AKG reborn? – Kinda. When AKG's Vienna HQ closed in 2017, its core team founded Austrian Audio who recently appointed Audio Tuning as their global distributor. Audio Tuning are the parent company of Pro-Ject and Musical Fidelity. They cooperate with 150 hifi distributors around the globe. The first two Austrian Audio consumer models leveraging AKG DNA are the Composer [€2'499] and Full Score one [€1'499] headphone and amp respectively. The Composer runs a 49mm diamond-like carbon-coated dynamic driver with N52 neodymium motor, magnetically attached ear pads and comes with three different banana-terminated cables which attach to the headband not cups. The amplifier calls itself "very fast, with very little transient modulation, switchable true transient tech and a fully discrete analogue design without ICs in its signal path". A closer look at the specs reveals 1MHz bandwidth, 0.0005% THD under full load, max output voltage of 19dBV, max slew rate of 200V/µs and paralleled XLR and RCA inputs. Outputs are on dual 6.3mm and one XLR4. Dimensions are a compact 22 x 26 x 6,5cm and weight is 2.8kg. The volume pot runs a special gain curve and a high-speed high-impedance Jfet buffer precedes it. The power supply is linear and fan-less. The headphone claims bandwidth of 5Hz-44kHz, 112dB sensitivity, sub 0.1% THD and weighs 385g without cabling.
