YouTube and type in "ATH-M50" and you'll
get over 26,000 hits, with people reviewing and commenting on them left, right
and center, generally talking about how
they absolutely destroy the "fashion"
brands in terms of believable and translatable sound quality.
But it's not much of a contest to
beat a fashion-forward headphone in
a serious test; what about the real
world of studio tracking and mixing?
The ATH-M50 and ATH-M50x do splendidly there as well. Among serious pros,
they've garnered a bit of a reputation as
a solid, unflattering, honest, reliable
workhorse that gets the job done with

The headphones themselves look very
much like their siblings at first glance,
with a generously padded and easily
adjustable headband and comfortable,
tightly sealed earcups with removable
pads. The earcups swivel by 90º for oneear use and flat storage, but do not fold
like those on the ATH-M50x.
...and on the inside
The ATH-M70x features proprietary
45 mm large-aperture drivers with
Neodymium magnets and copperclad aluminum wire voice coils, reminiscent of the design of the other MSeries phones. Like all M-Series
phones, they're closed-back, but their
splendid acoustic isolation does not
come at a price of heavy or uncomfortable wear. At just under 10
ounces, they're whisper-light and completely unfatiguing even after hours of use.
A few specs: the ATH-M70x can handle a maximum input power of 2000
mW at 1 kHz, with a 97 dB sensitivity
and a 35 ohm impedance. Quoted fre-

Audio-Technica ATH-M70x Headphones
panache. Yes, I've used the word "honest" more than once, because you never
get a sense with these phones that they're
hyping anything, hiding details, or making something sound like it isn't.
As if that wasn't enough of a bed of
laurels to rest on, Audio-Technica then followed up with a series of less expensive
M-Series phones, each with slightly different convenience features and voicing
characteristics. As I mentioned in my
review in May 2014, from the ATH-M40x
setting a new standard for a $99 headphone down to the ATH-M20x as an
absolutely stunning value for $49 street,
there's something here for everyone.
Well, almost everyone. Even with as
many fans as the ATH-M50x has, the
question remained: where can we go
from here? We were very impressed with
what Audio-Technica could deliver at
lower price points... but what if they went
in the other direction to create an even
higher-end listening experience?
So glad you asked, dear readers.
Come along with me as I open the box
and try out the new ATH-M70x!
36

RECORDING May 2015

The M-Series gains a truly impressive big brother
The ATH-M70x on the outside...
At first glance, the various M-Series
headphones can be differentiated by
external features: swivelling and/or folding vs. fixed earcups, detachable vs.
fixed cabling, multiple cable types, carrying pouches, removable and replaceable
earpads, and so forth. Living as it does at
the top of the M-Series, the ATH-M70x
comes out of the box with everything you
get with the ATH-M50x, and then some.
A beautiful semirigid zippered carrying
case holds the headphones with a small
zippered bag that contains its three removable cables. As with the ATH-M50x, you
get
two
3-meter
cables,
one
straight/coiled and one straight, that share
a screw-on gold-plated 1/4" TRS adaptor to
go over their standard miniplugs. A third
cable, intended for listening to mobile
devices, is 1.2 meters long and ends in a
miniplug with no adaptor. All three cables
have a twist-lock fastener to hold them
securely to the left earcup yet still allow
quick and easy removal and replacement.

quency response is an impressive 5 Hz to
40 kHz, albeit without tolerances listed.
Ears on
I worked with the ATH-M70x for a period of several weeks, doing my usual listening to "torture test" tracks on everything
from an iPhone to a Grace Design m902
headphone amplifier and a variety of
audio interfaces at different price points. I
used them for tracking, mixing, live performance (on my weekly radio show, I
often do live on-air improvisations as part
of my playlist), and casual listening.
When a headphone sounds "beautiful,"
the skeptical reviewer steps back and listens carefully for details and flaws in music
he or she knows well. Sometimes the perception of beauty can come from a subtle
tilt of the frequency response away from
the honest and into the exciting, from an
emphasis on boom and sparkle rather than
what's actually in the music. But sometimes
the headphone presents the music with all
of its details intact, everything where it

Recording - May 2015

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