I'm looking for recs on a TOTL open back headphone for use with heavy metal, rock, and punk... Not necessarily the best recordings in terms of dynamic range and usually lots of treble energy and speed in the recording, should I try to counter this synergistically?
I think you're in the right path taking the limitations of your recordings as a consideration. Slightly raised bass and slightly recessed treble can typically make less than ideal / dynamically compressed recordings sound much better in my experience.
For instance you might prefer Elear over Utopia.
Utopia will have the edge in terms of detail when paired with a fully uncompressed, perfect acoustic recording of a small string ensemble or similar material. But when we're talking about multi-layered studio recordings with modern mainstream mastering, we're mostly dealing with dynamic range 4 - 7, and that's a whole different story.
The Stax SR-009 (or possibly SR-009S) is the best I've heard, even for not so good recordings contrary to what most people claim. It makes those recordings sound much better to me, revealing new layers of detail and new sounds not previously heard while making them much more transparent, almost as if it makes them a higher quality recording than they actually are.
Its "speed" just isn't matched by anything else in production as far as I know... or any other headphone in the history of headphones perhaps. The Orpheus HE-1 didn't strike me as being that "fast" and planars (even the Abyss AB-1266, haven't heard the Phi's yet though) don't have fast/realistic enough decay.
I know it probably doesn't really help but I still kind of feel the need to leave this comment:
The best way I have ever heard old and badly recorded heavy metal and rock recordings is on the old vinyl player my grandma inherited to me, with some crappy speakers from the 40's played from some dusty old lp's ... it just rocked
I'm looking for recs on a TOTL open back headphone for use with heavy metal, rock, and punk... Not necessarily the best recordings in terms of dynamic range and usually lots of treble energy and speed in the recording, should I try to counter this synergistically?
What are you looking for in the headphone and what are you intending to drive them with? A budget would also be nice. I don’t think any one headphone sounds all that much better for one genre of music than another it depends on how you want it to sound. Grados are fantastic for rock but also are good for acoustic music as well and the HD-800’s depending on the amp can also do just about anything well and the Abyss while with the power can also rock the house but also can just do some folk and “Old Man” from Neil Young is just awesome from them. For speed yes planars and electrostats are going to do that a bit better but a lot of dynamics can hold there own also. If it were me I would find a headphone that has the sound signature I’m looking for and go from there as most of the TOTL headphones are not going to have a problem with Metal but some will show a bad recording more than most. I tend to grad my closed back AKG K872’s when listening to metal but that is me and still listen with the others also depends on the mood.
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