I tried a Senn HD25 at guitar center with a bunch of metal and thought it was a better fit for it than any of my Grados or the Grados I've heard multiple times and not obtained. For Metal I think you need a phone that has a horizontally wide sound, exciting treble, and a decent enough bass response to give it a powerful sound and keep the shrillness at bay. That's what I got with the HD25. Just haven't ordered one because I recently got the HD558 and K550. Neither of those is ideal for Metal. They are more vertical than horizontal in presentation. The 558 is best suited to stuff like Olivia Newton John Physical and Divinyls S/T. Those albums sounded far better on the 558 than on anything else I've heard. It does a decent job with metal but it doesn't make it very exciting or mask the recordings defects very well. The 550 is too clean and sterile with the wrong type of soundstage. Once again, the metal is decent on these, but far from ideal. The K550 gives 5 star presentations with my film scores though. Grados are vastly overrated for this stuff. They don't have the body or right EQ to really do Metal right. A song will sound good for a while, then some part of it will get way too hot in the treble or not have the oomph I'd like. I used to listen to a discman with Koss KSC35 headphones and often enjoyed the rock and metal more on that setup than Arcam 73-Darkvoice 332-RS-1. And the detail and refinement wasn't really up to par with the KSC35. The RS-1 does have a big wow factor though. I just think that for it's price it should get a lot more right. HF2 is not as wide or clear-sounding as the RS-1 but it has a lot more body. I never really got into that headphone much. It reduces the fatigue to almost nothing but the wow factor isn't there. Closed headphones may be cleaner and more controlled sounding. I used an MDR V600 for a long time and felt that it had that type of sound. Open back phones let all that sound out and maybe it's not the best thing for heavily compressed Metal.
A lot of 80s cd pressings, not modern remasters, of Metal stuff work good with the 558. It depends on the album. Seventh Son sounded a tad rolled off and dull whereas Powerslave was pretty good. The Audio Fidelity Holy Diver is awesome with the 550 or 558. Didn't like Operation Mindcrime with the 558 but it wasn't bad with the 550. Leprosy kinda sucks with the 558, too muddy. Human and Domination were too muddy when I demoed the HD25 but that was probably because I was using a Sansa Clip Zip with the official firmware set to the rock eq into my supposedly warm-sounding Ibasso P2. The original Don't break the oath was awesome on the HD25 though. The guitars were just screaming on Dangerous Meeting, sorta like on the RS-1, but in a way that I liked better. Venom is a tricky band when it comes to headphones. The remasters are well done and not volume maximized at all. But they have a big bass presence that I felt was a bit much on the K550 and HD558. I am now using Rockbox on the sansa with no eq changes most of the time. So I put the old Venom castle and combat cds on an sd card. Those sounded shrill with the RS-1 but they sounded better than the remasters with the 550 or 558. I imagine that may be the case with the HD25 too.
I think the DT990 is not bad with metal, but it can sound a bit congested. But it really gives you awesome impact on stuff like So Many Lies by Testament. I was using the K701 with the arcam 73 and heed can amp. Nothing fatiguing about this setup, you could even blast Testament-Dark Roots without the treble and bass becoming fatiguing. But the 701 is better for film scores and you really havta crank the volume to ear splitting levels to make the music exciting.
Modern metal really kinda sounds like garbage. A lot of this Andy Sneap and Andy Sneap inspired stuff. There isn't much you can do with it aside from just trying to tolerate it. I forget if I tried any modern stuff with the hd25. The modern recordings, especially those made after maybe 2004-2006 are just so jumbled and overly compressed that there isn't much point in investing tons of money in audio equipment to play them on. Even Dead Heart or No World Order are a lot more tolerable than this more recent stuff. Anthems to the Welkin At Dusk too. It often isn't about volume, but how much junk they crammed in a pro tools mix.
I would probably just get the HD25 and a source you can EQ. I plan to order an O2 and Odac sometime soon along with the HD25.
and a bit durable (when i maybe put em in my backpack, or wear around my neck when having fun).
