Hello everyone! I'm new to this community (actually this is my first post out of hopefully many more to come). Right now I'm at the brink of buying my first higher end type of headphone. I've skimmed through some threads in this site and even read some reviews at InnerFidelity. Out of everything that I read, these headphones were either mentioned the most or caught my attention in one way or another (lol):
Audio-Technica ATH M-50
Ultrasone HFI-580
Sony MDR-XB700
V-MODA Crossfade LP2
V-MODA M-100
Noontec Zoro
Philips Fidelio L1
Shure SRH840
Sennheiser HD 239
Now here's some info about myself to give a better idea of how I'm going to use these headphones:
Comfort is going to be a big thing since I have to commute to go to school and during my breaks I travel. So these headphones need to be comfortable and they shouldn't leak a lot. But I don't mind minor leaking and I don't have the volume up too loud anyway (less than 40%).
Usage wise - Kind of already discussed that I'm going to do a lot of traveling but other than that home/office use. Oh and I also do some gaming.
Type of music I listen to - Pretty much everything except country and jazz (those I listen to sparingly). If I had to name what I listened to the most then it would be Alternative, Pop, Indie Rock, and Punk. Although, recently I've been listening to a lot of Classical.
Durability - I tend to be careful with my stuff but since I, again, do a lot of traveling sometimes stuff happens so I don't want anything that will break easily.
Two more things:
1)I'm not really looking into in-ear/earbuds type of headphones since that's what I've been using until now. But other than that, I don't care whether your recommendation is over ear, on ear, closed, open, etc.
2)Budget: max is $200 (As I previously mentioned, this is going to be my first major headphone purchase and I just want to "test" how things go first. If I have a good experience with this, I'll probably be more willing to spend more cash but for now I'm thinking that $200 is plenty.)
I've tried to be as specific as possible to, hopefully, make it easier on you guys to make recommendations. Thanks for any help!
P.S. The headphones listed above aren't the headphones that I'm currently choosing from. I also know the importance of actually trying the headphones out before actually buying them and I get that a lot of the "choosing process" is connected to personal preference but it never hurt to ask for an experienced response. I have also already tried some headphones including Bose QuietComfort 15, Beats by Dr. Dre Solo HD, Soul by Ludacris, Klipsch, Sennheiser, Sony, and whatever else was available at Best Buy.