Austrian Audio The Composer

Verdict

If a vigorous, dynamic and thoroughly engaging rendition of your favourite music is what you’re after, and if you don’t mind paying for it, Austrian Audio would like you to meet The Composer…

Introduction

It’s been getting on for eight years since a group of AKG employees declined to involve themselves in the move from Vienna to California dictated by parent company Harman, and decided to set up their own headphone company instead. 

So it hasn’t taken all that long for Austrian Audio to establish its credentials not only where consumer-designed headphones are concerned but also with studio-grade microphones too.

Until now, though, the vast majority of Austrian Audio products have been aimed at the mainstream – some are even contesting the entry level. But with the portentously named The Composer, the company is setting its sights on the rather more rarefied area of the market contested by the likes of Grado, Sennheiser and, yes, AKG… 

Availability

The Austrian Audio The Composer wired over-ear open-backed headphones are available in the United Kingdom for £2249 per pair. In the United States you’re looking at $2699, while in Australia the going rate is AU$3849 or thereabouts.

Need I say with undue emphasis that a) this is plenty of money for a pair of headphones, and b) you’ve plenty of alternatives to consider. Brands as credible as Beyerdynamic, Grado and Sennheiser (to name but three) all have similarly configured, similarly priced products with which to turn your head…    

Design

• Over-ear, open-backed
• Tilting earpads
• Weighs 385g

Fundamentally, you know what you’re getting here. These are over-ear headphones, after all, and where design is concerned no brand in its right mind is about to throw caution to the wind. 

So The Composer look like a regular pair of over-ear headphones – albeit a pair that uses carefully selected materials that are equally carefully assembled. The multi-hinged yokes allow the headphones to fold flat and afford a degree of fore/aft movement as well in addition the four tilt position the earcups can be moved into.

The earpads are of soft pleather-covered memory foam, and the rear of the earcups is a fine wire mesh that a) affords a view of the back of the drivers, and b) means these Austrian Audio are about as open-backed as they come.

The headband is a two-tier design – the inside is a light, flexible mesh-and-pleather strip that keeps the headphones secure and your head mercifully unsweaty at the same time. Outside that is a slim aluminium band that locates the headphones and keeps them in position. With admirable understatement, it carries the legend ‘The Composer’ and ‘Made in Austria’ on the inside. The only other branding is the company name on each of the slender earcup-to-yoke bars.  

Specification

• 49mm full-range DLC dynamic drivers
• Three detachable cables
• 5Hz – 44kHz frequency response

Austrian Audio has fitted a couple of 49mm full-range dynamic drivers to do the audio business – each diaphragm is coated with Diamond-Like Carbon for strength, stiffness and minimal weight. Austrian Audio is claiming a frequency response of 5Hz – 44Hz, which is both way below and above the range of human hearing.

Each one is fed by a cable that fits into the earcup using a bespoke two-pin banana jack connector. There are a choice of three cables in the big, businesslike box in which The Composer arrive: a 1.3m length that terminates in a 4.4mm Pentacon connector, a 3m length that finishes with a four-pin XLR and another 3m cable that’s terminated with a 3.5mm plug. This last can be fitted with the supplied 6.3mm adapter. 

Sound Quality

• Positive, open and dynamic
• A real sense of scale
• Very revealing, for better and for worse

First things first: expensive headphones in general, and the Austrian Audio The Composer specifically, tend to require an equally high-achieving source of music if they’re going to give you everything they’ve got. Yes, you could plug The Composer into the headphone socket of your laptop – but you know as well as I do that’s not a good idea. These headphones are the end-point of a system, after all, and a weak link in the chain will be ruthlessly exposed by these headphones.

But with a connection made to the 4.4mm output of one of iFi’s iDSD Diablo 2 headphone amplifiers, The Composer waste little time in establishing their credentials. And what direct, dynamic and thoroughly revealing credentials they are too. 

Given a big 24-bit/192kHz FLAC file of David Bowie’s Sound and Vision to deal with, the iFi and Austrian Audio combination is little short of thrilling. The sound The Composer serve up is absolutely wide open, with an enormous sense of space to the wide and deep soundstage they create. 

The attention they pay to the finest details of the recording is easily described as fanatical – but the balance they strike between analysis and enjoyment is beautifully judged. Yes, they’ll let you know about every facet of the recording, and give even the most transient of details the appropriate weight – but everything’s in context, and everything is in service of the bigger picture.

There may be plenty of space available on the soundstage, and the headphones may give just as much emphasis to the silences and gaps, but they unify the recording into something approaching a genuine performance.

They’re a hugely positive listen – the typically close-mic’d vocal during a 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC file of Billie Eilish’s All the Good Girls Go to Hell is direct and unambiguous. The same recording allows The Composer to demonstrate their mastery of tonality (neutral and natural every time), their ability to journey the whole of the frequency range without over- or understating any area (uncanny), and their ability to hit prodigiously hard at the bottom end without any lack of control or impact on momentum.

The dynamic of the recording, both where the obvious shift in intensity and the more subtle harmonic variations are concerned, are relayed with the sort of effortlessness that’s the mark of a truly accomplished pair of headphones.   

The Composer express the hectic rhythms and stunt tempo-changes of Chick Corea’s return to Forever without breaking sweat. The control they exert over the attack and decay of individual sounds is absolute, and they load even the most rapid, fleeting elements of the recording with a stack of information regarding tone, texture and intensity.

Really, about the only problem of any note concerns lack of tolerance The Composer have for ropey recording or small, compressed digital audio files – combine the two, for instance with a listen to a 320kbps MP3 file Holy Calamafuck by Run the Jewels and the lack of patience the Austrian Audio have for this nonsense is almost powerful. Is it rough and jagged around the edges? Is it squashed and compressed? This is exactly how The Composer will make it sound, and I get the strong impression they’ll judge you as a listener at the same time.

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