What's new

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

SimonCharlesHanna

Senior Member
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)
 
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
 
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).
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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)
 
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
 
Top Bottom