[Bakgrund]

Hey, i am going to buy a pair of headphones, the price range is where the ath-m50/custom one pro's are. I've only tried the m50's in person and liked the sound of them, the design can be discussed tho. I've heard the custom one pro's are very similar sounding, but they are very low impedance (16 ohm vs 38 on the m50's), i've heard that the impedance determinates how much juice you need to power them, but i've also heard that is not true, what is the truth here?
 
Would a pairs of cop's be a big improvement from akg k518 if i don't get all that detail out from them that i want? What headphones should i buy? It's a complete mess, there's so many!
 
Thanks.

 

[PurpleAngel]

What sources are you plugging the headphones into?

 

[Bakgrund]

  What sources are you plugging the headphones into?

I will be using them on my on-board audio on my pc 90% of the time, but it may happen i want to use it on my phone too.

 

[PurpleAngel]

  I will be using them on my on-board audio on my PC 90% of the time, but it may happen I want to use it on my phone too.

On-board audio is not great for driving low impedance (Ohm) headphones, like the 16-Ohm COPs, portable audio devices (smart phone, mp3 player, iPods, etc,) usually come with very low impedance output, which works better for driving headphone like the COPs.
 
The 38-Ohm of the ATH-M50 is still more for portable audio, but on-board should still be ok.
 
For use with a computer, get the Gemini HSR-1000 (Takstar Pro 80), they are 60-Ohm and cost $50-$60.
 
Adding an Asus Xonar DG (PCI) sound card, $26.80 and there is a $10 mail in rebate (Amazon).
Should improve the audio quality of headphones plugged into your computer.

 

[Bakgrund]

  On-board audio is not great for driving low impedance (Ohm) headphones, like the 16-Ohm COPs, portable audio devices (smart phone, mp3 player, iPods, etc,) usually come with very low impedance output, which works better for driving headphone like the COPs.
 
The 38-Ohm of the ATH-M50 is still more for portable audio, but on-board should still be ok.
 
For use with a computer, get the Gemini HSR-1000 (Takstar Pro 80), they are 60-Ohm and cost $50-$60.
 
Adding an Asus Xonar DG (PCI) sound card, $26.80 and there is a $10 mail in rebate (Amazon).
Should improve the audio quality of headphones plugged into your computer.

Hey, sorry for late answer.
 
I tried the m50's again today, and i have to say i am not as pleased as i remembered with them, i think the bass is too tiny and not as deep as i like it. Would the COP's still be a worse choice? What would i suffer if i choosed the COP's over the M50's and vice versa. Also, what does the impedance affects in terms of sound quality?
 
Thanks.

 

[PurpleAngel]

  Hey, sorry for late answer.
 
I tried the m50's again today, and I have to say I am not as pleased as I remembered with them, I think the bass is too tiny and not as deep as I like it. Would the COP's still be a worse choice? What would I suffer if I choosed the COP's over the M50's and vice versa. Also, what does the impedance affects in terms of sound quality?
 
Thanks.

It's preferred to have the headphone impedance to be 8 to 10 times (or more) the impedance of whatever the headphone is plugged into, otherwise you get things like a bloated bass (louder, less detail).
On-board audio can have an impedance from 40-Ohm 100-Ohms (guessing).
Where as the 16-Ohm COPs would be best used plugged into something with a 2-Ohm impedance.

 

[rubinstein]

 
It's preferred to have the headphone impedance to be 8 to 10 times (or more) the impedance of whatever the headphone is plugged into, otherwise you get things like a bloated bass (louder, less detail).
On-board audio can have an impedance from 40-Ohm 100-Ohms (guessing).
Where as the 16-Ohm COPs would be best used plugged into something with a 2-Ohm impedance.

 
Do you mean drive ability of an amplifier? or something else?
 
I connect to HE 400 to E 17. The impedance of HE 400 is 35 Ohm. The drive ability of E 17 is 16 to 150 Ohms. There is another term called sensitivity of headphone.
How can I correlate all these things? could you please explain?

 

[PurpleAngel]

   
Do you mean drive ability of an amplifier? or something else?
 
I connect to HE 400 to E 17. The impedance of HE 400 is 35 Ohm. The drive ability of E 17 is 16 to 150 Ohms. There is another term called sensitivity of headphone.
How can I correlate all these things? could you please explain?

It's very easy to throw a lot of power into driving headphones, it just cost more to do drive headphones the right way.
 
The Fiio E17's output impedance is around 1-Ohm, but can drive headphones from 16-Ohm to 300-Ohm.
Sensitivity is also a factor for driving headphones, but I'm not really knowledgeable enough about it to explain it well.
Usually the headphone impedance (Ohms) give a rough area of what is need to drive headphones.

 

[Bakgrund]

 
It's preferred to have the headphone impedance to be 8 to 10 times (or more) the impedance of whatever the headphone is plugged into, otherwise you get things like a bloated bass (louder, less detail).
On-board audio can have an impedance from 40-Ohm 100-Ohms (guessing).
Where as the 16-Ohm COPs would be best used plugged into something with a 2-Ohm impedance.

How can i find out what my output impedance on my motherboard is? I have a Msi z77a-g43. I really thought the bass was not that great when i tried the m50's on my phone, would that be different on my computer? Also, isn't there any sound card that works good with the COP's, with lower output impedance?

 

[PurpleAngel]

  How can i find out what my output impedance on my motherboard is? I have a Msi z77a-g43. I really thought the bass was not that great when i tried the m50's on my phone, would that be different on my computer? Also, isn't there any sound card that works good with the COP's, with lower output impedance?

It's usually not listed for the output impedance of the motherboard's line-out/headphone jack.
I'm guess because it's not something for the motherboard makers to brag about.
Lowest impedance on a sound card is 10-Ohm, where as external headphone amplifier can be less then 1-Ohm.

 

[Bakgrund]

 
It's usually not listed for the output impedance of the motherboard's line-out/headphone jack.
I'm guess because it's not something for the motherboard makers to brag about.
Lowest impedance on a sound card is 10-Ohm, where as external headphone amplifier can be less then 1-Ohm.

This is hard, if we skip all the numbers for now, would the m50's with a xonar dgx, would it fix the bad base? Or should i go with something completely different? Or maybe the cop's?

 

[PurpleAngel]

  This is hard, if we skip all the numbers for now, would the m50's with a xonar dgx, would it fix the bad base? Or should i go with something completely different? Or maybe the cop's?

I think the Xonar DGX is a great value sound card, that can easily drive the ATH-M50 headphones.
 
Check out the Gemini HSR-1000 (Takstar Pro 80) closed headphones. $50-$60.
I think they easy match the ATH-M50s for audio quality (maybe even a little better that the ATH-M50s?).

 

[Somegravity]

Beyer Dynamic DT-770 Pros are good

 

[Bakgrund]

 
I think the Xonar DGX is a great value sound card, that can easily drive the ATH-M50 headphones.
 
Check out the Gemini HSR-1000 (Takstar Pro 80) closed headphones. $50-$60.
I think they easy match the ATH-M50s for audio quality (maybe even a little better that the ATH-M50s?).

Unfortunately we don't have gemini in Sweden, which is where i live, otherwise they would have been very nice if they sound better than the m50. And i don't want to import them because it will just be a lot of taxes and problems with eventual rma.
 
Do you think the COP's will get the side effects you talked about? bloated bass (louder, less detail). I have decision anxiety between them and the m50's, but better audio is the most important thing.
 

  Beyer Dynamic DT-770 Pros are good

I've heard a lot of good things about them too, tho i really don't like the look of them, and people also say they aren't that bass heavy, i like bass, but i still want to hear everything else, so i don't like beats by dre bass, but you probably get the point.

 

[rubinstein]

get x1.
http://www.amazon.de/Philips-HiFi-Stereokopfh%C3%B6rer-hochwertigem-Neodym-Treiber-schwarz-braun-silber/dp/B008ZW2T7M/ref=sr_1_1?s=ce-de&ie=UTF8&qid=1383089283&sr=1-1&keywords=x1+kopfh%C3%B6rer