# I haven't shopped for Headphones in 8 years - some advice please



## SimonCharlesHanna (Sep 10, 2018)

Hey everyone.

I live in a small apartment box so I rely pretty heavily on my headphones at the moment. As the title suggest I have no idea what advances have been made (open back?) and I was hoping friends here could advise me on some top recommendations/styles.

I am happy to spend up to $600.00AUD ($430.00 USD/327GBP)


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## chocobitz825 (Sep 10, 2018)

my personal recommedation is Nuraphones


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## jneebz (Sep 10, 2018)

I would definitely check out the Beyerdynamics DT 770 or 880's

https://north-america.beyerdynamic.com/kopfhorer-headsets.html?anwendung=910


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## gregh (Sep 10, 2018)

I would not use anything with noise cancellation for mixing music. Assuming you are wanting headphones for making music and coming straight out of your audio interface it is probably better to get headphones with lowish impedance - I use Beyerdynamic DT250 80 Ohm headphones and I like them quite a bit. Physically comfortable and a good sound. But there are plenty of other good ones. If I were in the market for some new ones I would probably make up a short list of two or three and buy the cheapest / whichever is on special at the time


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## MatFluor (Sep 10, 2018)

+1 for Beyerdynamic DT880s or DT770s. I use the DT880s and just love them.


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## gregh (Sep 10, 2018)

the DT770 Pro come in a 32 Ohm version too!


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Sep 10, 2018)

Thanks for the tips!

I have no idea what most of it means but.

I'd likely be purchasing it from these guys: https://www.storedj.com.au/brands/beyerdynamic


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## gregh (Sep 10, 2018)

SimonCharlesHanna said:


> Thanks for the tips!
> 
> I have no idea what most of it means but.
> 
> I'd likely be purchasing it from these guys: https://www.storedj.com.au/brands/beyerdynamic



I get stuff from them as well
also
http://headphones.com.au/ have given me good advice in the past


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## Michael Antrum (Sep 10, 2018)

I went through this about a two years ago, and ended up with a pair of Audio Technica ATH M50x.

I went to a local music warehouse (Gear4Music in York) and they had a large display all wired up and ready for testing. So test them I did.

I soon found out that my 50 year old ears were indeed around 50 years old - and I really could not discern much of a difference between the M50x's and others - certainly not that were worth four times the price.

Some I found really uncomfortable, and others felt like they were not very durable (that's you Focal !).

So I bought the M50x's, and have been happy with them ever since.

(With the money left over I got a pair of iLoud monitors and a travel case for when I'm out and about).


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Sep 10, 2018)

mikeybabes said:


> Audio Technica ATH M50x.


See my Audio Technica ATH M50s have lasted so long - fantastically durable. I was keen for an "upgrade" but sky's the limit here apparently


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## Manaberry (Sep 10, 2018)

I use DT 770 250ohm, awesome headphones. Maybe one of the most popular.


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## Vin (Sep 10, 2018)

For dynamic open back headphones, Beyerdynamic DT 880 Pro (my favorites) and Sennheiser HD600. I personally prefer them to Sennheiser HD800 and AKG K701/702, which are also quite popular for mixing. Pair them with https://store.sonarworks.com/products/reference-4-headphone-edition (Sonarworks Headphone Calibration) and you're set.


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## Loïc D (Sep 11, 2018)

I second DT880 pro.
I own a pair of ATH-M50 (not x), I love them, but my new DT880 brings something the ATH-M50 didn’t in the range of transients & reverbs.


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## SoundChris (Sep 11, 2018)

AKG K812 pro.


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Sep 11, 2018)

This is has been already mentionned, but be sure to include the Sonarworks headphone calibration plugin in your budget


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## EvilDragon (Sep 11, 2018)

DT880 250 Ohm here, I love them.


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## MarcusD (Sep 11, 2018)

Heard some really positive things about Nuraphones, might be wroth checking out:

https://www.nuraphone.com/?gclid=Cj...LwGserg6D0ZJUkOR6ogFm7mn8C5hePpoaAhFoEALw_wcB


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## TrojakEW (Sep 11, 2018)

Well I have DT880 and they are great and very very comfortable but there is no way to use only these for mixing. I can only mix using headphones too, but I found DT880 to sounds "good" most of time even with average mix. I also have AKGk240 but ...

Most of time (99%) I use Magnat LZR 580. Not very comfortable and have kind overbased lows, but that overbass help me to tweak those freqeuencies without using analytic tools. What is cool, even they are made from cheap materials and your ears scream from pain from bad ear pads is that there is audible difference (enormous) between poor and good mix. With poor mix they are muffled with almost no soundstage and they trully sound bad. When mix is good they sound really awesome.

So for me those are my "analytics" heaphones. Then I test track with DT880 and with very chep earbud headphones to balance it little more. But to tell you the truth for mixing I can live without DT880 and will prefer those bad and cheap Magnat. There is also LZR 980 model that looks nice and from what I read they are quite good sound with better construction and materials.


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## gregh (Sep 11, 2018)

TrojakEW said:


> Well I have DT880 and they are great and very very comfortable but there is no way to use only these for mixing. I can only mix using headphones too, but I found DT880 to sounds "good" most of time even with average mix. I also have AKGk240 but ...
> 
> Most of time (99%) I use Magnat LZR 580. Not very comfortable and have kind overbased lows, but that overbass help me to tweak those freqeuencies without using analytic tools. What is cool, even they are made from cheap materials and your ears scream from pain from bad ear pads is that there is audible difference (enormous) between poor and good mix. With poor mix they are muffled with almost no soundstage and they trully sound bad. When mix is good they sound really awesome.
> 
> So for me those are my "analytics" heaphones. Then I test track with DT880 and with very chep earbud headphones to balance it little more. But to tell you the truth for mixing I can live without DT880 and will prefer those bad and cheap Magnat. There is also LZR 980 model that looks nice and from what I read they are quite good sound with better construction and materials.




Very good points - I don't mix with phones, but I have mainly used them for mega detailed listening when I had not so good monitors. Now not so much but I do use them for specific purposes ( or when I need a bit more isolation)


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## Nao Gam (Sep 11, 2018)

TrojakEW said:


> Well I have DT880 and they are great and very very comfortable but there is no way to use only these for mixing. I can only mix using headphones too, but I found DT880 to sounds "good" most of time even with average mix. I also have AKGk240 but ...
> 
> Most of time (99%) I use Magnat LZR 580. Not very comfortable and have kind overbased lows, but that overbass help me to tweak those freqeuencies without using analytic tools. What is cool, even they are made from cheap materials and your ears scream from pain from bad ear pads is that there is audible difference (enormous) between poor and good mix. With poor mix they are muffled with almost no soundstage and they trully sound bad. When mix is good they sound really awesome.
> 
> So for me those are my "analytics" heaphones. Then I test track with DT880 and with very chep earbud headphones to balance it little more. But to tell you the truth for mixing I can live without DT880 and will prefer those bad and cheap Magnat. There is also LZR 980 model that looks nice and from what I read they are quite good sound with better construction and materials.


I have some broken cheap bass-heavy JBLs that will need tape to be held together. They should do a similar job as backups


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## mauriziodececco (Sep 11, 2018)

For a number of wrong assumption, i ended up buying the Audio Tecnica ATH-R70x. I am super-happy having them, i alternate between good old Genelec 1031 and them depending on the time of the day and the mood of my neighbors.
The wrong assumptions had nothing to do with music performance :->.


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## danbo (Sep 15, 2018)

If you want absolutely perfect reproduction - Stax electrostatic headphones. They are wire with gain. These are open back, and reproduce acoustic instruments more accurately than anything I've tried (dynamics, planers, horns, etc). There is the 4070 studio cans which aren't produced anymore, I have a few pairs, that are closed. 

For general studio use and cheaper I've found the Beyer DT's comfortable and sound good, but they are closed. Sound pretty good for closed headphones.


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Oct 19, 2018)

Okay so I bought Beyer 880 pros 250ohms...Downloaded the sonarworks software. I've been testing out the system-wide version with the correct loaded profile and I cannot perceive the difference? In fact if I couldn't see the meters moving I'd swear it wasn't working at all. Should I try it inside my DAW? Am I doing something wrong?


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## X-Bassist (Oct 19, 2018)

SimonCharlesHanna said:


> Okay so I bought Beyer 880 pros 250ohms...Downloaded the sonarworks software. I've been testing out the system-wide version with the correct loaded profile and I cannot perceive the difference? In fact if I couldn't see the meters moving I'd swear it wasn't working at all. Should I try it inside my DAW? Am I doing something wrong?



You need to test the reference 4 headphone edition. It has presets for each type of headphone. It should be included in the trail version, but if you check this page you can see the $99 headphone edition at the bottom.
https://www.sonarworks.com/reference


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Oct 19, 2018)

I am sure I did what I was suppose to do


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## X-Bassist (Oct 19, 2018)

SimonCharlesHanna said:


> I am sure I did what I was suppose to do



So since your using systemwide, you are listening out your computer headphone output, and NOT out of an audio interface, right? Systemwide is for your system, not an interface. Reference 4 studio is for speakers hooked up to an interface, and Reference 4 headphones is for headphones plugged into an interface. If you are listening through a usb or firewire interface, you won’t hear the systemwide adjustments AFAIK. Then again, this is how it was on reference 3 and I have not updated, so perhaps it’s all changed?


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Oct 19, 2018)

X-Bassist said:


> So since your using systemwide, you are listening out your computer headphone output, and NOT out of an audio interface, right? Systemwide is for your system, not an interface. Reference 4 studio is for speakers hooked up to an interface, and Reference 4 headphones is for headphones plugged into an interface. If you are listening through a usb or firewire interface, you won’t hear the systemwide adjustments AFAIK. Then again, this is how it was on reference 3 and I have not updated, so perhaps it’s all changed?


Ahk that may be the issue. Let me check again - would make sense since I could hear absolutely no difference


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Oct 19, 2018)

So this is enabled right? Sounds much flatter. Is that to say that the flat sound is more representative of the actual sound?


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## X-Bassist (Oct 19, 2018)

SimonCharlesHanna said:


> So this is enabled right? Sounds much flatter. Is that to say that the flat sound is more representative of the actual sound?



Yes, the red line is indicating that you want a flat sound (even though the headphones do not have a flat sound naturally) so it is adding the curve (indicated by the profile you chose above) to flatten the signal. Below you can choose other target curves if your intention is not to get flat sound. But with most mixing you want to get as flat a sound as possible, so you are hearing the mix and not the headphones. Many headphones (like my AT50's ) have a bass boost that has to be flattened to get an accurate representation of the bass in the mix. Otherwise you might mix with less bass, thinking it's more (because of the headphones). The profiles work well for me and it has curves for most popular brands of headphones.


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Oct 19, 2018)

X-Bassist said:


> Yes, the red line is indicating that you want a flat sound (even though the headphones do not have a flat sound naturally) so it is adding the curve (indicated by the profile you chose above) to flatten the signal. Below you can choose other target curves if your intention is not to get flat sound. But with most mixing you want to get as flat a sound as possible, so you are hearing the mix and not the headphones. Many headphones (like my AT50's ) have a bass boost that has to be flattened to get an accurate representation of the bass in the mix. Otherwise you might mix with less bass, thinking it's more (because of the headphones). The profiles work well for me and it has curves for most popular brands of headphones.


The difference is huge - I can't see how I can do without the program especially considering I need to mix with them (for the most part)

Thanks for your help :D!


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