regnaDkciN
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2013
- Posts
- 20
- Likes
- 10
After getting by with various earbuds and ultra-cheap phones for some time, I'm looking to get a decent pair to use at home with my computer (eventually to be fitted with a DAC/headphone amp) and iPhone. The main factors I'm concerned with are:
-- No more than $300, and preferably less than $200.
-- Over-ear and closed-back, as I'll be using them in bed at times, and can't disturb my wife.
-- A detachable cable would be a plus, as the better phones I used to own years ago (Koss and Grado) met their demise when their non-detachable cable started failing.
-- My main musical tastes run to classical, with some rock and jazz thrown in. Basically, that means I'm mainly interested in well-balanced sound with lifelike midrange, as opposed to "basshead" LF needs, although I don't want thin, lightweight bass, either.
-- Soundstaging is VERY important to me. I know soundstaging is mentioned here often but, with all due respect, I have to echo Inigo Montoya in saying "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." For a lot of Head-Fi'ers, it seems to me "soundstaging" means "the sense that sound is coming farther to the left and right than the phones themselves." I mean quite a bit more than that! Soundstaging, to me, means the sense of a 3-D space that starts at the ears and goes forward, so that, if listening to an orchestra, there is a sense that the woodwinds are further "upstage" (deeper in front of me) than the strings, and the brasses are even more so. Now, I understand that I'm never going to get the sense of a to-the-front-wall stage the way I get with speakers unless I can eventually afford a front-end with a head-transfer function, but I find the cheap-o phones I'm using now, even with a crossfeed plug-in on my computer media player, tend to put all the instruments on a straight line between my ears. Needless to say, that's exactly what I DON'T want!
Based on my need for soundstaging, my first thought would be to go for a lower-cost, closed-back Ultrasone with its S-Logic design, but it seems as if, for everyone who loves them, I run across two more people who hate them. It's going to be hard to do much auditioning, as most of the stores around here limit their "better" headphones to "the best that Monster and Dr.Dre can provide," so I'm going to have to do a lot of narrowing-down "blind," as it were, plus buy from somewhere with a generous return policy. Given all that, could you suggest any phones I should check out? Or am I asking for too much at this price range?
-- No more than $300, and preferably less than $200.
-- Over-ear and closed-back, as I'll be using them in bed at times, and can't disturb my wife.
-- A detachable cable would be a plus, as the better phones I used to own years ago (Koss and Grado) met their demise when their non-detachable cable started failing.
-- My main musical tastes run to classical, with some rock and jazz thrown in. Basically, that means I'm mainly interested in well-balanced sound with lifelike midrange, as opposed to "basshead" LF needs, although I don't want thin, lightweight bass, either.
-- Soundstaging is VERY important to me. I know soundstaging is mentioned here often but, with all due respect, I have to echo Inigo Montoya in saying "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." For a lot of Head-Fi'ers, it seems to me "soundstaging" means "the sense that sound is coming farther to the left and right than the phones themselves." I mean quite a bit more than that! Soundstaging, to me, means the sense of a 3-D space that starts at the ears and goes forward, so that, if listening to an orchestra, there is a sense that the woodwinds are further "upstage" (deeper in front of me) than the strings, and the brasses are even more so. Now, I understand that I'm never going to get the sense of a to-the-front-wall stage the way I get with speakers unless I can eventually afford a front-end with a head-transfer function, but I find the cheap-o phones I'm using now, even with a crossfeed plug-in on my computer media player, tend to put all the instruments on a straight line between my ears. Needless to say, that's exactly what I DON'T want!
Based on my need for soundstaging, my first thought would be to go for a lower-cost, closed-back Ultrasone with its S-Logic design, but it seems as if, for everyone who loves them, I run across two more people who hate them. It's going to be hard to do much auditioning, as most of the stores around here limit their "better" headphones to "the best that Monster and Dr.Dre can provide," so I'm going to have to do a lot of narrowing-down "blind," as it were, plus buy from somewhere with a generous return policy. Given all that, could you suggest any phones I should check out? Or am I asking for too much at this price range?
