Good Open Headphone under 400 dollars - Page 2

FiiO E10-$80

FiiO E17-$150 - can be used for everything

 

Maverick Tube Magic D1- $200 The first "serious" amp you should consider due to it's cheap price and performance. this is stircly a desktop amp and is a very highly suggested one. should fit what you are looking for.

Open headphones under $400? Perhaps you can get a Stax SR-202 with an amp in that budget?

 

Trying out at least one electrostatic would be good for variety.

Wow thanks for adding that. STAX is rarely mentioned in these threads, it's welcome for someone to add them. his genre's may not fit the STAX "house" signature though as some say.

If your music is good quality go for the PRO 2900, just be warned any brickwalled recordings will be rendered unlistanable hence why I let mine go. I have similar tastes to you (various genres of metal + older electronica) and the new Hifiman HE-400 coming out is what I'm going to be trying next. I wouldn't get a Senn, I tried the 598. It would be good for dubstep, but not so much for any music that needs aggression. Metal and hard rock are a no go, and the 598 is more aggressive than the 650.

 

I'm not exactly sure what it is myself, not without being able to audition more headphones.

 

Lambda-series models are bright and very open, airy, atmospheric-sounding as a rule. However, I did find the SR-202 to not make vocals stand out quite like the vintage Normal bias SR-Lambda does (though my set's drivers are rebuilt, thus not perfectly representative of a stock SR-Lambda), as well as add a slight roughness to everything...but there's just as much of a possibility that the amplifier differences could be to blame for that. (SR-Lambda is driven by a SRD-7/SB fed by an old TX-SV515PRO receiver, while the SR-202 is driven by a SRM-212.) On the flip side, maybe it is the headphone drivers, given how the SR-Lambda Pro allegedly has more bass but a recessed midrange compared to the Normal bias version.

 

(Do note that I don't consider the SR-202 bad or anything...it's more of a comparison between "good" and "great".)

 

Those who have heard the SR-007 say that it's rather dark-sounding by comparison, and it's even mentioned in a basshead thread. (Electrostatics in a basshead thread, would you believe that?) It's also said to have slightly less soundstage width than the Lambda-series models, though possibly more precise in its imaging.

 

The new SR-009 is often touted as the most neutral headphone ever made, though that could be hype and placebo for all I know given the steep price tag. Soundstage is allegedly even bigger than the Lambda lineup, hard to believe as that sounds.

 

Even if it's only Stax-made electrostatics we're talking about here (not even bringing up the Koss ESP/950, Sennheiser Orpheus, or so forth), there's still some differentiation to the sound between different models.