Need some new headphones, but which ones should I get? - Page 2

You can just call beyer's 800# on their site and place an order for VELOUR pads for the dt250's, they run under $30 for a pair and are definitely worth it, i use them on my 7506's and they are quite comfy. It's up to you to decide on which pair you want.

Actually, those particular "big" closed can headphones (Sony MDR-V6/MDR-7506; Sennheiser HD280 Pro) are "easily driven" to fairly loud levels even from a portable CD player. (Of course, they generally will sound better when used with an amp.)

On the other hand, some small, cheap, portable, open-air headphones require a big, expensive headphone amp just to produce any sound at all whatsoever. (The Sennheiser PX100 is not one of those, however - but surprisingly, the really cheap Sony MDR-101LP headphones and the really cheap Koss P3 earbuds both really are that power-hungry. And in the case of the latter two headphones, what sound that comes out of those is craptacular even with an amp.)

hahaha. People in Head-Fi will make you close to broke from what I've seen. If you have good headphones most likely they will need headphone amps.

For me I would just buy good headphones and save for the amp later. Apparently amps help a lot.

Anomaly

read eagle drivers post above... none of the headphones you are considering need a headphone amp... but ANY headphone sounds better amped... for some it is just a larger difference...

Hmmm. I went through much the same process, except that in my case, I got the HD280's first (and as my first-ever pair of decent full-size headphones), was impressed at first but rapidly became dissatisfied with their sound. (Particularly, the grainy highs and the overall "distant" nature of the sound.) Bought the Sony 7506 (same phone as the V6), liked them much better than the HD280's, returned the HD280's to the store. (I do like the construction and isolation of the HD280's better, but there was no contest for the sound.)

Listened to the 7506's for a while, decided that I wasn't quite happy with those either (mostly due to the very strong highs, and also the comfort, since they're supra-aural), and ordered the Audio-Technica A900's from Japan. They were a major improvement over both the above-mentioned phones, and I've been very happy with them. (The 7506's also went back to the store.) They're $211 shipped, though, and you don't sound like you're ready to spend that much yet.

Between the two, I'd pick the V6's -- I found it a cleaner and more listenable sound, despite the sharpness of the highs. The Beyer pads would probably improve comfort a good deal.

The isolation on the V6's isn't as good as the HD280's, but it's still respectable, and there isn't enough difference to justify going with the 280's instead.

As for the plugs, both the V6/7506 and HD280 have a 1/8" plug, and both come with a screw-on 1/8-to-1/4" adaptor, which is what they're wearing in that photo.

And regarding the fact that you're listening to low-bitrate MP3's -- the V6's will probably make you more aware of the limitations of the MP3 format, but they'll still sound a lot better than any included earbuds. Your player shouldn't have much trouble driving them to a decent volume (I used mine out of a Rio Karma and got plenty of volume out of them.) No question that they'd improve with an amp, but they certainly don't require one to sound good.

Every headphone has its own frequency response curve -- i.e., at a fixed input volume, some frequencies will come out of the phones sounding louder than others. (When I was trying to explain this to a coworker, he said "Oh, so it's like every headphone has a built-in equalizer?" That's as good a conceptual description as any.) So for instance, if you're trying to listen to something in the middle frequencies and turn up the volume to where the midrange is comfortable, you may find that the highs are then too loud and piercing. It's very much a matter of taste and preference how you react to a particular headphone's response curve. Many people love the V6's, others hate them, and both sides frequently cite exactly the same reasons.

With closed phones, isolation is a matter of how much outside sound they block. Open phones do leak sound out the back so that other people can hear it, but with almost all closed phones it's not an issue at any reasonable listening volume.

There's an old thread around here somewhere describing the exact process of swapping out the V6 pads for the Beyer pads, but it'll be tough to find until the search function is back online. I believe the V6 pads have a tight "collar" that grips a groove around the edge of the earpiece, so you just peel it out of the groove and slip it off the earpiece, and the Beyers go on the same way. I also recall that the V6 earpads include a foam "cover" that hides the drivers inside the earpiece, while the Beyer pads don't (since on the Beyer phones, that cover is part of the earpiece instead of being part of the pad). So you need to transplant that part when you put on the Beyer pads, or else the V6's driver will be exposed. Hopefully search will be back up soon so you can read the details.

And yes, I did give both sets of phones a decent burn-in while I had them. The HD280's are infamous for requiring a really long burn-in period to start sounding good. I gave them about 400-500 hours, and the sound did change a lot over that period, but they still didn't sound good to me. I think the Sonys got about 70-80 hours of intensive burn-in. So the sound had pretty much settled down when I made my decision.

Actually, there are some posters, like Tyson (you around here somewhere?), who have said that the HD280 benefits greatly from upwards of 1000 hours of burn-in. You might want to read Zanth's "Headphone Burn-In FAQ", which is a sticky post at the top of this board, for some background on burn-in and the various arguments about it. I did my burn-in by leaving the phones hooked up to my PC 24/7 playing bass-heavy music at a volume loud enough to be uncomfortable, but not ear-shattering.

You can see Tyson's original thread about long-term effects of burn-in on the 280's here. (Although if you read to the end, you'll see that he eventually sold his 280's again because he still wasn't quite happy with them. I'd also take notice of the current ongoing thread about the 280's plastic headband developing cracks over time -- another reason to be cautious of them.)

I wouldn't worry that much about the electrical usage of running your CD player long-term (as long as you're on AC power and not burning up batteries, of course). It's still going to be insignificant compared to the power consumption of a PC, or a large appliance like a refrigerator.