[doom0matic]

Hello all,
 
first, thank you for taking the time to read this rambling of a newbie.
 
So first, I mostly listen to music with electric guitar dominance, and some highly detailed drumming (think progressive rock/metal). Source is usually a lossless codec, however, there is no specific amp involved, so it's always either a standard computer our mobile phone headphone-out. When looking at this headphone frequency chart I see that that the response curve should be somewhere between 40 and 1000 (if I interpret it correctly) Hertz to get crystal clear sound for this kind of music. I tried a few of the recommended phones to see how they match on headphone.com/learning-center and (unfortunately?) the Bose QC15 came out quite high. Now this is very troubling, because I tried those and they sounded really "washed out / filtered" (don't know how to define it better) when I hooked them up to my phone to try them. So, my first question, am I interpreting this frequency response chart wrongly?
 
Anyways, I want to buy a headphone with a few must-have requirements, and a few more additional features that would be great but are not strictly necessary. I was looking for a kind of comparison matrix but could not find anything. I went through the top-rated phones in the head-gear and none of them seem to fit with my novice interpretation:
 
Here are the must haves:
 
- must be able to give crystal clear clean&distorted electric guitar sounds, as well as detailed drums (bass is important, but not so much as guitar&drums)
- over-ear (feels most comfortable to me. On-ear constantly produces headaches for me. In-ear is out of the question.)
- must be super-comfortable for 8+ hour nonstop listening sessions
- closed (because most of the time I have people around me, and I don't want sound to leak.)
- travel-friendly (I travel quite a lot, by plane and train, so it would be good if they are foldable or something)
 
The following things would be awesome if they are there, but this is where things become orthogonal:
 
- either Bluetooth support (really good for travelling) or single-cord-only
- noise-cancelling, either passive or active, would be appreciated (i am aware that active noise cancelling kills sound quality, but in those times where i need it, i will gladly sacrifice)
- if batteries are needed, they should last at least 8 hours, or even better, are rechargeable in the headphones directly via cable or something
- sometimes being used at home for videogames
 
The budget is approximately 300-350 EUR. Thank you very much for your time reading this and (hopefully) giving some advice and recommendation.

 

[kimvictor]

  Hello all,
 
first, thank you for taking the time to read this rambling of a newbie.
 
So first, I mostly listen to music with electric guitar dominance, and some highly detailed drumming (think progressive rock/metal). Source is usually a lossless codec, however, there is no specific amp involved, so it's always either a standard computer our mobile phone headphone-out. When looking at this headphone frequency chart I see that that the response curve should be somewhere between 40 and 1000 (if I interpret it correctly) Hertz to get crystal clear sound for this kind of music. I tried a few of the recommended phones to see how they match on headphone.com/learning-center and (unfortunately?) the Bose QC15 came out quite high. Now this is very troubling, because I tried those and they sounded really "washed out / filtered" (don't know how to define it better) when I hooked them up to my phone to try them. So, my first question, am I interpreting this frequency response chart wrongly?
 
Anyways, I want to buy a headphone with a few must-have requirements, and a few more additional features that would be great but are not strictly necessary. I was looking for a kind of comparison matrix but could not find anything. I went through the top-rated phones in the head-gear and none of them seem to fit with my novice interpretation:
 
Here are the must haves:
 
- must be able to give crystal clear clean&distorted electric guitar sounds, as well as detailed drums (bass is important, but not so much as guitar&drums)
- over-ear (feels most comfortable to me. On-ear constantly produces headaches for me. In-ear is out of the question.)
- must be super-comfortable for 8+ hour nonstop listening sessions
- closed (because most of the time I have people around me, and I don't want sound to leak.)
- travel-friendly (I travel quite a lot, by plane and train, so it would be good if they are foldable or something)
 
The following things would be awesome if they are there, but this is where things become orthogonal:
 
- either Bluetooth support (really good for travelling) or single-cord-only
- noise-cancelling, either passive or active, would be appreciated (i am aware that active noise cancelling kills sound quality, but in those times where i need it, i will gladly sacrifice)
- if batteries are needed, they should last at least 8 hours, or even better, are rechargeable in the headphones directly via cable or something
- sometimes being used at home for videogames
 
The budget is approximately 300-350 EUR. Thank you very much for your time reading this and (hopefully) giving some advice and recommendation.

Parrot Zik. Although they don't really compete with similarly priced audiophile hps, they do have fairly clean sound and have all the awesome feature you want. They are much better sounding than QC15. BTW, you can't judge a headphone entirely based on frequency response graphs.

 

[doom0matic]

Thank you, and sorry for the late reply. I went to the store and tried out the QC15 and the Parrot Zik. UNfortunately the Ziks are too small for my ears. The QC15 fit very well sizewise, but when I turned on that noise cancellation I almost got an instant headache. What the?
 
So I guess I have to change my requirements a bit. Bluetooth is still very much appreciated, but noise cancellation is basically out of the question if I get dizzy from that.
 
ANy other suggestions for phones that I should try out? I'm looking at the Sennheiser MM550-X, they seem quite nice, but I haven't had the chance to test them yet.

 

[kimvictor]

  Thank you, and sorry for the late reply. I went to the store and tried out the QC15 and the Parrot Zik. UNfortunately the Ziks are too small for my ears. The QC15 fit very well sizewise, but when I turned on that noise cancellation I almost got an instant headache. What the?
 
So I guess I have to change my requirements a bit. Bluetooth is still very much appreciated, but noise cancellation is basically out of the question if I get dizzy from that.
 
ANy other suggestions for phones that I should try out? I'm looking at the Sennheiser MM550-X, they seem quite nice, but I haven't had the chance to test them yet.

Hmm. Never heard the Sennheiser wireless line. Sorry I can't help anymore.