Elbows Music Blog Community

what's the budget? and what device are you planning to use it? (ipod/PMP) or something with amplifier?

My take: your best bet is having one nice headphone and leave it at home, for intense listening.  And have another low cost out door one, enough to make your ear happy without getting annoyed.

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Sony MDR-V6, monitor. The Honda accord of studio headphone. Time tested, nothing fancy, nice balance, gets the job done. 
Sennheiser HD448. Never tried it myself. It's new. but popular and talked about.
Audio-Technica ATH-M50. Tried it. I like it. I don't mind having one of this.

Low Cost.
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Sony MDR V150. $20. If you have to buy low cost headphone that doesn't make you barf. Infinitely better than any earphones for the price.

Sony MDR-E10LP $10. Jogging, walking, roughing it, destroyed after 8 months use. This one is my favorite earphone. because it has nice sound balance. Also durable. (no, you won't hear deep bass, but neither can you hear anything while walking  outdoor using anything  except full size can.) It also comes with option of  annoying  colored plastic. barbie doll style. so nobody is going to steal this puppy. IMO those above $30 in ear are pure rip off.

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If you are in store. check these babies out. They are niceeeee.....
Sennheiser HD 650 (I really love this one)
Audio Technica ATH-AD700 (Moka has one, she seems to like it.)
http://elbo.ws/vanilla/discussion/3432/over-the-ear-headphone-suggestions/p1

This store has response chart. Not an absolute, but nice to weed through headphones characteristic.
http://www.headphone.com/headphones/

if you want to ask the audiophiles for latest and greatest.
(but always try those headphones first before buying. It's like buying shoes. have to try them out and test a little. It's half the joy of buying gear. heh.)
http://www.head-fi.org/f/

Thankyou kindly senor Squashed. I ordered a pair of the V150s for the time being until I can test a few higher end ones out for real.

M

 my biggest annoyance with in ear  (keep in my this has been awhile, It was first generation in ear. maybe it's better now)

- it's hyper sensitive to cable vibration. You tap on the cable, the whole thing is transmitted to ear cannal perfectly, since it hugs ear cavity. It's practically a mini stethoscope.

- wind noise. Specially in cold winter. It's like walking in horror movie's sound FX studio.

- sound quality isn't as good as the hype & price.

those.. I get used to after few weeks...

the worst is still the effect of prolonged use of isolation earphone on relatively bad acoustic quality ... I start to notice I can't bounce back and perceive sound depth as quickly. That annoys me. (I am talking about hours a day listening here.)

I for one believe, if one listens to lots and lots of music using headphones... Buy open air, with the biggest diameter, and play it at low volume in quite room...You get all sound detail at minimum volume. you get what you want. you are happy.  Don't use tiny in ear and blasting it.

that's why I think Apple's selling 128kbps, and telling kids to buy crappy over priced low quality in ear gear is evil. Everybody plays it ever louder volume thinking they can hear more "bass/sound better" when what they look for is detail and clarity... It's practically criminal. total health hazard. I hope people will sue their ass off.

If apple cares about music, they would have sold high bit rate files, proper headphones, and good amplifier for low price. and tell people, look, listen to better quality recording material at healthy level of loudness... stop blasting crappy remix using bad earphone hoping you are going to hear crisp Viena philharmonic. It's not happening no matter how loud. You are trying to cheap law of physics. It's crappy re-recording of bad record on top of bad music... making it louder won't give you anything crisper except bleeding ear. You won't get rid of the muddiness. Good recording quality doesn't just happen.