We love offering practical buying advice on the latest affordable gadgets here at TechRadar. But sometimes what we love even more is to indulge in the most high-end, cutting-edge, luxurious (sometimes ridiculously cost-prohibitive) tech on the planet. That's what we bring you in these Money no Object columns – you can read the whole series here.
AKG had almost seven decades of Vienna-based operation under its belt when Harman (the company that acquired AKG in 1994) decided back in 2016 that what was required was a relocation to California.
On a scale of one to ten (where ‘one’ is ‘not at all’ and ‘ten’ is ‘absolutely, utterly flabbergasted’), how surprised do you think Harman was when some AKG employees declined this ‘opportunity’? Using the same scale, how surprised was Harman to find these same less-than-gruntled ex-employees decided to use their manifest experience to set up their own audio company? How surprised to learn it was to be called ‘Austrian Audio’? And how surprised to find Austrian Audio immediately started turning out profoundly competitive headphones (for the consumer market) and microphones (for pro applications)?
Having established itself as one of the true heroes of the mainstream headphones market in double-quick time, Austrian Audio has now trained its sights on the pricier sectors. The rather awkwardly-named The Composer are wired, open-backed over-ear headphones that cost $2,699 / £2,249 (around AU$3,800) which means they’re going up against some of the most credible, most high-achieving and most recognisable brands around – Grado, say, or Focal (see the Focal Stellia). Or AKG…
Austrian Audio The Composer: what are they?
So yes, The Composer is a pair of headphones. Open-backed headphones, what’s more, which is a statement of intent all by itself – it’s a configuration which a) promises a more spacious, open sound than the closed-back alternative, and b) strongly suggests The Composer are for solo listening. Because ‘open-backed’ means exactly what it says – the rear of the earcups (and therefore the driver that’s producing sound) are not enclosed, which means that sound will leak from the outside of the headphones in the most anti-social manner.
The Composer are also hard-wired headphones – none of your newfangled Bluetooth nonsense here. The advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement are obvious when you think about it. Wireless connectivity is all well and good (super-convenient and all that), but even the most efficient new Bluetooth codecs such as aptX Lossless are only capable of delivering a CD-standard 16bit/44.1kHz digital audio file – and that’s if you can find a source of music that’s compatible. Wired headphones, on the other hand, can deal with whatever you put into them, no matter how big and information-rich a file it might be.
Some brands try to give their expensive over-ear headphones a little visual pizzazz to try and justify the asking price beyond the way they sound, but Austrian Audio obviously recognises the futility of this. So The Composer are a sleek, quite minimal and understated pair of headphones, constructed mostly from as little aluminium and pleather as possible. Both tiers of the two-tier headband are slender, as are the bars that attach the articulating yokes to the ear cups themselves.
In keeping with the minimalist aesthetic, branding is underplayed too. One arm on each ear cup carries the words ‘Austrian Audio’, and behind the slim mesh covering on the rear of the cups, the 49mm full-range dynamic driver is visible – it carries the company’s stylised ‘A’. Other than that, the inside of the outer headband carries the words ‘The Composer’ and ‘Made in Austria’, which will only be visible to those who are uncomfortably close to the wearer.
Not even remotely understated, however, is the big wooden box in which The Composer arrive. As well as ample padding to keep the headphones secure in transit, it also contains three cables that cover pretty much every connectivity eventuality. Two are 3m long – one is terminated in a 3.5mm jack and comes supplied with a 6.3mm adapter, the other finishes in a four-pin XLR. The other cable has 4.4mm Pentacon termination, and is a more manageable 1.3m in length.
Austrian Audio The Composer: what makes them special?
I’ll get to just how special The Composer sound shortly, but for now it’s worth noting that performance is not the only special thing about them.
A big advantage of the design of these headphones is that they weight in at just 385g – and in a sector of the headphones market that routinely delivers alternatives weighing twice as much, it helps with comfort no end. Add in contact points that are small and judiciously padded, a ‘tilt’ mechanism that allows the ear cups to swivel to suit the angle of your own individual ears, and that open-backed arrangement that means ear-heat isn’t as readily trapped as it is with a closed-back design, and you’ve a pair of headphones that are no trouble whatsoever to wear. They stay comfortable through even the longest listening sessions.
It’s also worth pointing out that The Composer are not the most tolerant headphones around when it comes to the system they’re part of, or the music they’re given to deal with. No one in their right mind is dropping over two grand on a pair of headphones to just hook them up to the headphone socket of their laptop (are they? Say it isn’t so!) but nevertheless it needs stating: you won’t hear much of what The Composer are capable of unless they’re wired to a proper source of music. A decent headphone amplifier, one of the best digital audio players or the headphone socket of a capable piece of domestic hi-fi would have to be a minimum. And the same is true of digital audio files – obviously if The Composer are playing music sourced from CD or vinyl it’s not an issue, but compressed digital audio files are exposed quite ruthlessly by the fidelity of these headphones.
But let’s suppose you’ve done the decent thing: the music you’re listening to is of a worthwhile standard and it’s being delivered by some equally worthwhile electronics. Heard this way, The Composer are a pretty compelling listen.
No matter if it’s some vinyl via a good amplifier or some 24bit/96kHZ FLAC files from a digital audio player, The Composer are a thrillingly open, informative and confident listen. They’re carefully neutral and natural where tonality is concerned, and manage to deliver the complete frequency range without overstating or underplaying any area of it. (Here, I’ll just mention that the diaphragms of those 49mm dynamic drivers are coated in Diamond-Like Carbon for optimal stiffness and responsiveness, and the resulting 5Hz - 44kHz frequency response is more than adequate for human hearing.)
They can retain and reveal an extraordinary amount of detail, and are just as attentive to the transient, fleeting elements of a recording as they are the broad strokes. They’re able to put every aspect of a recording into proper context and, what’s more, do so without sounding in any way analytical or dispassionate. They’re no lapel-grabbers, The Composer, but they’re always and only a musical pair of headphones. Which may sound like an odd thing to say, until you remember how many pairs of pricey cans seem to have forgotten their primary purpose in a quest for a forensic assessment of a recording.
Dynamic headroom is considerable, so changes in volume and/or intensity are relayed faithfully. The soundstage the Austrian Audio can create is big and believable, with a huge amount of space available in both the left/right and front/back directions - even the most complex recordings are laid out coherently, and each element has ample below-room in which to do its thing. And control of the low frequencies is sufficient that The Composer fairly motor along, expressing rhythms with real positivity and keep momentum levels high.
Austrian Audio The Composer: are they worth it?
With the obvious caveats, the short answer to this question is “yes”. The slightly longer answer is “yes, all day long”. The Composer by Austrian Audio are a positive, direct, balanced and thoroughly engaging listen, and as such deserve to be on the shortlist of anyone fortunate enough to have the sufficient readies.
Just make sure you’re in a position to do The Right Thing where everything else is concerned…
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