First Time Buyer 0-40$ Range, Priority Soundstage and Comfort

[Mik James]

Hi folks
 
I'm looking for a decent set of headphones for the upcoming thief game.
I'm looking for something with good sound positioning and imaging and that can be worn comfortably for long periods of time.
I am most interested in over ear phones.
 
For a reference of comfort, I have a set of Akg k77's here and I find them to be uncomfortable (to dense of padding and to much force put on the ears).
 
I live in Canada so i've been checking out ebay.ca and amazon.ca for good deals, but I'm open to other sites as well.
 
Thanks in advance

 

[Mik James]

I ended up going with the Beyer Dynamic Dtx710 at 57$ total from ncix.
I was considering entry level Philips, Sennheiser, Samson and a couple others but there is a free express shipping deal on the Beyer Dtx710's at ncix and the new Thief game comes out on monday
 
I'll post my thoughts when they get here. For Headphones all I have to compare them to is the akg k77's and a cheap set of Kenwood on ears.
 
For speakers I've recently owned a set of Psb 400's. Before that I owned a set of Cerwin Vega v29 Pa's (not necessarily hifi but certainly fun )

 

[lintonindy]

Welcome to the forums. Let us know how you like them. If they don't tick all of your boxes, check out the Superlux line, especially the evos.

 

[Mik James]

Thanks glad to be here.
What would you say are the main differences between the Beyer Dtx 710's and the Superlux Evo's?
I noticed the Dtx 710's are open back, is that like an open baffle sort of effect on bass or more like a port?

 

[lintonindy]

  Thanks glad to be here.
What would you say are the main differences between the Beyer Dtx 710's and the Superlux Evo's?
I noticed the Dtx 710's are open back, is that like an open baffle sort of effect on bass or more like a port?

Well, I don't or haven't owned the Beyers before but I think you did well based on the short amount of research I just did looking them up.
 
I would say the build quality looks to be about equal.
 
It looks like the Beyers have a slightly exaggerated bass response which is okay in an open back design (which usually lacks bass compared to a closed back headphone). The Evos also have a slightly exaggerated bass response which I prefer personally actually.
 
The Beyers are "open" meaning that the back of the headphone is open to the environment. The driver is usually covered by some mesh or other housing but it a lot more open to the outside environment. When you're wearing an open headphone you can usually hear the things going on around you so it's best to sit in a more quiet room. Like you can hear what is going on around you, your music won't be a secret to anyone else either. All this is fine if you have a quiet room, as I use my open headphones in my office when all alone (I use some Sennheiser 558s).
 
A closed design is what I prefer for a mobile solution as well as when I'm laying up in bed next to my wife and I don't want to disturb her with my music. The driver and you ear are closed off from the environment. Although, a lot of  closed designs do contain some small holes to let miniscule amounts of air into the driver or your ear. Closed headphones are usually not as known for having as good of a sound stage as open headphones, but are known to isolate the listener better. They are also capable of a better bass response due to the design and the amount of seal they have on your head. I really like my Denons and sometimes (like right now listening to some Daft Punk) I wear them in my office even though I could listen to my open Senns. 
 
The Evos are a semi-open headphone meaning they have large port or air holes. They kind of isolate, have a decently large sound stage, and also have a pretty good bass response. They are IMHO a good compromise between the two styles. They were very inexpensive and if I didn't have my other headphones that cost about 3 to 4 times more a piece, I would be happy with those Evos. I do however, have my closed back Denons and my open back Senns that I just slightly (I really do mean just slightly. They were 85 -90 percent of my other headphones) prefered to the Evos so I sold them. Judging from what others have said about those Beyers though I think you will be happy with them. Make sure you tell us if you aren't happy (or if you are) but try and put a finger on what exactly you aren't happy with and some of these fine people will be able to steer you in the right direction.
 
Good luck and sorry about your wallet!

 

[GeneraI]

For $0-$40 your expectations are too high. I have yet to hear a $40 headphone with soundstage. Plus $40 headphones come with bland and uncomfortable earpads.

 

[Mik James]

So basically after using the dtx 710's for awhile they are exactly what I thought they might be, an entry level quality set of headphones.
I have them connected to a Kenwood vr-206 receiver which is connected to realtek on board, the same setup used for my psb 400's.
 
Imaging/sound field is certianly present although it is subtle and not a close approximation of positional surround sound via conventional speakers.
The midrange while present and not over attenuated on certian frequencies seems to be missing something. The bass goes quite deep, although I don't have much to compare it to.
They are more comfortable than the akg k77's for sure.
I also prefer the sound of the dtx 710's over the akg's as well.
 
Basically I don't see where the money is going when you buy a set of headphones.
When you design speakers there is the r&d involved in the crossovers, higher cost of drivers, r&d involved in how a speaker will interact with the room, etc etc.
 
Then again this is just one set of headphones so perhaps it's not necessarily indicative of of what you can get for a reasonable amount of money.
 
So in closing I wasn't wowed but I wasn't entirely disappointed either. If you need headphones then you just have to pay the asking price for headphones regardless of what they might actually cost to produce and r&d.
I'll probably stick with speakers in the future though.

 

[Beocord]

  Basically I don't see where the money is going when you buy a set of headphones.

 
In your case the money went into the piece of text on the cups that says "beyerdynamic". I try to steer away from lower end models from well known manufacturers such as Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser and AKG. I have DTX910 and it is one of the worst build headphones I have come by. Cheap, creeky plastic with shallow pads and bad cable. Sound is definately better than average for the price, but I would not recommend these to anyone because there are a lot of better alternatives available.

  For $0-$40 your expectations are too high. I have yet to hear a $40 headphone with soundstage. Plus $40 headphones come with bland and uncomfortable earpads.

 
That's quite a generalisation. There are good 40$ headphones. Of course it takes some research to find those. Most cheap headphones are terrible and you are likely to get one of those buying in random.
 
                <--- 40$ headphone

 

[Saoshyant]

For the most part I agree that there's a lot of bad stuff at the low end, but there are also some gems that are great for the cost too.  The two Koss superstars, KSC75 and Porta Pro both shine in this range, as well as the JVC S400.  Like with most things in life, you generally get what you pay for.  BUT, there's also the little gems that once you know they're there, will always stand out.

 

[cel4145]

Basically I don't see where the money is going when you buy a set of headphones.
When you design speakers there is the r&d involved in the crossovers, higher cost of drivers, r&d involved in how a speaker will interact with the room, etc etc.

Then again this is just one set of headphones so perhaps it's not necessarily indicative of of what you can get for a reasonable amount of money.

Well, your PSB400s were what? About $500 or $600 MSRP new back in the day? You really expect a random $40 pair of headphones to compete? After all, the headphones you purchased are not regularly recommended on Head-Fi as good price performance values. And then you think you can extrapolate from one pair of headphones to all headphones? This kind of hasty generalization won't convince anyone else, and it won't help you if you to make good decisions if you are trying to pursue the audio hobby.

 

[Mik James]

Well, your PSB400s were what? About $500 or $600 MSRP new back in the day? You really expect a random $40 pair of headphones to compete? After all, the headphones you purchased are not regularly recommended on Head-Fi as good price performance values. And then you think you can extrapolate from one pair of headphones to all headphones? This kind of hasty generalization won't convince anyone else, and it won't help you if you to make good decisions if you are trying to pursue the audio hobby.

Haha, slow down man. I already conceded in my post that I've only tried 2 sets of headphones.
Basically i'm optimistic that there are decent quality headphones in the lower price ranges. Even though many on this forum seem to think that sub 100$ headphones can't be good, it is nice to hear that not everyone here believes that.
 
I'm not entirely sure what the cost of the psb's were back in the day. I payed 100$ on the used market, and there are good value speakers that could probably compete well with those psb's for ~200-300$ new these days.
 
The main issue is that headphones should be a better value due to the only real cost being r&d. Even then were talking about single full-range drivers in a nearfield environment, there's only so many design possibilities in that situation.
 
I'm certianly willing to concede that there are good values in the -100$ range that could compete with 200-300$ speakers in many areas, but I haven't heard them yet and my thinking is that high end headphones companies should either put effort into lower cost products or exit the low end market. Selling crap doesn't seem like a good business move.
 
And also, grain of salt should be obvious for any user review, mine or otherwise. I had considered avoiding sharing my thoughts of the Beyer Dynamic Dtx 710's entirely because I know some people out there only base their decisions off what they read on the internet.

 

[cel4145]

I'm not entirely sure what the cost of the psb's were back in the day. I payed 100$ on the used market, and there are good value speakers that could probably compete well with those psb's for ~200-300$ new these days.

Yeah. Well, I looked it up. I prefer not to make guesses on little information. LOL

The main issue is that headphones should be a better value due to the only real cost being r&d. Even then were talking about single full-range drivers in a nearfield environment, there's only so many design possibilities in that situation.

How do you know what's involved in the R&D on headphones? Speaker design may be comparatively easier because you can use measurements to make a lot of decisions (simulation modeling is frequently used). Headphones have to fit a wide variety of people, and then how the sound interacts with people's ears are going to be different. I'm sure it requires a lot of individual testing and tuning of the enclosure, driver, and pads. Then durability testing of the design. And the "speakers" are extremely small miniaturized drivers. Smaller does not always mean cheaper to produce.

So yeah. I wouldn't jump to your conclusions. I'd encourage you to try more headphones--one's recommended by head-fiers.

 

[Saoshyant]

Eh, he took a chance and it didn't pan out.  I doubt there's any serious head-fier that can claim they haven't had that happen to them.  No matter how much research you do, it can only give you an estimation on whether or not you'll like the product, nothing more.  Some of us head-fiers have better advantages such as being able to audition the headphones they're curious about, some of us aren't as lucky.  I'm still surprised that Austin's headphone market is as bad as it is, especially given its motto "Live Music Capital of the World."  Yes I know there isn't necessarily any correlation between the amount of live music and how good of an audio equipment market there is, but you'd think.  Anyways, headphones are very much a trial and error process, that at best involves educated guesses.  Just think of it as a learning experience.

 

[Mik James]

Yeah. Well, I looked it up. I prefer not to make guesses on little information. LOL
How do you know what's involved in the R&D on headphones? Speaker design may be comparatively easier because you can use measurements to make a lot of decisions (simulation modeling is frequently used). Headphones have to fit a wide variety of people, and then how the sound interacts with people's ears are going to be different. I'm sure it requires a lot of individual testing and tuning of the enclosure, driver, and pads. Then durability testing of the design. And the "speakers" are extremely small miniaturized drivers. Smaller does not always mean cheaper to produce.

So yeah. I wouldn't jump to your conclusions. I'd encourage you to try more headphones--one's recommended by head-fiers.

 
And ideal speakers would be designed to room specs, the enclosures would also be tuned and tested. Multiple drivers are tested to work together etc.
There are of course full range loud speakers though so I won't say it's any easier. All I'm implying is that they can focus more of the costs on r&d rather than material costs. 

 

[cel4145]

And ideal speakers would be designed to room specs, the enclosures would also be tuned and tested. Multiple drivers are tested to work together etc.
There are of course full range loud speakers though so I won't say it's any easier. All I'm implying is that they can focus more of the costs on r&d rather than material costs. 

I don't know what ideal speakers have to do with this discussion. I think you are totally lost in justifying your point since this discussion is about $40 budget headphones. LOL