Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro or Premium?

I recently auditioned a number of closed cans, and it came down to a choice between the DT880 Pro and the DT770 Pro. I picked the 770 because it was warmer than the 880 - the 880 is probably more accurate, but the source is my Cowon D2 which while being an excellent MP3 player still can't compare to home electronic sources, so warmer is more forgiving - also the Cowon tends to be a bit bass shy IMO.

I wasn't able to listen to the Premiums, but the general impression I am getting from multiple threads is that the Premiums are brighter. Is this the consensus opinion to those who have gotten to do a direct comparison? If so the Pros are probably the better choice for me even though I like some of the Premium features (better construction, lower impedance, straight cord).

Thanks

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeroblade 

Apparently, the Pro's are more designed for studio monitoring, hence the tighter grip. According to my friend, who's used both versions (he recently sold his premium the other week and the pros way back then) the DT 770 Pro's sound horrible compared to the Premium's, however. The Pro's have a boomy, overwhelming bass, while the Premiums are more on the bright side of things.

Your friend heard it right IMO.

Beyer Pro (80 and 250 ohm) is a lot of bass and coarse highs,

Premium (250 ohm) is bright, unless you got the 600 ohm Manufaktur who are more balanced.

All in all the Premium are the better sounding headphones.

I would not describe the highs on the 770 Pro 80's as coarse.  I am sensitive to bright/harsh sounding equipment, but I can listen to the 770 Pro 80's for hours.  It is true that they are a tad bass heavy, but in my opinion, people over exaggerate this.  It's like not strapping two Velodyne sub woofers to your head.

But if you are a person who is sensitive to bass, you might want to avoid them.  But if you really have no preference, I suggest you at least listen to them.  I never thought of myself as a "basshead", but I know that I enjoy the DT770 Pro 80's.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiemen 

Your friend heard it right IMO.

Beyer Pro (80 and 250 ohm) is a lot of bass and coarse highs,

Premium (250 ohm) is bright, unless you got the 600 ohm Manufaktur who are more balanced.

All in all the Premium are the better sounding headphones.

So far the impression I am getting is that folks are confirming that the Premiums are brighter and more bass neutral than the Pros, and this might be especially so for the 32 ohm version which is what I would get if I were to choose the Premiums. So far this confirms that for my admittedly very limited application the Pros are probably the better choice, but will watch this space for more inputs before ordering. What I find very interesting is that the 880 Pros I auditioned sounded very similar to how people are describing the 770 Premiums (brighter with more refined bass).

If this were for home use (I haven't done serious home headphone listening for many years, phones are strictly work and travel use for me) I would shop around for a nice used pair of electrostatics - for me that is audio Nirvana in headphone listening.

Thanks much for the feedback folks have provided thus far! So far Beyer has yet to respond to my similar inquiry.

P.S. I have heard that even for folks that like the Pros, that the Ms are markedly inferior for music listening - has anyone here actually listened to a pair?

Update: Regarding the M I should have just done a search here: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/500977/what-is-the-difference-between-the-beyerdynamic-dt-770-m-and-the-beyerdynamic-dt-770-pro

'Nuff said on the M, off the table :-)

Thanks again!

I now have several hours on the DT770 Pro-80. Not yet fully broken in, but good enough for a quick review.

Tonal accuracy is very good. I am using as a reference my home theater with Sunfire XT ribbon hybrids and Bag End professional mastering subwoofers. The all important mid-high region is spot on. Bass is a little emphasized, true, but the degree is exaggerated IMO. Cutting by ~ 2dB at 80Hz brings it into line.

Transients are very good, bordering on excellent.

Imaging is very good. Definitely bettered by semi-open and open headphones, but they have their own drawbacks.

Comfort is very good - as mentioned one can adjust the spring tension to one's preference - very nice feature.

Isolation is Good to Very Good - a bit above mid-pack. I haven't seen a variation in this aspect amongst closed backs, excluding super high isolation special purpose cans.

Main drawback is load/efficiency. In my experience these can not be adequately be driven by either a laptop sound card or by an MP3 player, even the powerhouse Cowon D2. I have a Turtle Beach USB DAC/amp at work, and a Total Airhead for travel. So far have only used the Turtle Beach but I have little doubt that the Airhead will have enough oomph.

So far have been using the high bit rate Pandora stream as a source, looking forward to mobile use when I'll be using primarily FLAC and higher bit-rate MP3.

From the graph, the premium 32s and 250s look pretty bass heavy to me.  The 600 is more neutral.  That's how I remembered them when I got to compare the 250s and 600s too.

Looks like they both depart from flat.

The 250 ohm (they don't have 80 ohm on headroom looks like) has about +4-5dB from average output below 100 Hz, and the 600 ohm has about a 6dB/octave roll off below 80 which is likely the driver resonance. This is equivalent to running a home theater without the sub turned on. The 250 ohm is like having the sub turned up a few dB too high.

Depends on personal preferences as to which sounds more neutral. That is why opinions (including mine) in a forum like this are only good for providing a general idea - everyone needs to listen for themselves.

Thanks for the graph, great data!

I played around a bit with the various graphs. One that I thought was especially interesting was the 50Hz square wave graph. Isolation graphs were also very useful. Distortion graphs didn't seem to show much variation, and the 500Hz square wave were more difficult to compare. I highly recommend the HeadRoom graphs as a comparison tool. They have data on a very large number of phones.

Here are graphs for the 4 new headphones I auditioned (I used the 250 ohm for the DT770). Notes for those who aren't used to some of these graphs. Frequency response is self explanatory. For Isolation, the lower the graph line, the more external noise is attenuated. For square wave response, you want to look for flatness of the wave, and amplitude and duration of ringing at the wave edges (less is better).

After breaking these in, an update.

They are even smoother than when new. And the imaging approaches excellent - one of the better imaging phones I have heard. The DT880s and DT990s have to be better, but for a closed phone very impressive!

And if you got a pair of these, some day you could convert them into these:

http://www.headphile.com/page8.html

He will only accept the 80 ohm DT770 Pros as a basis for the conversion.

It would be overkill for my purposes (increases cost by 150% over the base phones) but they sure look cool...

dear sbradley02 or twimc

     the headphile site :

http://www.headphile.com/index.html

is definitely an impressive marriage of technology and art .  i wonder why the artist will only accept the beyer dt770 pro 80 ohm version .  is it because the 250 ohm or 600 ohm versions have voice coil assemblies which are to large to fit inside his wooden housings ?  or is it because the headphile guy ( name ? ) just prefers the performance characteristics of the 80 ohm version over the higher impedances .  and does he only do modificatons on the beyer dt770 pro 80 and not on the dt770 premium 80 ?  my guess is that he only mods the dt770 pro version because it is originally manufactured with easy servicing and parts disassembly in mind .  any thoughts ?  but why not accommodate the sonically superior 600 ohm version of the dt770 pro ?  perhaps the headphile guy does not believe that the 600 ohm version sounds better than the 80 ohm version .  hmmmmm.....

FWIR, its because he prefers the Pro 80's sound.  Besides the drivers, they only differ in aesthetics and headband pressure.  The Pro has more clamp.

That makes sense. I thought there might have been some technical reason that prohibited the use of any other model, appears to not be the case.

As mentioned elsewhere, clamping pressure is readily modified by slightly bending the metal headband. I did this with mine.