[blackteacz]

Hi gentlemen and ladies,

I would be super greateful if you could help me steer in the right direction. I would like to buy closed cans for evening home listening. SInce moving in with my wife, having kids and all that I am starting to miss my ultimate relaxation: to throw myself on a sofa and listen to some good music on my home stereo. Closed so that I can listen relatively undisturbed and I do not leak too much sound.

I have been doing a lot of googling and educating myself and came to a conclusion that to narrow down the potential options I should ask you, the experts, here

I listen to:
- jazz (piano jazz, trios and quartets, stuff like Charles Mingus, Herbie Hancock, Dave Brubeck, Ahmad Jamal, ...)
- vocals (like Nick Cave, Adele, Janis Joplin, Elton John, Bob Dylan, ...)
- not so hard rock (Dire Straits, Queen, Doors, Pink Floyd, ...)
- guitar blues

I prefer a balanced sound, with clear vocals, good guitars (mids?). I am not so keen on having too much bass and I will listen to the music to relax and unwind, it does not have to be superanalytical or too aggressive.

I have Onkyo TX8150 and I do not mind buying an amp for the headphones. My budget for all is about 1000 USD. I can push to 1500 if the price to performance ratio would be terrific. I listen to losless on Tidal.

Any reccomendations for cans or a can amp combo would be greatly apprecited.

PS please do not tell my wife about this expenditure, ok?

Some options I have stumbled upon:
- ATH-A1000X or ATH-W1000X
- Shure 1540
- Beyerdynamic DT 1770 PRO

 

[Monsterzero]

I would recommend a ZMF Atticus or Eikon+ vintage receiver to drive the ZMFs.

Most modern receivers like your Onkyo have pretty crappy sounding op-amps to drive headphones. Vintage receivers used a resistor tapped off of the speaker amp section for the headphones.
Modern gear,especially in the price range of your Onkyo are all about the bells and whistles...bluetooth,multi channel,etc and SQ is an after thought.
If you go the vintage receiver route,you will want to stick with headphones 250 ohms and higher. Lower impedance headphones sound like garbage out of the powerful vintage gear,suffering from bass bloat and other undesirable sonic attributes.

ZMF have fantastic mids,great for blues,vocals and rock. The Atticus has + mid bass for added slam. The Eikon has better sub bass rumble,but less slam.

Beyerdynamics have screechy treble and recessed mids. I would avoid all Beyers if I were you for your listening preferences.
ATH headphones can have a severe clamp and odd tonality. I used to own the original AD2000s,and they were great for rock,metal,blues and trance,but the clamp was unbearable.

If you want more info check out my YouTube channel(link below) on using vintage receivers as headphone amps and ZMF headphones.

 

[blackteacz]

I would recommend a ZMF Atticus or Eikon+ vintage receiver to drive the ZMFs.

Awesome, thanks for the advice. I am very happy to explore this direction as I believe that the older stuff would be better for what I need.

B

 

[Ilomaenkimi]

BD T5p V2 is pretty good, i had them before Stellia. Maybe a bargain, could say..
Graham Slee Solo ULDE was pretty good match with them.

 

[diggygun]

Good musical choice