Hi!
I’m looking to buy a set of really good headphones. The Dre Beats Solo HD do sound great but surely the price is driven by the name.
What do you use for total immersion?

Shure se420 here. (now 425 with replaceable cables)

fabulous sound detail, pick up stuff you havnt heard in recordings you know well.
very secure fit, never come out unless i want them to
pretty much absolute sound isolation (for u and those around you)
perfect for closing your eyes on the commute and going to a happy place 🙂

a quick warning to go 530/320 or even another brand if your music taste is bass heavy, mine it quite acoustic and 420 are perfect

What music do you listen to and what is your source? If you’re listening to Dubstep using your phone/mp3 player and 192kbit/s mp3’s I don’t think it really matters that much

I bought my daughter some Sony headphones from Amazon for about £20 this Christmas and they sound fantastic, which is good news as I’m a recovering and now pretty skint audiophile.

However as the spec is eye watering (?) and mind blowing I’d go for some Audio Technica ATH-M50’s

Edit – oh and a headphone amp too.

It’ll be multi use really. Plugging in to my iDevices, the TV and my sony HiFi. Hard to sum up what I’m listening to. Hendrix/Band of Gypsies, Roots Manuva, The National, Clinton Fearon and Crystsl Castles have all been listened to this week.
I guess I want the balance between great sound and bling

Bling (open back)

£1700 🙁

(closed back)

£200

(closed back – but not bling – can’t decide

£140

more techno – bluetooth and sound isolating but hmmmm

£330

Edit £249 here

Trt the beats mixr, I spent along time searching and listening and these were the best I found below £200

Try some -I ended up with AT-M50 after trying them, they have a demo/tryout thing on their site.

Find a shop who can do similar for others?

OH wanted headphones for Christmas. After auditioning every set in a 30 mile radius, she ended up with these.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/headphones/audio-technica/ath-es7/audi-ath-e57-blk

The ATH- M50’s are very good. They don’t colour the sound too much. It was a close call between those and the Beyerdynamics DT250. Fantastic reference monitoring sound. Flat attenuation, no colouring. The DT250’s unfortunately have high impedence and need a head phone pre-amp for non-studio use. Thus making iDevices etc. sound very quiet. The M50’s work fine.

The Beats things are just expensive bass heavy poser cans.

Grado SR-80 is my standard recommendation! Well priced and sound awesome, very clear and natural. I don’t like Sennheisers, too bass-hyped and muffled sounding. The Grados don’t have an abundance of bass but it’s plenty (they don’t sound thin or anything) and they don’t really become fatiguing at any point.

The price of some of these is eye watering 😯

I went for the ATH M50s as well – very pleased with them. I bought them mostly for recording/studio use though.

For daily listening to carry around my Soundmagic E10s are incredible, and only £30.

grados are a good choice as long as you listen in private.

http://www.sennheiser.co.uk/uk/home_en.nsf/root/private_headphones_hifi_audiophile-headphones_004465

driven by a half decent headphone amp like a rega or something. Best sounds you’ll hear this side of £1000’sss

I use DT250s for mixdowns but if I was buying something now it’d be these – http://www.aiaiai.dk/store/headphones/tma-1-studio-no-mic

This morning I just took deliver of a pair of sennheiser momentum and a pair of sennheiser Amperior.
Just running them in for some testing. Both sound great but in different ways.
Amperiors are uber clear but a little tiring. Momentum s are super comfy but not quite as attacking – more smooth.

Usually anything by dre is a marketing lead pile of shite …….

Beats Solo HDs are not all that great. I have some.

Rachel

I shall look more carefully into the M50s and SR80s I think. Thank you all

I’m looking to buy a set of really good headphones. The Dre Beats Solo HD do sound great but surely the price is driven by the name.

The Beats things are just expensive bass heavy poser cans.

Usually anything by dre is a marketing lead pile of shite …

Beats Solo HDs are not all that great. I have some.

Rachel
All this is true. A pair of the latest EarPods that come free with an iPhone will pwn anything by Dre, and if you want better isolation, and plenty of bass, then M6 Sports by Mee Electronics, which can be had for around $30-40 wee in Beats shoes.
I’ve done direct comparisons using my own iPod and music I know well, ripped at 320Kb, and the Beats are grossly overpriced rubbish aimed at people more concerned with being seen to be cool, and little concerned with how good what they’re listening to sounds.

Have a pair of Beats Solo HD, they are not bad but they are not great OH got them for me for less than 100£ on a pre-xmas sale so for the money they are fine. I disagree they are worse than they are worse than the EarPods.

Havign said that I dropped by the Sony Centre the other day for no other reason that to browse and stuck a pair of MDR-1Rs on my iPhone and heard a few 320Kb AACs… They sounded really really good and you can find them if you search for less than £200. If the beats were not a gift from the OH I’d buy the MDRs in a heartbeat.

I’ve just bought a set of KRK KNS6400s:

£79.95 at http://www.pmtonline.co.uk/

Those Sony’s look nice, but there’s no way I’d pay that much for over-ear cans; I don’t listen at home through ‘phones, and walking around town with a pair on makes you look such a complete tit. Plus I wear canalphones at work when operating noisy machinery, so they multitask.

Any chance I could ask some of you chaps…

I tried some earphones once that had a mode that didn’t play any music but made ambient noise almost dissapear. What’s this function called ? Can you get in-the-ear type earphones that offer this ?
Thinking of something to wear at work when I need to concentrate. Thanks.

I tried some earphones once that had a mode that didn’t play any music but made ambient noise almost dissapear. What’s this function called ?

Active noise-cancelling by what you describe; they’ll listen to ambient noise and then invert the signal to your ears – this cancelling it out.

Little point in considering headphones without considering your source and whether or not a headphone amp would make a difference.

Over the last month or two I’ve bought some Grado SR80i’s and a FiiO E17 DAC & headphone amp; I simply would not bother using the Grados without using the FiiO – I use an old Rotel CD player with a coax digital output to the FiiO.

I’ve stopped buying digital downloads and gone back to CD as the difference is very palpable.

I use the Sennheiser HD600 that joolsburger links to. Amazing detail, but open back so sound escapes and can annoy those around. Also, can get hot with extended listening.

the motorhead ones have been well received…not too bass heavy.

though for the money, if you can track down goldring’s open-backed gr20? for under £30 then your’e laughing.

maybe a gander on the play.com website?

I,ve got some Bose that are excellent for just under £100

Beats by Dre – the best way to show people you have no taste in music whatsoever.

Grado SR80 are fantastic nothing comes close for the money, or quite a lot more money. Check out the reviews. Not for the train though.

As above +1, long time Grado SR80 user and despite owning many headphones over the past 10 years that cost 5 times as much i find myself using the Grados more often than not purely because i enjoy the listening experience much more, a good source is key obviously and if you do listen to rips then a high bit rate is preferred otherwise you will hear artefacts.

The Bowers + Wilkins P3 (or P5) are very capable as well and rather better for “public” listening, very well made and rather a premium looking product compared to the rather utilitarian Grados but for sheer pleasure you’d be hard pushed to better the SR80’s for musical enjoyment, pair them with a suitable headphone amp and they’ll fly – i prefer to use my Ray Samuels Predator Dac/Amp with my Grados but it is not strictly necessary to do so.

Another HD600 user here.. I have had them for years and still love them. I do agree with csb that they can get a bit hot, but only after extended listening. Also the pad is quite firm so some may not like the fit.

The worst thing about the Beats headphones is that they don’t actually have lots of real bass, they just have a prominent mid-bass hump plus a load of second and third order harmonic distortion on the low frequencies – which does a great job of fooling the inexperienced into thinking they have awesome lows when actually they’re artificially thickening and fattening the sound at the expense of truly big dynamic and responsive lows. It’s the same ‘trick’ that’s pulled with all boomboxes and party speakers because it’s so much cheaper than making speakers that can move enough air to do real lows, except there’s no excuse with headphones as physics is actually on your side! Really really disappointing.

FORGET any form of WiFi headphones …. it simply doesnt have the bandwidth of copper cable. Fine for watching TV in bed without disturbing the wife but for a serious audiophile then just don’t bother.

My mate makes a headphone amp… yrs for £342…

Personally I can’t tell the the difference but hey ho hes flogging 2 per month.

I like Seinhauser & Bose

I dunno what hymm-sheet chiefgrooveguru is reading from or what his background is but that’s almost word for word what a mate said with regard to a listening session to a set of “high-end beats headphones” that a friend of ours got bought for xmas a couple of years ago, for reference the mate in question was employed by BBC Radio for 25 yrs as a sound engineer and ended up being principle sound engineer for R3 for the last 15yrs so he obviously knows what he’s talking about and designed his own custom built PMC floor standers based on their MB2 model but with his own crossover circuitry as nothing else measured up to his golden ears, he used to be the preferred sound engineer of the Berlin Phil though so i tend to take his advice rather than write him off as a crank.

The Dre Beats Solo HD do sound great but surely the price is driven by the name.

Stay away.

I got some Audio Technica M50’s as my first decent headphone. One of the best bangs for buck in terms of sound quality – you’ll pay twice as much for beats and get worse sound quality.

AKG K550 from Richer sounds. Also tried a pair of Grados but preferred the sound of the AKG.

What Hifi rates AKG very highly.

Headphones are like saddles … Everyone has a personal favourite so just try as many as you can.

I’m also searching for a perfect pair of can’s and I’ve auditioned everything I can get my hands on.
Most of the highly regarded headphones really haven’t lived up to expectations.
And to be fair some have just sounded shite – b&w I’m looking at you …..

Next on my list are vmoda m80 –

v. interesting thread
Silly question – Why do you need a dedicated headphone amp?
Is it better than the standard outlet on my seperates amplifier?
Or is this just audiophilia?