Quote: You mention that they weren't burned in.  You gotta think that they would improve dramatically with the proper burn in time?  At least for me, the hp100's definitley did along with the other few headphones I own. 

Quote: They handle bass very well.  I'm not a bass head, but if you pair them with an e11 or something with a bass boost you get a lot of bass.  Can be obnoxious at times, but I don't like a ton of bass.

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For closed headphones my vote is for the Soundmagic hp100.  Can't help you out with open headphones cause i don't own any.  hp100's are $200 and you don't have to buy an amp for them.  I don't notice a difference amped, but a lot of people do.   

Quote: Yah, i ended up getting a fiio e11, pretty good price and I figure next time I upgrade I'll have an amp for the headphones.  Don't really notice a sound difference, unless I turn the bass boost on.

People get too mad over little things like this.  If people think they're wasted money is put to good use then let them be.  No point in stressing over other people's poor choices in headphones...

Look no further than Soundmagic hp100!! their sound compares to 400 dollar headphones....  Real nice and smooth with a good amount of detail.

Quote: Even with my other headphones or my ear buds which don't need an amp I still have the volume around 70% to be decently loud.  Just my opinion but I think the internal amp can handle it just fine.

Quote: They're my first pair of high end (at least high end to me) headphones and I really like them so far.  I don't have a whole lot to compare them too but they have a really smooth sound and they're unbelievably comfortable.  Earpads are a little bit shallow, but I may get velour pads...

I don't really go out and about with it, but it has the ability to be portable! Probably more than 500, but I got the Ipod for free from my parents who never used it , so it's way less than 500 for me.  I find it really hard to believe that spending 2000 dollars I don't have on really nice...

No, it's from the "Complete Clapton" disc 1.  It was made in 2007.

I sort of disagree with the whole "they sound better with amping."  These things sound great plugged right into an ipod or iphone.  I haven't noticed much at all different amped/unamped, only thing is i can have a bass boost with my fiio e11.

Quote: No i haven't tried that yet.  I downloaded the program yesterday though.

Quote: I completely understand what you're saying with certain tracks.  But as I said in the original post, layla in particular, there's clearly a problem with something considering the vocals add a hissing sound and get very distorted at certain frequencies.

re-ripping an album to mp3 didn't change the hissing sound at all.  I don't have any issues with albums downloaded from itunes, just from albums where I have imported from the CD.  It's gotta be a computer hardware issue or something.  But, it also has the same hiss on my ipod.  If that's the...

Thanks for the quick response, I'll give that a try.

While trying to find out how much difference I could tell between music bitrates, I've come across a problem.  In particular, with the song "layla," I have a version that I got online which bitrate is 128 kbps, and I have the CD which I imported to my computer and put them as apple lossless...

I'm pretty big into knives.  My grandfather has collected for decades and passes them onto us.  Current collection is an SOG jet edge 2, Kershaw groove, kershaw ken onion leak, Canal Street Cutlery Bowie knife, a few Benchmade elischewitz series, spyderco dragonfly, and a few other random knives...

Quote: Your Ipod still has a DAC in it.  Most DAC's can't bypass the ipods internal one.  I'm not sure exactly which ones can but it's not many.

excuse me for being a rookie.  Can you use say either an l3 or l8 in an iphone?  whats the difference in sound if you can?

beyerdynamic dt770's have a good amount of bass too and they're quite comfortable.

If you'd be willing to spend 200 bucks you should definitley go with the Soundmagic hp100.  They do nothing wrong and sound great across the board.  They have a detachable coiled cable too.  I don't have an amp to go with them and they sound great, but I've been told they really shine with an...

I haven't tried them with an amp yet, still waiting to buy one.  But, I think they sound really good still without an amp.

Thanks, I found out that you can compress everything to one of the three settings, 128, 164, or 256 kbps under sync options for each specific device.  Thanks for all the help and suggestions.