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Originally Posted by drlee27
Interesting, I thought I would get a recommendation of Grado cans.
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Same here. I guess the Senn cans can thought of as "vocals" oriented cans, especially male vocals because of their alluring, ever so smooth and soothing midrange. The Grados are more lively in the upper registers and probably favor female vocals more so than male vocals.
Another possibility would be along the lines of the Sony SA5000, Stax SR-404, or Audio Technica AD2000 varieties, all of which are very quick and detailed and have extended upper frequencies. One caveat: sometimes "quickness" can mean bad things for vocals, particularly when the decay is as quick as is the leading edge of notes. This is a problem that I've experienced with the SA5000's in particular. Some would refer to these types of headphones as "light and airy" but I think that's an over generalization because they all respond well to different amplification and sources and thus can have a very pronounced bass response in the right system. Yet, in general, It think you would find them to be quite pleasant with most vocal styles, both male and female.
A third train of thought would the "middle of the road" types of sonic presentations where no particular aspect (highs, mids, or lows) is given special emphasis. In other words, neutral cans. Here, I'm thinking along the lines of the AKG K701 or Senn HD650 (especially with the Zu Mobius, Moon Audio Silver Dragon, or Equinox replacement cables) or even the Beyer DT880 (although I like the other two a little better). These cans do vocals well, but in truth, they do pretty much everything well and just get out of the way and let whatever is on the recording pass through. The nice thing about these types of "neutral" cans, is that they "support" the vocals quite well without causing any offense to the listener. What I mean by this is that vocals are seldom presented without musical accompanyment, and the K701, HD650 and DT880's of the world won't ever make you cringe from ear bleeding highs or make you deaf from subsonic lows. They all do bass reasonably well but not to the detriment of anything else. In other words, it doesn't dominate the presentation.