[Stormbringer]

By the way, personally, if I had that money to spend, I would buy 2 $50 headphones and comparable amps, 3 $200 headphones and comparable gear, and maybe 2 $600 headphones and comparable gear. I would start using the "cheap" ones, and slowly get up. After a few months I'd get back here, share my thoughts about the headphones, and listen to the suggestions for even better stuff.
 
You achieve two things by this:
1) You get the "better" gear because people here can advise you the stuff that really fits to your previous experience.
2) For me the most important thing: You can truly appreciate the better stuff. If I speak for myself, I have a guitar student who has more expensive gear than I do. He/his parents bought it right away. He can't hear the difference though between his stuff and a $200 dollar kit. Because he has no experience with the "inferior" models, let alone experience at all. Second example - almost the same kind of student, with a great guitar rig. Also no experience, but he has a good ear. For him everything is rubbish, only his stuff is good. He doesn't appreciate his gear, for him it's a standard. But his second problem is, is that he doesn't acknowledge other great rigs, which are just as good or even better than his. But they are totally different sounding, and he doesn't really get that difference.
 
Another example, if some teenager buys a Bugatti Veryon, he'll like it. But if someone who drove numerous of sport-edtions of Volkswagen, Toyota, Renault, eventually Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, then Ferarri, Lamborghini, Maserati, and only after that he gets that Bugatti, he'll feel like the most happy person on earth! Also, he could be all lyrical because that Bugatti is soooo much better than blablablablabla, although he liked the xxx of the xxx better. For that teenager above, it's just a car. It's good, because he knows it costs a lot of money, people say it's the best, and actually he hasn't got anything to criticize it for.
 
So I think you can be totally happy with that K701 someone mentioned earlier. But then you can buy an even better headphone set, and you will love it even more. If you go straight to the top, you won't appreciate it as much as you get there gradually. Plus I think it's fun and interesting to gain more experience first.

 

[Uncle Erik]

If you're working in classical music, I'm not sure if any of the headphones you listed would please you save the LCD2. The others are all a bit colored and I think you would find yourself disappointed when they don't sound like what you're used to hearing live.

To head off trouble: NO, I am not saying the others are bad headphones that cannot be enjoyed. The opposite is true; they are enjoyable and make their owners happy.

However, I'd recommend a stable of headphones that will get you much closer to what you enjoy. Consider the Sennheiser HD-800 and HD-600; AKG K-240DF, K-501 and K-1000, and the Beyerdynamic DT48. With your budget, you could buy all of them.

If you are interested in tubes, consider the amps from Eddie Current. They are built exceptionally well, Craig designs sensational circuits, and the prices are more than fair considering what you get. Also consider having a Beta22 solid state amp custom built for you. The Beta22 is about the last word in solid state amplification.

All of that will leave you with quite a bit left over. I'd put some of it towards an excellent pair of speakers, most likely an ESL from Quad or a pair of Magnepans. There are several models of each and any should please you. An appropriate amp would depend on which model you chose, but you could afford something good.

However, take a hard look at the headphones (and possibly speakers) you choose. With some of the cans you mentioned, the strings might not sound like strings do live, and other horrors.