[Res1]

I am looking at a couple of headphones, I am not sure what I should be looking at. My budget is $400 USD. I like the Beyerdynamic DT 990.

I listen to a variety of music and I was thinking how can I tell while shopping online for a pair which would be good for what genre of music? How can I tell the frequency of headphones, and for what genre of music? Which headphones can produce good bass? Which headphones have a perfect reproduction of natural instruments or in-game sounds for gaming, etc... What should I be looking at?

 

[msing539]

Hey, first thing is there are very few YouTube reviewers you can rely on. Either their tastes might not match yours or they're getting paid to favorably review certain headphones. Exceptions of course, there are some I genuinely like and trust, though I never base a decision solely on a reviewer.

Frequency response graphs help, but some headphones sound better than they graph and vice versa. In other words, FR is only a small part of how a headphone actually sounds. Driver material, cup design, everything adds up and influences its sonic characteristics.

If gaming is a good portion of what you do, then start looking at the recommended headphones for gaming. If you don't game competitively and primarily use them for music, then that should influence your decision more heavily.

If your budget is all in at $400 for a dac, amp, and headphone, it's doable but buying used will take you farther. Don't be afraid to ask questions along the way.

 

[Res1]

If your budget is all in at $400 for a dac, amp, and headphone, it's doable but buying used will take you farther. Don't be afraid to ask questions along the way.

I have a Schitt Magni 3+ and a Modi 3E. The budget is for the headphones themselves. But, perhaps the headphones would be overkill for this AMP/DAC stack. I wouldn't even know where to start to look at used equipment.

 

[HWB3]

You can pick up a pair of HIFIMAN Sundara's for $299. Well reviewed and thought highly of.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I listen to a variety of music and I was thinking how can I tell while shopping online for a pair which would be good for what genre of music?

Truth is it's all over the place. People say use Grado for rock and metal, I hear everything getting thrown off the stage so I use the HD6x0. Sure it's not as expansive as the K701 but at the time I bought it I didn't know I was gonna come across a damn good amp (without which these AKGs have a tendency to have even less bass than what the measurements suggest).

How can I tell the frequency of headphones, and for what genre of music? Which headphones can produce good bass? Which headphones have a perfect reproduction of natural instruments or in-game sounds for gaming, etc... What should I be looking at?

Speaking of measurements...that's not a lot of help either. People in a very quiet environment and don't expect too much bass or too much of a thump find the HifIMan HE4xx tier (save for the S) have more than adequate bass, people in a louder environment and/or looking for more of a thump are disappointed. Looking at it objectively it's about as flat as it gets from 20hz 1000hz, but then there are relatively wild variances between 1000hz and 8000hz that some people either don't hear enough vocals or that there's too much (3500hz peak scalloped out to either side ie it depends whose voice you're listening to).

Which headphones can produce good bass?

What exactly is "good bass" to you?

If you want a very pronounced thump on AC/DC tracks then Sennheiser HD650.

If you want plucking on a double bass in a jazz track to be absolutely perfect with no artificial bloom then a smoother, flatter response, fast moving ie not jackhammering movement planar like the HE400 would be best.

Neither would be good enough if you either expect it to sound like an Escalade with two 2000watt amps driving a 15in Audiobahn subwoofer each, or if you do want either of the aforementioned options but you actually have a high noise floor and thus have more noise getting between your eardrums and the bass and thus less of the actual bass registers in your brain.

Which headphones have a perfect reproduction of natural instruments...

Technically and strictly speaking, none. I mean...for the reproduction to be technically perfect then the response needs to be perfectly flat, and that doesn't exist. it doesn't even exist for speakers yet.

You're basically going to have to compromise somewhere.

...or in-game sounds for gaming, etc...

Are you really going to fret that that MP3 track of an assault rifle or worse, a fictional weapon like a Gauss rifle, sounds a little different from when you're at the range or from what you think a Gauss rifle needs to sound like?

I'm not saying crappy headphones or speakers can't screw this up. I'm just saying if you're going to get only one headphone might as well focus on how it does with music since you'll likely be too busy processing various stimuli to win to think that that 7.62mm battle rifle's semiauto mechanism sounds different in the game than when you fire it at the range. And that assumes you have, like, an AR-10 or a SCAR-H or whatever that is actually in a video game.