[Adol]

Not a very original way to start off here, but...

Right now, I have a slightly old, slightly battered set of Sony MDR-V6's, hooked directly into the high sample-rate output of a Chaintech AV710 sound card. All of which was selected by my lurking here, no less.

The entire system's pretty good sounding to my ears, especially considering its sub-$100 price point, but...well, nothing's ever good enough, is it?

To that end, I've been considering upgrading the system in two ways. Better headphones, preferably in the ~$150 price range, and a cheap (by audio standards, anyways) CMoy-type amplifier. I'm, admittedly, rather clueless as to what headphones in that price range are good, so...uh, yeah. Yet another "what headphones in X price range are good?" thread. No shortage of those around here, as far as I can see.

I listen to just about everything, from jazz to classical to rock and so on, so I'd need headphones that are good at handling pretty much all genres of music. Amplification shouldn't be a big deal, unless the headphones are sufficiently power-hungry that they can't run well from aforementioned CMoy. [size=xx-small]And I'd assume that most headphones that need that much power are well above my price range, anyways[/size]. Isolation would be nice, but unneccessary. Besides, if I really need to keep other people from hearing my music for some reason, I'd still have the V6's. Finally, I have lots of music in MP3 format, but almost all of it's at least LAME APS quality or better, and a good bit of my collection's APX-quality MP3's or Musepack files. I can't imagine that any headphones in my price range would exactingly point out every slight error in that quality of compression, but, again, they should be able to handle that kind of source material.

One headphone that I'm looking at is the AKG K501. It's reasonably-priced, and, AFAIK, is pretty good at handling just about any musical selection thrown at it. Not too sure about its stereo postioning, though, and, since I'm rather addicted to murder simulation...er, Unreal Tournament 2004, I'd like headphones that'll give me some idea as to where bullets, explosions, and such are coming from.

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

I think you are on the right track, in your price range the k501s are some of the best phones to be found. As far as for videogames, you may want to try those new Zalmans, they are made for that sort of thing.

 

[terrymx]

the k501 have very big soundstage and awesome precision so you will be good with fps.

they are not good for all type of music, but rather classical, jazz, symphony, and light rocks. since their bass punch is weak, they dont impress me when i listen to metal. if budget is low, i would recommend getting something like a Mint amp with 2x9volts. getting more power into that thing may help bring out the bass more.

but yeah, listening to classical type music with the k501 is truly bliss.

oh and did i mention how superbly comfortable these are?

 

[Adol]

Now that I actually have a decent working CMoy amp, I'll bump this thread.

So, is the bass extension on the K501's lacking, or is the bass on them just not very pronounced? Weak bass extension would be almost be a fatal flaw, not having overly-bombastic bass would be a strength in some regards.

I'm also interested in the Sennheiser HD555 and HD580's. The HD555 is well-priced, and pretty well-liked AFAIK, and, if the HD580's a big jump over the 555 or K501, I'd be willing to spend the extra $50.

While the prospect of jamming little, easily-misplaced pieces of plastic in my ears doesn't sound too pleasant initially, if the Shure E3C or Etymotic ER-6 canalphones are really good compared to standard headphones in the price range, I think I could get over that aversion pretty quickly.

 

[rxinside]

What about AKG 171 or 240?

 

[Tyson]

Well, with an amp, the best closed headphone in this price range is the Beyer DT250-250. The Ety ER-6's are pretty good except for their light bass.

 

[daycart1]

There are great deals available now on the Senn 580...one of the current best buys in audio!