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Hello everyone, I am going to buy high-end headphone to listen to mainly classical music and piano (mainly alfred cortot, rubinstein, horowitz...etc) on my PC. I would like to know which headphone would be best for that. the HD650 or DT 990 or AKG Q701 or AKG 702 or AKG and any other AKG or headphones ?. I am really gratefully for any help thank you.
Meh. The HD650 amp requirements are blown out of proportion. Most, if not all the difference between amps are due to some kind of expectation bias anyways.
AKGs have a large soundstage but I don't recommend them overall because I don't find that they don't reproduce timbre well in the lower range. Probably some problems with the overtones. Have trouble listening to large modern symphonic works or organ pieces with these. The Q701 does sound nice with jazz though (soundstage wise), as long as trumpets aren't involved.
The DT990 has a nice airy sound like all the Beyerdynamics but again, bit too much bass in the 50-150 hertz region. I actually don't mind accentuated treble in the mid-upper midrange just because I feel that for some piano pieces, the piano needs to have a stronger treble (Bach keyboard works for instance). For anything else though, especially with something like Debussy who manipulated the sonority of the piano, and relied on weak treble, I don't recommend it. Decent soundstage though, and more accurate imaging than the AKGs imo. Maybe you should look into the DT880/600 instead.
HD650 suffers from the same problem (too much bass) but their rolled off treble works well with classical music, except when something like cymbals are involved. Timbre reproduction is quite good, as well as imaging. Soundstage is good. I like the dark sound but again, too much bass for piano works.
I liked the HD600 and HD598 better than the 650 for classical music (and a lot of other genres). Timbre is more refined on the HD600, with less grain to boot. Very nice treble with the HD600. But I'd give the edge to the 598 most of the time, mainly for its far superior soundstage. But the 598s have slightly stronger upper midrange than I'd like, but EQ solves the problem. As long as you cover 50-1600 hertz as a perceived flat frequency response, everything should be fine. There is a tutorial on how to EQ properly but I can't find it. Oh, and an amp is a must for both the 600 and 598.
