I replaced the pads on my AKG Q701 headphones today for the 4th time. It made me realize that I’ve used these headphones for at least 40 hours a week for 14 years straight. I’ve had to repair the left side speaker solder joint a few times, but they’re designed to be easily torn down and repaired. Truly BIFL headphones.
I’ve heard that the newer AKG K702 headphones are identical but I can’t vouch for that. They go for around $250.
That’s quite interesting. I can see the benefits offered by each arrangement, curious to me that they opted to swap pin functions from 3-to-4 (as opposed to adding the extra ground on the extra pin and keeping everything else the same,) but I suppose this also ensures that things don’t ‘half-work in a weird way’ if someone uses the wrong connection method.