[TheeeChosenOne]

I have the Sennheiser HD497 and have upgradtitis.

For those that have experience with the two headphones can you please distinguish the performance improvements if any?

Besides sound, the headphones have to be efficient enough to run on my computer sound card.

Thanks......

 

[nothing101]

I dont have either but i have listened to both. If i would have to choose between the two i would choose the sr80 but there is no point to getting the sr80 when it is outclassed by the alessandro ms1 Which is the same price for slightly better sq. In australia where i am the sr80s are 150 aud and getting alessandros from their website is about 130 aud. (exchange rates) This is because getting grados locally in australia is not cheap. Stocks are very dry indeed but i was lucky to find a hifi shop that had them so i had a listen. I think if you were even consedering grados you should go for the ms1.

or maybe im just a grado fanboy!!!

 

[Thai Fighter]

You'll find the grados more fun, whereas the senns are more analitycal. It's a matter of preference. If you like your HD497s you'll be blown away by the HD280s. Of course, they utillize a closed design, it might be a good idea to take into account open Senn headphones (HD555 and HD595).

 

[aliquis]

I haven't listened to many phones and I might have been expecting to much of a difference, but I would say that my Alessandro MS-1 compared to my Sennheiser HD437s gives a little clearer/sparkling sound overall and the bass somehow sounds different which I guess is what others call tight, and it makes drums sound like drums. The HD437 on the other side isn't as "clear" sounding and have more bass but drums sounds more like a bass sound than drums.

Yeah, my explanation rules! I still haven't get myself a razor blade and can't find my carpet knife so I still haven't cut holes in my HD414 pads. I think they sound a little more tame/less sparkling with them without holes compared to the comfies, so without holes I think I prefered the comfies.

 

[blessingx]

I'm not sure the SR80 is an upgrade to the HD497 (a few years ago they use to get compared - along with the SR60) and the HD280 certainly isn't. Go MS1 or save up for the A900, HD595, etc.

 

[kaushama]

I used HD497 for some time and upgraded to HD580 straight after reading a lot here. I wish I had bucks to go to HD650 straight away. Once you go above the ladder, you are bound to end up at the highest point when you need either DT880, HD650 or K701 ... so on. So intermediate steps are just waste of money on your journey up!
If one cannot just afford to reach HD650 heights, the great bang for buck alternatives are HD580 and Pre 2005 DT880.
They need to be amplified though!
If you are not going to amplify next on line is HD595!
But IMHO you should go for HD580 plus good sub 100$ amp like XENOS 0HA REP or GO-VIBE 5!

 

[SteveZ]

I had the HD497's for about 3 years, just a couple months ago went out and bought the HD650. It may sound like a lot of money to spend, but if you listen to headphones an hour or two a day like me, then it's definitly worth it. I agree that it's not worth it to buy a bunch of lower end headphones, if your just going to end up with a really high end pair eventually.

My advice would be to find a local shop that carries sennhesier headphones, and bring your HD497's to compare. Thats what I did, and to me there wasn't very much difference between all the low end phones and my HD497. Even the HD595's sounded similar tomy HD497's. The 650's were the only headphones that sounded significantly better, and justified the upgrade for me.

About running them out of a soundcard, thats what I use for my HD650's. A big disclaimer though, I use an EMU 1212m driving the headphones in balanced mode, which can drive the headphone's fairly well. Even the audiotrak 7.1LT with a built in headphone amp that I tried had trouble driving them, so you need to be really careful picking a soundcard if you want to drive your headphones this way. IF you want more info on driving headphones in balanced mode with no amp, there are plently of threds about people driving HD650's out of the balanced outputs of high end DACs like the DAC1 and the DA10.