[TMC]

I bet the soundcard would be the worst bottleneck though. I mean a decent USB soundcard with A500 would most probably sound better than just A900 straight off a standard laptop soundcard.

 

[bangraman]

Could I throw in the Ultrasone HFI-650 or HFI-700 (which I have not owned)? The HFI-650 is a very 'headphone' listening experience (quite blobs in your head) but they do 3D placement quite well. The 700 were intended for DVD applications and apparently have more low end than the 650. These will be a bit more practical for laptop use than the A900 for the reason that they have smaller earcups and they fold up (albeit to still a rather large package... but a lot more tractable than the A900).


I'm not sure I want to buy the HFI-700 because I'm approaching (have approached?) headphone fatigue. But I think either of these phones would be more suitable for laptop use than the ATH-A900, which I consider to be a home use phone. They are transportable, but I think I've already slightly damaged my ATH-D1000 (based on A900 chassis, only $450 more) in transit. There's definitely more play in the pivot than I remember.

 

[JeffL]

The DT770s are very good for movies, and gaming. They have a lot of bass. Soundstage is very wide, almost sounds like it exceeds your head sometimes, especially on well recorded tracks. I have the DT770-250, and I can say that they will need an amp for best sound. I can run them off a portable CD Player and they still sound great, but the phones just can't reach their potential, the bass and soundstage both suffer.

If you're goint the get the DT770-80, just note that the cans still need lots of power. If you are going to put them on a crappy source will just make them sound worse..for example no soundstage, fake soundstage, loss of focus, rolled off highs or lows, etc. With these cans, even with the new 80 ohm version, they still need to have the power behind them.

I run my DT770s off a Marantz 2230B /w M-Audio Sonica USB card and they are very sweet sounding.

If you're curious about burn in, I'd say the DT770s need around 200 hours before they really take off, and the bass (sub -bass) really kicks in. Keep in mind, you will not have the visceral impact as with speakers though.

 

[ffocus11]

fatmaneatschild, I'm selling my A900's on the for sale/trade forum - write me a private message if interested!