Hello, first let me say that after spending a few days browsing these forums that I don't think I'll ever look at headphones the same way again. This forum is a wealth of knowlege and I'm happy to have found it.

Four days ago after semi-extensive research I decided a wanted a new pair of cans to replace my crappy coby headphones. I'm a student at BU and was tired of hearing by roommate droning in the backround talking loudly on his phone(My dorm is incredibly small). I spend 4 or 5 hours a day wearing headphones so I decieded to get a good pair. Isolation was my first priority and settlled on a pair of HD280s. Luckily I live about a two minute walk from a guitar center and easily ran down and bought them for a 100 bucks. The HD280s have excelent isolation, the best I've ever tried, but they sound so boring. Accurate berhaps, but I'm not a recording artist, I use my headphones for music(rock, classic rock, industrial mostly) and movies primarily. I just started this odd obsesion recently, so I can't really give a technical description of my disapproval with this pair other than to say I'm seriously considering returning them. (Yes I burned them in for 30+ hours)

Currently I use my headphones with my pc. My pc has a soundblaster Live! value card hooked into a Klipsh THX 4.1 speaker system. The speaker with the controls on it has headphone jack that I use for my HD280s. The speaker volume also controls the volume outputed to my headphones.

And so here is my question:

Does this form of output constitute an quasi-amp? It does boost the volume. I ask primarily because for a replacement I have my heart set on a pair of Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pros which are notoriously hard to run without an amp. Secondly, in my course of reading some of the articles here I've noticed people don't seem to care for soundblaster cards(or even audigys it seems), with that, should I replace my soundcard before even bothering changing headphones?. Is it one of those weakest link situations where it's not even worth buying good headphones with a crappy soundcard? I only use headphones with my pc.

Thanks for your time-
Dave

As much as I love the 280's, they are quite sterile as they were designed to be just that. For movies and gaming as well as analytical music listening, this is great. You'll also be hard pressed to find another pair of headphones that can produce low bass as beautifully as the 280's. You might consider returning them anyway since you paid $30 more that you could have if you took Guitar Center a print out of PC Mall's buy page which shows the 280's for $69.99. If you decide that you miss the sound you can always print the page and go get another pair. You might try the Sony 7506 instead which the Guitar Center sells ($99.99)so you could just exchange. Most people really like them, they're a bit less analytical (although more colored from what I hear). Stay away from the Sony Vxxx stuff they sound terrible and aren't worth half what they cost.

As far as amping goes, I'd recommend a good dedicated headphone amp instead. If you're a brick and motar shopper like me and don't want to spend a lot, you could try the PreSonus HP4 (also available from Guitar Center for $99.99) I don't know about how it stacks up when compared to audiophile amps that are toted around here, but I'm pretty happy with it, and it is dead silent which was my biggest concern when I puchased it. Otherwise, there are a large number of amps out there that are supposed to be quite nice and I'm sure many people will soon chime in with reco's for those. Another thought is that the Bithead will soon be available from Headroom and will fix your soundcard issues while allowing you to switch back to the SB card for gaming as well as being an amp.

On that note, the deal with the SB cards is that they are particularly bad at reproducing redbook (44.1khz audio 16bit audio, aka. the CD) and upmix all audio to 48khz and do so quite poorly. They are, however, the best gaming cards... If you don't do a lot of gaming and music is your thing or you'd like to try running two internal cards, you might add a M-Audio Revolution (I think Guitar Center has this as well) 7.1. The M-Audio Audiophile USB (Guitar Center does carry this card and I talked to the Sales Manager and he said he'd cut me a deal and sell it to me for $150 when I'm ready to buy) is supposed to be quite nice as well and allows you similar advantages to the bithead. If you replace the power supply with a good regulated one (I think the recommended one is an Elpac) the headphone out on it should give you pretty good preformance.

As far as the weakest link goes, yes and no, you're going to get better sound with a good headphone but ultimate quality is currently limited by your source... What kind of budget are you working with? That will help bring up better recommendations to suit your needs and wants.

Anyway... Welcome to Head-Fi, sorry about your wallet.

Oh yeah, what kind of music do you listen to? That would help with recommendations too.

the klipsch promedia 4.1's will push out quite a bit of juice to the headphone jack, and have that handy speaker mute button too. They are relatively flat, as you can see:



Thats running out of a sblive (using the rear jack, it has a better quality DAC than the front jack. also using the KX drivers, http://www.kxproject.com/index.php?skip=1

More or less the same setup you have, though I would recommend you install the kx drivers and use the swap front/rear jacks option. The kx drivers also open up the powerful DSP stuff in the emu10k chip, you can use a 10-band eq to level out those highs, for example, and it doesn't suck any cpu, as its all in the soundcard.


I find the 280's to have plenty of oomph and excitement, though if you are used to the promedia's with the sub turned up... They won't sound like that.

First, let me thank you both for your remarkable fast replies and lenthy. There are several things I'm still fuzzy about.

to Jasper994:

I listen to mostly rock,classic rock, and industrial. Whats is a bithead, is it an amp or a soundcard? Budget-wise assuming I return my HD280s and get my hundred bucks, I'm willing to spend 250 at most. If I dont then 150. Finally, assuming I need both an amp and a new soundcard, which is more critical? Do HD280s need an amp as badly as other headphones? Or considering the lower olms rating for HD280 and my speaker output are neither terrable neccisary?

To ph0rk:

I quickly downloaded the KX drivers driver from the link you provided. To they indiscrimiatly increase the quality of my soundcards output or do they allow to to tweak the sound(or both). How do I go about using the swap front/rear jacks option? what does that mean exactly?


Thanks-
Dave

If you can spend $250 and want a DT770, I'd say you should get a better soundcard ($90 for an M-Audio Revo at Newegg) then scour the for sale forum for a pair of DT770's (usually $100 to $130) and a cheap amp like a Mint or whatnot (they can be found for as little as $25 or $30). Is it the most hifi-system ever, no, but it does give you what you want, at a price you can afford.

answering questions directed towards other people,

A bithead is an headamp/soundcard combination that's supposed to be offered at headroom in the near future. But priced at >$200, it's not something that you can just buy without thinking...
A soundcard is MUCH more critical than an amp. An amp can only reveal as much as the source will give, so if your source is bad, an amp is only going to reveal a load of crappiness.
HD280 can be driven decently without an amp, but like almost any other headphone, it improves with the addition of an amp. Note: impedance is not always a good judge of whether a headphone requires an amp.
For your money, I'd say get a decent source such as the M-audio revolution card ($100), and get a decent pair of closed cans that don't require an amp, such as the MDR-V6 ($100).

i would avoid spending money on an amp for now, your promedia's can drive phones well up to 300 ohms.

I believe (but am not certain) the kx drivers correct the sblive upsample bug, where they upsample 44.1 khz audio to 48khz, adding a large amount of distortion in the process. I still use the winamp upsample plugin, for what its worth.


The kx drivers have a funky looking interface by default, but its not hard to figure out. there is a checkbox to swap front and rear jacks in the configuration (it adds a taskbar icon on the right hand side by the clock). After that, you can go int othe dsp section (which is kinda funky too, but if you mess it up and can't figure it out, you can restore it to default)

I added a 10-band eq in just before the output stage to tidy up the treble from the card.

That freq graph is from the rear jack (better dac), without any eq, into the +6db aux jack on the 4.1's, and out the headphone jack, with generic radio shack cables. (i tweaked the volume knob a bit and got similar graphs at 1/4 volume, 1/2 volume, and 3/4 volume, so the pot looks clean. at full folume the 60hz hum from the wall ruined the graph though.)

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It's been said before, but I'll say it again: 30 hours isn't *nearly* enough burn in for the 280s. Give it at least 100. Plug them in, stick them in a drawer, leave them. Then go on vacation. Spend a week hiking the Appalachian trail. Visit Paris and Rome, rent a car and tour Tuscany for a few days. Perhaps you've wanted to circumnavigate the world by hot air balloon? Once you've done all that stuff, take your 280s out of the drawer and see what you think.

(Ok, that's a *slight* exaggeration, but really you might want to give them a bit more time.)

I don't like my PM4.1 phone jack much at all. It's a bit empty sounding and the subtle hiss is quite annoying. I hear there's this cool thing called the "bithead" comin out soon. Seems worth getting.

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I'm uisng the HD280s too, and I whole heartedly agree. I've probably used mine for 40-50 hours, and I notice the improvement more than anything on an unamped source. The bass is just....wow When I hook them up to my amp (which is my Onkyo TSX-501 receiver, but it does a decent job, I'm looking into a META now), its even that much more impressive.

Just burn that stuff in.

Then burn it in again. When you are done burning them in, burn them in again. Then listen.

If you still don't like them, you should probably consider selling them and getting something else...Good luck

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I've owned mine for about 9 months, and I'd say they kept improving for the first six months or so of regular use.

What's Guitar Center's return period, anyway?

Burn them in some more. It's already been said, but worth repeating. IIRC, some people even found them to get worse around 20-30 hours. 50 seems to be about where people really start to like them, but they might keep getting better up to 100+.

Though, on the other hand, you paid a bit too much for them, and even after burn-in, there is no guarantee that you will like their cold-analytical sound.

So, burn them in some more if you have time prior to when you must return them. Then, once you know for sure whether you like them or not, I would return them and buy them somewhere cheaper or get something else.

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good point, definately burn in the 280's before making a definate call

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Regaurding the 280's: No they don't need an amp, they can be driven fine without one. They just sound better with one.

Definately upgrade soundcard. As somebody already mentioned, source is very important. If it were me, I'd grab the Revo or Audiophile USB and try the 280's with that until they're fully burnt in. If you still don't like it, try the Beyers or the Sony V6 (not V600) or the 7506 (same as the V6 except the 7506 has the gold plug).

Down the road when you have more cash, get a nice amp.


-EDIT-

By the way, from your tastes in music and from you reaction to the 280's, you really sound like a Grado man except that you need isolation. You might reconsider how important the isolation really is when compared to the type of sound you like. If the isolation is less important, try Grados.