Please respond to the poll AND offer a reason, or reasons, why you answered the way you did. : ) Answer under the assumption that you DO have sufficient funds to be able to purchase any of the current flagship offerings (e.g. HD800. T1, ED8, etc.) and kindly limit the purview to DYNAMIC headphones.
Thank you!
Here is my rationale (shamelessly borrowed from the tail end of the "T1 vs. DT880/600, Round 1" thread):
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As long as there exist Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, AKG, Ultrasone, Denon, JVC, Audio-Technica, et al, there will be unique brand- and design-specific advantages to ownership within a fairly broad array of headphone products. If one were financially able--and not all of us are--I guess the way to go would be to purchase all the available flagship offerings.
But for the majority of us--myself included--the "next best thing" is to buy from the mid-fi "sweet spot" of those manufacturers with whom your listening preferences click. For me, that would include the AKG K501, Beyer DT880/600 and Denon AH-D5000. [And possibly, if I were fallen into reckless abandon, the Ultrasone 750Pro, reserved for female vocals.]
That way, I can capitalize on the inimitable keynote(s) of each (e.g. the K501's cohesiveness and peerless midrange integrity; the DT880/600's detail, balance and dynamic texture; the AH-D5000's engrossing bass lines; the 750Pro's haunting upper midrange).
This often requires a more selective, genre-targeted style of listening, and that the listener make concessions to comparative weaknesses while exploiting comparative strengths in the headphones of choice at the time, but I think--at least for me--this is the more satisfactory way to go.
Honestly, I don't believe there ever will exist, nor ever can exist, a single, flagship, "hi-fi" product that could pull off all those respective performance pluses on par with each of the above-mentioned "mid-fi" offerings. If that were so, then headphone listening will have become lamentably homogenized, and our universe would be slipping irreversibly into immanent maximum entropy, into a black hole of formless mediocrity.
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Edited by pataburd - 7/6/10 at 2:17pm
But yes, I'll need music with me at all times and I'd look utterly silly with a headphone system with me. I needs me some IEMs. JH customs probably wouldn't do for me either because they're high-end, I guess. There'll be times I'd actually like to hear things at home too.
