I have had a set of HD280s for years and still love their sound, but they were also my first 'real' headphones. I am expecting a set of M50s this week or next, and am very excited to hear the differences. Your review has made me very confident that I will love my new cans for as many years as I have loved my 280s!

The 280 is better than the M50.

Het guys sorry for the nieve questions but im completely new with this stuff
I really like how the reveiw sounds and the price
My overall budget was $400 max but i was suprised to see the price tag on this and how highly it is favored
I just plain and simple want to get the max out of these
What would be a good amplifier to add on and how to they work
Preferably a amp like $50-$100 range
I havent ever looked into amps but heard they help with sound quality
So if my numbers are waay off sorry
And one more thing
Hows the leakage.

You don't need an amplifier. In fact, headphone amplifiers are largely unnecessary and a total waste of money and hyped up ridiculously in the headphone community. The only time you need to buy a dedicated headphone amp is if:
1) Your audio interface/receiver/stereo/computer cannot actually output enough volume
2) Your audio interface/computer has really horrible sound quality, with audible distortion, lots of noise, and messed up frequency response. This is highly unlikely these days as D/A converters used in recent years are already far better than even the professional ones from ten or fifteen years ago. The truth is, today's cheap consumer D/A converters are plenty good enough, unless you have highly trained professional level understanding of audio fidelity or incredibly picky and are accustomed to really high-end audio products. Otherwise, even if you can hear any audible differences, they will be so minute that you'd wonder why the hell you spent the extra money on a dedicated amp.
Don't buy into the hype and the exaggerations that the community at large likes to perpetuate and promote. Be pragmatic in your purchases, and only spend the extra money when you are 100% sure you can hear clearly audible and compelling differences when doing critical comparison testing (ideally double-blind tests), otherwise it's mostly just placebo effect and your vanity playing tricks on you.

I must disagree with this. My main use of a headphone amp is volume, for the ipod is actually never loud enough for me. I also decrease gain of the audio files to rid it of clipping. The issue is that iPod's and such are designed with the current music of today, which are rendered in high decibel levels. I don't listen to current music often, so as a result, my music is far to quiet, even before I use programs like MP3Gain to lower the decibel levels. The E07K does change the sound noticeably. Fullness is introduced that the ipod cannot deliver, making everything sound more complete, cleaner and more lifelike. I also hear a bit more soundstage with my amp. The E07K also gives the music a different sound than the E11 did, where it is not as enhanced in the warmth it delivers ( enhanced bass and recessed mids), but truer to the sound of neutral. Amps also allow the sound to be changed in the highs and lows, and mids. This is much better than the ipod or similar players, which "increase" bass by decreasing everything else, or "increase" treble in the same way. This actually lowers the volume of an already quiet sources. Amps provide gain to the desired areas of increase, or those areas can be removed of gain as well.

If you can hear clearly differences for the better, and the money spent was within your tolerance for diminishing returns, then sure, the purchase was worth it to you. But it isn't worth it for a lot of people who do spend money only to hear very minute changes--nothing close to what hype likes to refer to as "night and day" difference in sound quality.

This is by far the most accurate review of the M50's I have seen. People looking for a magical listening experience won't find it with these cans.
These are for pro studio use and really the only set of cans you want to use if you're forced to mix in headphones, because it has the most accurate bass reproduction of any headphones out, which if you've ever attempted to do headphone mixing, bass is the bottleneck every time.

@inthere - In the recent years, there has been much more expensive headphones that are even better at accurate bass reproduction than the M50, such as the Audez'e LCD series, or the Hifiman HE-5xx/6xx series, etc. But for the low price-point, the M50 is still one of the best.

You may be right about better bass reproduction but in my experience the Hifiman's are not very practical in a studio setup because of the cost and the fact that without research you could easily wind up with a dud for a headphone amp. For the cost of the headphones+the amp you could do much better just getting speakers. With the ATH M50's you can pretty much just plug them into any headphone jack and get to work.