[Triffis]

Ok, so I'm an absolute beginner in good headphones (I've been using my iPod buds and that's been it) but I'm looking to upgrade to something nicer.
 
I travel a lot for my sport so I wanted something portable (on-ears) as I just can't take to in-ear buds. Because I travel in the car a lot I'm looking for a pair with decent sound isolation, good durability (I'll be chucking them in my bag a bit) and obviously good portability.
 
My budget is around $100 US unless you can recommend a REALLY good pair like bose on-ears (I don't know if they are that good) that are substantially better and worth the money (in which case I'll just save up a bit longer.)
 
I've been searching around and these are the pairs I am most interested in:
 
- Sennheiser PX 200-ii
- Sennheiser PX 100-ii
- AKG K 518
 
Cheers
 
(sorry for the extensive use of brackets)

 

[echosf]

What about AKG K 480 NC? It is lightweight and has active NC function. Most importantly, the sound is not that bad. The thing is regular price is way over $100. But, if you are lucky, you can buy at a much cheaper price. Anyway, among your candidates, PX 200 might be the best choice.

 

[productred]

Quote:

What about AKG K 480 NC? It is lightweight and has active NC function. Most importantly, the sound is not that bad. The thing is regular price is way over $100. But, if you are lucky, you can buy at a much cheaper price. Anyway, among your candidates, PX 200 might be the best choice.

Second the K480NC. I've never been too excited about NC cans - the PXC cans from Senn were pretty pointless. I bought a pair of K450 (the non-NC version of K480) when it was first released a couple of years ago and thought it was OK, nothing spectacular but does the job. Its isolation was OK-ish. It was only recently that I got the chance to demo the K480 (then HAD TO buy it), which I thought was the NC clone of the K450, but I was surprised to find that the sound is quite a bit different, with quite some more intimate details, better articulation and much nicer extension with finer quality at both ends of the spectrum. Soundstage is OK, not huge, but definitely without the messiness of K450 when handling many-layers classical music. The NC function is quite useful, again much to my astonishment (from what I read here or elsewhere it is rubbish). The hissing when the NC's on is actually not that bad............you're using the NC when in a noisy environment so even if there's hissing you won't even feel it.
 
The NC unit is quite intrusive if you're in your casual attire without anything for it to attach to. I'm wearing a jacket on a daily basis so I just clip it to my inner pockets and it's fine.
 
I still can't believe AKG would use different drivers in K480 and K450, even though the official specs are a tiny tiny tiny bit different (K450: 11-29.5 Hz, sensitivity=126dB; K480: 11-30.5 Hz, sensitivity=127dB). Maybe it's because of some tweaking and finetuning of the driver during the 1 year or so by AKG between I auditioned the two so it's a matter of batch sound? Only AKG knows. I may have to try some newer batch K450 to see for myself.

 

[Chimaobi]

People need to own up and start talking about the K 480 C, are they reall that good? Or...bad?
 
Cheers.

 

[kingpintps]

I'm not sure if you've had a look at the following thread or not, but if you haven't it's definitely worth a look before you take any decision:

http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/433318/shootout-65-portable-headphones-reviewed-tdk-wr700-akg-k430-added-01-08