New Headphones?
April 8th 2005
I’m in the market for some new headphones… my $29.95 Panasonic HT355’s (which I now consider the most bang for your buck in headphones) died last week — the volume control dial wore out and now there’s no right channel. So I’m gonna need some new ones I guess….
I listened to a friends’ pair of Sennheiser HD555’s yesterday, and I was blown away by the quality. It made me realize that my old ones had some real issues. It also made me realize that I didn’t want to take them off my ears. I had heard Sennheiser HD 570’s before (my roomate owns a pair — hi John) and though they were very nice and detailed, I thought they were way too airy and unnatural sounding for my taste. They were very good for classical and instrumental jazz, but not so much for vocals. The HD555’s on the other hand were nearly perfect to my ears in all genres, and had an amazing realism to them; exactly what I’m looking for.
I’m sure there are other worthy headphones out there, so if you have reccomendations, please let me know. And if you even think the 4-letter B word, I’m gonna whack you upside the head with a stick. 
For $150, they better be damn good.
Damn straight! I’d expect nothing short of perfect sound for that price. Yet another reason not to buy Bose….
agree. I don’t care how good they claim they are, there is no headphones worth $300.
I have no idea how good these are, but Turtle Beach has released “surround sound” headphones.
http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/earforce/x51/
Those are interesting, but I think stereo is the way to go; in fact I bet a good stereo headphone has better “surround” spacialization than these things. Funny how our ears work like that…
Yeh the look good
My uncle was a DJ working at a radio station once and he bought headphones for his studio at home for £800 thats like $1650! They were amazeing though, and you could pump them up to like 100RMS but i guese that wouldnt be too good for your ears… hmmm
…and my stage speakers only go up to 200RMS each! You proberly know but normall standerd headphones are like 5RMS to 10RMS but that i still loud, and im talking about the $300 ones
Look at some of the grado-labs headphones. They have a very nice range of high quality headphones with excellent reviews, and they have a very retro look. I think they’re entry level is the SR60 and the SR90 series, a bit upwards of 50$, but I listened to the SR60 last year and they blew my mind, so give them a try……there’s an audiophile store in Walnut Creek that has a few in stock if your want to listen to them. I know sony really isn’t known for their headphones, but their high end line looks intrigueing. Try Shure too.