Don't get me wrong, laid back spacey presentation is great, but the more I listen, the more the slight differences begin to set the phones I have apart wildly. I could go on and on about why many of the ones I have heard would be great for rock... It is hard, maybe not possible, to crown a single brand as the headphone for "blank"... I certainly love my grados, and am not sure why people describe them as a closed in sound when they seem to stage, for me, wider than I was generally used to.
I listen to Beyers a lot too. The DT770pro/80s with earpads from the 880/990s, when broken in, these sound just great. I have an older set of 990s that I configured the same way, in fact, I replaced the drivers with extra pro/80 drivers I had, since the guy that sent me these sent me membrains with too much hair on them to remove without destroying them. It was just terrible, but I wanted to salvage the shells, and since they were basically an open design of the pro/80 770s, I installed an extra set of 80ohm beyer drivers... These are almost as open as Grados, but not nearly as spacious, but they have a neutral balance to them that the 770s are missing ever so slightly. They stage almost like my 770s with just a more open sound. It was a nice experiment. I have had synergy with a certain low power tube amp and Shure 440s. I am not sure why, but this combination blows my mind, but it only works with this certain little amp, any other source, other amps, preamps, the Grace901, the Shures just sound annoying, but with one amp I have, they sound magical, and this is rock to IDM to psych, to prog, to jazz, to classical.
Everyone seems to like the DT880s, but they sound more closed in than my haked 990s, and certainly my Grados. The timbre may be fairly accurate, but there is an in your head feeling that never goes away.
Grados are FAST! the membrain is so thin it is amazing they are even assembled the way they are. I think the forward sounding presentation is the shear speed of the drivers. Amped right, it is crazy how fast they are, so naturally details will emerge and I can see why metal, with digital distortion and overdrive, would end up shredding ears.
I can only listen to some metal with them... Metal with a more psych theme. Your classic idea of shredding metal just probably just throws too much at you at once. A slightly more laid back, but still nimble headphone does make sense, like a sennheiser, I know their drivers are speed deamons too, just their design places a bit more of the HF energy towards the back instead of way up front. For a laid back headphone, it might take metal to wake them up. I should try it with my senns. I used mine for IDM because of how accurate they could produce electronic synthed sounds. Grados are getting better at it though.
m50s seem to work really well most of the time, but they don't stand out enough for me to use them much. A shame.
Still, if you have sr60s or sr80s, esp. the 80s, get to modding. You can take the 80s and bring them close to the higher end models with a relative few tweaks. It might even be easier than the old HD555>HD595 or better mods. Grados are made for tooling around and tayloring your sound. Guitar guys are obsessed with TONE, and I think grado lovers have a similar obsession. The tone is what pulls us in.
But what soundstage? The SR225i is a step up and it had miniscule soundstage, especially for an open can.
