Best Headphones EVAR!!!111

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Originally posted by natgun
ok a few questions, #1 what is the difference between sealed and open headphones?

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The biggest difference you'll notice is sound isolation. Sealed headphones keep the sound of your music confined to you, and keep outside sounds out. Open headphones don't isolate sound, so when you're listening, you'll hear your music *and* the sounds around you, and the other people around you will hear your music.

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Originally posted by natgun
i plan on using these with my MP3 player at school, will the noise bother people around me? would they be louder to others than a regular pair of bud earphones? do you guys know of a good online store that sells the SR60's at a good price? the cheapest i can find is $70.

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I wouldn't recommend the SR60's if you don't want others to hear your music. When listening to them at comfortable levels (not loud at all), anyone within 10 feet or so of the wearer will be able to hear the music loud and clear. They are MUCH louder than plain ol' buds to the people around you. (The sound is GREAT, though!)

For use at school, any high-quality open headphones will most likely be too loud to other people. You'll definitely want to look into a sealed pair. The Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's and Beyerdynamic DT 231's are supposed to be good reasonably-priced sealed headphones. Sennheiser also makes some less expensive sealed models, like the HD 212 Pro.

for gaming i would say the sony mdr-v6 ... i have a pair of senn 495 and they do sound great for music but they lack alot of punch u might want during gaming.. also most sennheisers are open design.... which could be a hassle if youre at a loud lan

sky, i dont really care if they hear the music or not, i was just worried that it would be annoyingly loud. im just in the market for a good pair of headphones for gaming and my mp3 player.

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Originally posted by natgun
sky, i dont really care if they hear the music or not, i was just worried that it would be annoyingly loud. im just in the market for a good pair of headphones for gaming and my mp3 player.

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Sealed headphones also block outside sound from getting in, as well (naturally), so if that matters enough to you (eg, you want to listen to music on a loud subway) then they're worth considering.

ok, first off, dont get open ear headphones. You need to turn the volume up way higher than closed headphones to be at the same volume level since alot of the music escapes out and a lot of noise seeps in with open ear headphones

Sennheiser - absolutely best for music. THese have THE MOST ACCURATE bass reproduction and are good at playing all kinds of music. well worth your money

Sony - Recommended for portabel use, built to last, make sure it is atleast mdr 500, prefferably 600 or 700.

Grado - I dont have any problem with them, but i prefer Sennheiser.

I Do not game that much, so i do not know what headphones are best for gaming, But I can tell you that Senn are much better than grado for Music. make sure your MP3's are atleast 160, even better at 192. If you are investing money in good headphones, better have good music. mp3's @ 112 or 128 would be like buying a $250 DVD player and buying a 5 inch B&W TV to watch it on

i encode everything at variable bitrate 100%, they sound great. im actually over budget at $70 for the grados, the only cheap closed senns dont have as good sound as the grados from what i have read.

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Originally posted by natgun
i encode everything at variable bitrate 100%, they sound great. im actually over budget at $70 for the grados, the only cheap closed senns dont have as good sound as the grados from what i have read.

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Okay, earlier cheap closed Senns don't sound very good. But with the HD 202 and especially the HD 212Pro, you'd be hard-pressed to find any sub-$50 closed headphones that sound better than these.

Check out beachaudio.com

MUCH better than headphones.com, that site sucks IMO btw. :p

Bought my Panasonic HT970 for about $53 I believe. Well worth the $$$. Best bass in it's class, features 50mm drivers. :eek: And also has a VMSS which increases the bass further with a AA battery, actually feels like my head is next to a real subwoofer. :D

i just ordered a pair of the sennheiser 280 pros from newegg for 65 free shipping. if you want the Best sound get open. if you want good sound and you are in a place thats noisy, bet closed. the open dont block noise at all

as far as the amps the cost as much as you want to spend

i reccomend checking into the cha47 and the meta42 for good amps

Personally, I tried the Panasonic 970's. I didn't like them at all. For all its bass feeling, they have no mids and tinny highs. You can do far better than the Panasonic 970's even at half their price.

And Panasonic has NEVER been renowned for their headphones - sound-quality-wise.

And headphones.com is NOT Headroom, BTW. Headphones.com is a completely different vendor that sells mostly mass-market crappy headphones. Headroom's Web site is actually headphone.com (note the absence of the "s").

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Originally posted by Nasty
Personally, I tried the Panasonic 970's. I didn't like them at all. For all its bass feeling, they have no mids and tinny highs. You can do far better than the Panasonic 970's even at half their price.

And Panasonic has NEVER been renowned for their headphones - sound-quality-wise.

And headphones.com is NOT Headroom, BTW. Headphones.com is a completely different vendor that sells mostly mass-market crappy headphones. Headroom's Web site is actually headphone.com (note the absence of the "s").

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Well I dunno I've tried a few headphones and these sound great to me. Of course I bought them mostly for LAN parties, so I don't do a lot of music on these.

Oh and yeah I meant to say headphone.com, yeah they suck though IMO. Dunno why I added the "s". :o

...and I saw mostly overpriced underperformance headphones! They have only a couple of good headphones, but everything else in their wide selection of headphones sucks. Their Sennheiser selection has the 4#7 series as their only decent headphones - the HD 500's and HD 570's both suck for their $$$ to me. And the 590's? Well, they aren't good enough for their price, either. beachaudio.com does NOT carry the HD 600's at all. As for Sennheiser's HD 2##/EH 22## series, only the HD 280Pro is any good (among beachaudio's wide selection) - and all of the other HD 2##/EH 22## series 'phones suck.

Sony? Their CD2000 and CD3000 are okay, but the rest of the Sony line is mediocre at best.

That site also carries only two Koss headphones that are any good - the KSC-50 and the Porta Pro.

And that's practically the selection of headphones that I saw that are noteworthy to me - none of the other brands of headphones that beachaudio.com carries are particularly renowned for them. Moreover, they sell WAY too many different types of audio/video products, making their site difficult to navigate - and reducing the quality of their selection at the same time.

And keep in mind that I am mostly a music listener; I don't use headphones at all on my computer (most consumer soundcards suck for music).

I have the mdr600's and they are really good for the price. Clean highs and lows. Good depth even though I primarily use them on a low end stereo. The mdr900 was expecially good sound quality. Although they are more expensive. You must be sure that you plug them into a good quality sound card. Even the best headphones in the world will sound like fecal matter if they don't have a good amp to drive them. I would reccommend going the way of the audigy1/2 with the live bay. What I really recommend though, is to find a place local where you can listen to various sets of headphones with your music. Everyone has thier own taste for how it should sound.

I've personally heard the MDR-V600's on an expensive hi-fi, and I'm sorry to say that I was (and still am) very disappointed in those headphones. The bass doesn't go down low at all. The upper midrange and lower treble is almost non-existent - and the rest of the highs are very grainy. The upper bass and lower midrange sounds predominate over everything else. (And don't say that I've tried them on a craptastic system; I've heard the same disappointment from those V600's even on an expensive audiophile system - and even on that expensive system, they sound no better than glorified $20 mass-market closed headphones masquerading as 'studio monitors'.) In other words, you will have to EQ the crap out of the MDR-V600's just to get any kind of sound quality at all whatsoever from them.

The V700DJ's and the V900's are better, but they still fall noticeably short compared to most other headphones in their price class.

in order to get the best sound quality from the phones you need to have them open

if you have the need for sound isolation, then use closed

heres a nice list

<$100
Koss KSC-35
Grado SR-60 OPEN
Grado SR-80 OPEN
Sony V6/7506 CLOSED (?)
Senn HD280 Pro CLOSED (?)...
Beyer DT231 CLOSED

$100-200
Senn HD580 OPEN
Beyer DT250-80 CLOSED
Beyer DT770 CLOSED
Grado SR-125 OPEN

$200-400
Senn HD600 OPEN
Grado SR-325 OPEN
AT W1000/A1000...CLOSED
Sony MDR3000 (?)
Etymotic ER-4p/s CLOSED - canal phones

>$400
Grado RS-2 OPEN
Grado RS-1 OPEN