raider,
you might be able to attend a St. Lou head-fi meet, or find other head-fi'ers in your area.
please, please, please listen to as many headphones as you can before you buy. or at least buy from the used section, so that if you do not like them you can get almost all your money back. if you pay $175 for the AKG K501s, chances are that you will not be able to get more than half of that back. (they go for about $125 - $150 on ebay).
open your local yellow pages, make some calls, visit as many stores as you can. take a trip into St. Lou, etc. Did you read the 'Most commonly used 'Phones (sub $500)' thread?
For $200, you can buy a Senn HD590 or ATH A900. But are you willing to lose that much money? A few weeks ago a used pair of HD590s went for about $130. But are you willing to lose that much money? I bought a pair of Philips HP910s on EBay for $40. But are you willing to lose that much money? Supposedly PortaPros are going for $10 at Fry Electronics. Are you willing to lose a lot of gas money trying to find them?
No matter what you buy, if they don't match up with your sources and amp, do not sound "right" to you, do not fit your ears correctly, or aren't comfortable, then in the end, you won't be happy.
Be patient. Listen to as many headphones as you can. Only then buy.
Try to find some Head-Fi'ers in your area.
Of course, you can always buy the DT531s for $125 and if you don't like them sell them to me
$100? no problem. you will pay for the shipping, right?
P.S., supposedly a pair of DT770s went for $140 on the for sale forum. Would you have paid $200 for them, new? see?
see if you don't grow into your hd280s. plug them into a real source (home receiver and cd player and not walkmans, pcdps, laptops, etc.), playing real music, not .wavs, .mp3s, pirated cds, downloaded files, home mixes, demos, etc.
i once sold a camera because i didn't like the way the pictures came out. they were all off colour. the guy i sold them to showed me these great pictures that came out of the same camera. i asked him what he did. he told me he used Kodak processing at the local camera shop. I had been sending them away (via mail) for $5 developing and printing...
