Over ear Headphone recommendation

[orskar]

Hi, been scratching my head trying to find an upgrade to my home headphones for gaming and late night movies as well as the odd bit of music. I have been an iem guy for a long time now, right now I'm using Noble Django with a Fiio E18, but I don't have much knowledge with full size headphones. I have a sennheiser pc360 gaming headset I kinda use for the purpose right now but it's quite lacking sound quality and I'm fed up of the bleed/lack of isolation (sometimes others are in the room). Have tried out a Beyerdynamics DT700 80ohm I gave as a gift a few months back, which was nice enough but I'm prepared to spend a bit more on myself so I figure there ought to be something more impressive, kinda having a hard time finding something that ticks all the boxes though so I'm tempted to give up and just get a DT770 for myself.

Main things I'm looking for:
- Price range £150-£300 (could push to £350 for something ticking every box)
- Closed Back, Over Ear
- Comfortable over long periods (like 5+ hrs), I have a large head and big ears too (main reason I disregard on-ears)
- Prefer soft/fabric ear pieces or if plastic/leather as standard, easy enough to get soft replacements. My head/ears get hot fast and that's what drove me to iems way back when. I am however now quite open minded to good leather or similar that is just as good for heat as any velour/foam/etc since they still make my head hot but it's bearable for longer.
- Ideally neutral sound, but I can put up with a V shape since it's mostly for gaming and film where I'm not so fussy about mids.
-I'd be using my Fiio E18 as an amp generally but wouldn't mind if the headphones were solid enough on their own direct from TV or Laptop.
- Would be nice if it had common connectors for replacement cable as I quite like upgrading with custom cables, but I can do without.

After skimming through a whole bunch of reviews from models I could get easily now, I've picked up on these headphones but according to reviews here, all of them have some kind of notable issue that puts me off a little bit, but they could be negligible in practice:
- Meze 99 Neo
- Meze 99 Classic (looks like sound isn't that different from Neo and just paying for nicer looks)
- Oppo PM-3
- Final Audio Design Pandora Hope IV (apparently Sonorous is the same but not sure if it's now II or III?)
- Final Audio Design Sonorous II or III (if either are notably different from Pandora Hope IV)

Feel free to tell me if those my things are all covered by those models though, most of what I saw in reviews was just questions on comfort which I'm sure could be exaggerated a bit for review purposes just to have a negative point and isn't that big a deal in practice, in that case, please suggest fits me best there.

 

[buke9]

Hi, been scratching my head trying to find an upgrade to my home headphones for gaming and late night movies as well as the odd bit of music. I have been an iem guy for a long time now, right now I'm using Noble Django with a Fiio E18, but I don't have much knowledge with full size headphones. I have a sennheiser pc360 gaming headset I kinda use for the purpose right now but it's quite lacking sound quality and I'm fed up of the bleed/lack of isolation (sometimes others are in the room). Have tried out a Beyerdynamics DT700 80ohm I gave as a gift a few months back, which was nice enough but I'm prepared to spend a bit more on myself so I figure there ought to be something more impressive, kinda having a hard time finding something that ticks all the boxes though so I'm tempted to give up and just get a DT770 for myself.

Main things I'm looking for:
- Price range £150-£300 (could push to £350 for something ticking every box)
- Closed Back, Over Ear
- Comfortable over long periods (like 5+ hrs), I have a large head and big ears too (main reason I disregard on-ears)
- Prefer soft/fabric ear pieces or if plastic/leather as standard, easy enough to get soft replacements. My head/ears get hot fast and that's what drove me to iems way back when. I am however now quite open minded to good leather or similar that is just as good for heat as any velour/foam/etc since they still make my head hot but it's bearable for longer.
- Ideally neutral sound, but I can put up with a V shape since it's mostly for gaming and film where I'm not so fussy about mids.
-I'd be using my Fiio E18 as an amp generally but wouldn't mind if the headphones were solid enough on their own direct from TV or Laptop.
- Would be nice if it had common connectors for replacement cable as I quite like upgrading with custom cables, but I can do without.

After skimming through a whole bunch of reviews from models I could get easily now, I've picked up on these headphones but according to reviews here, all of them have some kind of notable issue that puts me off a little bit, but they could be negligible in practice:
- Meze 99 Neo
- Meze 99 Classic (looks like sound isn't that different from Neo and just paying for nicer looks)
- Oppo PM-3
- Final Audio Design Pandora Hope IV (apparently Sonorous is the same but not sure if it's now II or III?)
- Final Audio Design Sonorous II or III (if either are notably different from Pandora Hope IV)

Feel free to tell me if those my things are all covered by those models though, most of what I saw in reviews was just questions on comfort which I'm sure could be exaggerated a bit for review purposes just to have a negative point and isn't that big a deal in practice, in that case, please suggest fits me best there.

Haven’t heard the Neos but using different cup material I’m should they don’t sound exactly the same. If you have big ears they might not be for you as the cups are pretty small and shallow as they might as well be on ears. That being said I don’t find them uncomfortable at all but have never gone 5 + hours straight listening to over ear headphones either in ears yes but not over ears. They are supposed to have larger cups but haven’t seen them for sale yet. Haven’t heard the Final Audio headphones only their in ears so can’t say. The PM-3 is a good headphone but a little too polite for me ie boring but they are pretty comfortable but have not used them for hours just a couple of songs.

 

[orskar]

Researched it a whole bunch more.
Going with Final audio Sonorous III. worked out model numbers are same as pandora hope, but I'm going with sonorous III even though it's a bit more expensive than the "pandora hope IV" when I check on amazon (£329 vs £299 on amazon right now). Going to get some earpad replacements too as the speaker depth is my only concern right now, just debating whether I will go with brainwavz (easy to get here) or try and get zmf (may have to import+waiting time)