Just keep in mind that the expensive and well regarded headphones aren't always the best for you. There's no best really, as far as subjective listening experience goes.
I have the Sennheiser HD650s and AKG K701s. Used to have the HD595 also. I tend to prefer the latter for most music, as well as speech. The Senns I find more preferrable for movies and classical music.
I also have an ancient pair of Grado SR-80s (or SR-60s?), which are by no means an expensive high-end headphone. But I still like their sound on some things.
Other people prefer considerably bassier headphones and I can see how that is a valid preference, especially considering how some electronic music is mixed.. in fact, I wouldn't mind having such a pair for myself.
Yeah, I have to agree that you really start to see diminishing returns. Going from Koss PortaPros to HD595's was a huge change and I spent most of my free time the next week listening to music. I just upgraded again to HifiMan HE500's and thought they sounded better, but my listening experience is more or less unchanged. Worse, they are quite heavy planar magnetic headphones and I don't enjoy wearing them as much. Maybe I need a better headphone amp, but part of me is convinced I might have hit my ceiling for my listening perception. Maybe I should have just gotten those Grados...
I have a similar setup than you do and bought the schiit modi and magni (~200$ dac and amp). I'm very happy with the purchase and recommand it as a first dac/amp.
HD595s aren't worth buying directly. It's cheaper to buy HD555s and mod them. They have the exact same driver, with a piece of sound dampening material that can be removed.
I'll note here that the Sennheiser 5x5 line has lately been replaced by the 5x8 line, which from all I've been able to gather is hardly different at all.
I've got a pair of HD558s which I quite like; indeed, they're the best headphones I've ever owned. What I'm curious about is this: Can someone who's actually done the foam mod give me an idea of whether the result is worth the risk? I'm pretty sure I can complete the modification without damaging my headphones, but I'd like to know it's worth my while before I carry it out. Thanks in advance!
> Can someone who's actually done the foam mod give me an idea of whether the result is worth the risk?
I'd be more interested in a carefully controlled double blind trial.
I suspect most people would not be able to tell the difference between modfied and unmodified headphones, and that is before making adjustments for the terrible source quality of most people's MP3 collections.
I'm not looking for an idea of whether the foam mod would be worth every HD558 owner's time and effort, but only of whether it'd be worth mine. Nor am I, at least in terms of my music collection, "most people"; I rip my discs via EAC to FLAC, and the only MP3s I have are the 320K CBR transcodes I use in contexts, such as my phone, where storage space or codec compatibility constraints preclude FLAC. (Before someone raises the point, it's not that I imagine I can hear a difference between FLAC and 320K CBR; I just don't see a point in throwing away any information I don't have to, and disk is so dirt-cheap any more -- my primary storage right now is a four-disk 1TB RAID-1 which cost me less to build than I paid for the first 500MB hard disk I ever bought -- that I really don't have to.)
I'd like to see a double-blind trial as well, but that's not what I'm after here; all I'm looking for, in the comment to which you replied, is a sense of whether it's worth my time to modify my headphones. Will I hear a difference? If I do, will it be genuinely there or simply a result of the placebo effect? Who knows? Who cares? If we were talking about $1000 cables, then, sure, it's worth asking those questions. But this is a non-destructive, easily reversible fifteen-minute modification to a pair of $150 headphones I already own, and can afford to replace if I slip and impale a driver or something. Given the minimal stakes, I'm strongly inclined to just go ahead and see what happens. If it makes, or seems to make, a difference, then great! I'll stick with it. If not, I'll put the foam back. Either way, I figure it's worth a shot.
None whatsoever, actually, with either music (1938 Karajan/Berliner Philharmonic recording of the overture to "The Magic Flute"), or the "Ultimate Headphone Test" files; any difference made by removing the foam is evidently so subtle as to be completely lost on me. I don't feel like dismantling my headphones again to put the foam back right now, so I'll leave it out (stuck to the inside of a Zip-loc bag, since I don't have any proper backing paper handy to preserve the adhesive) until the next time I take the pads off for cleaning, and put the foam back in then. I doubt I'll notice any more difference in sound at that point than I do now.
> I wouldn't do it because I'm a ham-fisted klutz and I'd probably damage something.
On the other hand, the modification really is as simple as its adherents purport it to be, especially since the cord is detachable; the only even vaguely dicey moment I had was when I took out the left driver and found that its connection to the cord socket PCB is made by a wire that's both quite short and very fine, and that the foam would have to come out past the wires to both drivers. If I'd dropped the driver, I'd probably have needed to trim the wire and heat up my iron, so I'm glad I didn't do that. Other than that, it was a snap; anyone can do it in ten minutes who has screwdriver, tweezers, and reasonably steady hands.
Edit: Now I think about it, what I really should have done was take the foam out of one side, but leave it in the other, and see if I could pick out any difference that way; having both sides in the same state makes it essentially impossible to compare. Perhaps, when it next comes time to clean my pads, I'll give that a try.
Absolutely agree, I was more wanting to point out to people not fully in the know that $500 was either an old price or a non-US price.
I've got a nice set of GE monitors from probably the mid 70s and they sound fantastic for music that's not incredibly bass heavy and were a quarter so that was nice.
Have you tested the Senn Momentums? They are closed and have a lot more low end than the 600/50s. I really liked them but, since I'm mostly alone at work, I went with the 650s.
I had Grado SR225i's, and they were probably the best sounding headphones I've used. Unfortunately, they caused fairly intense and immediate ear pain. The headband has the tightest I've ever encountered (I might have a large head, but most other headphones I've used have fit well), and the ear cups are apparently designed for people with tiny, perfectly circular ears. After doing a bit of research, it seems a lot of people do extensive modding on Grado's to make them bearable to wear. I didn't feel up to that, so I returned them.
I now use the Beyerdynamic DT990's (32 ohm version, because the FUD about needing a headphone amplifier scared me away from the higher resistance versions) and couldn't be more happy with them.
I'm not sure what they were thinking with the SR225i. I found them unbearably bright, sound-wise. And really, really uncomfortable. Something about having the drivers so close to my ears with the bright Grado sound is way too much for me. (I admit I may be used to the darker sound of Sennheisers, since I beat a $40 pair of them into the ground and loved them.)
I've been dragging my feet selling them. Now I kind of want to. Thanks. :)
I was listening to a lot of progressive metal at the time, so "the Grado sound" worked really well. But I would agree that they don't have the best sound for a broad range of music.
I have the Sennheiser HD650s and AKG K701s. Used to have the HD595 also. I tend to prefer the latter for most music, as well as speech. The Senns I find more preferrable for movies and classical music.
I also have an ancient pair of Grado SR-80s (or SR-60s?), which are by no means an expensive high-end headphone. But I still like their sound on some things.
Other people prefer considerably bassier headphones and I can see how that is a valid preference, especially considering how some electronic music is mixed.. in fact, I wouldn't mind having such a pair for myself.