[AirForceTeacher]

Ok, as some of you may know from other posts, I'm looking for lower-priced monitoring headphones for my son for music school. I say lower-priced because between the headphones and the Marshall stack, he'd rather have the stack, so most of his birthday/Christmas money is going toward that. As it's a Christmas present, I don't want to get him used 'phones - that's somethign I can talk to him about when he wants to upgrade. He's taking music classes and engineering classes right now, and he's also in a band who will probably be recording soon. He uses a Macbook , no dedicated headphone amplifier yet, but I can give him an old receiver it it's necessary. I was pretty much set on ordering a pair of Sony MDR-V6's because they seem to be recommended most often on these forums for monitoring (in that price range), but last night at Best Buy I noticed HD428's on the shelf in my price range. I checked the forum reviews and they all lauded their neutral response. So, of the two, are they about equivalent for monitoring? Do either require an amplifier, or will a Macbook headphone jack be powerful enough? While I was at BB last night, a lady in line with me at cellular said her husband mixed music too. I got excited and asked what headphones he used. "Oh Bose are the best! He's got the wireless ones!"

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

I found them pretty neutral, if a bit on the warm side of neutral. Blame that on the Sennheiser sound though. They are very easy to get into, especially for the price.

 

[Deep Funk]

I once preferred the HD428 over the MDR V6. Later on I bought a recabled HD428 which was an improvement. The V6 is flawed in certain ways.
 
If you are really on a budget for 'neutral' sounding headphones the HD428 is a nice option that improves with amplification. 
 
Just so you know, I have nothing against BOSE other than how they advertise their headphones and the prices they expect consumers to pay for products which lack information, build quality and visible appeal (visible appeal being subjective). I should try some of their headphones but then again I do not want to pay for excessive marketing.