I have a $400 budget, currently don’t have an amp or dac but willing to get one (not included in budget) V shaped sound signature, fine with semi open but preferably closed. Of course reliability and comfort are important.
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Welcome to HifiGuides. I can’t really give you an answer to your question, but I would recommend also listing your budget for an amp/dac as well as your music preferences to give everyone a better idea of what to recommend. That may influence which headphones they recommend to you. Good luck with your search.
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First one that came to mind at half this budget would be the Beyerdynamic DT 770s. Usually they are $200 new but you can shop around get them relatively cheap, I have seen them go for around $70-$100 if buying mint condition third party… plenty of budget for a good amp dac to go alongside them. The others that come to mind is third party Emu Teak or Aeon Closed RT third party, usually these are $500 headphones. I believe Denon has some with this signature as well iirc
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Thanks, I’d manly use it for metal, and I don’t know much about dacs or amps but I would say $200 is my budget for them
The DT 770 pro do seem nice, would you recommend the 80 ohm or 250 ohm?
250 by a mile
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How come? From what I’ve seen it seems like the 80 ohm has slightly more bass while the 250 ohm is slightly more neutral with more soundstage
Might also be worth looking out for S/H pair of Fostex I pick up a mint pair of Purplehearts for the equivalent of $210 the Mahogany’s are also worth looking out for at the right price. I had a pair of DT 770’s and the above two options are a significant upgrade over the 770’s imho.
80 ohm tends to be less detailed and flabbier than 250 ohm which has a higher quality sound to the ear, but I don’t see much wrong with going with the 80 ohm really.
IIRC those are more warm headphones rather than a V shaped especially the Purple Heart which is very bassy. Though not a bad recommendation I agree they are cuts above the 770
No, thats all bullshit some people said and everyone keeps spreading them. Impedance with Beyer headphones doesn´t matter, there is no impedance that sounds better or has more detail, no matter if its 32, 80, 250 or 600 ohm. Unit variation with Beyer-Headphones and pad wear has way more influence on the sound than impedance has. Just get the version which your amplifier can handle.
Here´s the unit variation of the DT770:
Thats quite a lot of variation, especially in the bass. If you wanna get the best sounding DT770, you will have to order several units (no matter the impedance, but probably not the 32 ohm version because it comes with leather earpads which have a different sound) and hope you will get a good sounding one.
The Audeze Maxwell might be interesting to you as well. Its a closed back gaming headset which probably sounds better than the DT770 (didn´t hear it myself yet) and doesnt need a DAC because its wireless. In terms of reliability and comfort the DT770 will probably be better tho.
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Meze 99 Classics. Closed back. $310. Impeccable build quality and gorgeous looks. Very easy to drive – can run straight from a phone. Super comfortable if you don’t have big ears.
These are quite V-shaped, with an emphasis on bass. The bass is a bit flabby, though, and seeps into the mids. Still, I found the treble to be very nice.
99 Classics border on bass cannons, with nice treble. A very nice gateway drug to audiophile headphones to those accustomed to V-shaped, bass-emphasized sound signatures from wireless cans from brands like Sony, Bose, Beats, Marshall, Bang & Olufsen, Master & Dynamic, Shure and Sennheiser.
Good luck.
hmm I would like to raise a counter point here based on graphs taken by DIYaudioheaven
DT 880 600 ohm in red vs 880 250 ohm in purple there
DT 990 600 ohm in green ^ vs the 990 in 250 ohms in blue
whether or not this is variation is hard to say, but there is definitely differences that people have experienced even in graphs going between the ohms here. I have never had that issue where I had to order several headphones… I have had multiple of the same beyer in front of me and those copies sounded the same to me… rather hard take on whats the actual issue in this regard
The graph for unit variation is rather drastic though which is… to say the least, a disappointment
Not really a counter argument, thats just 2 different units sounding different. DIY Audioheaven measured one 250 ohm unit and one 600 ohm unit and compared them to each, if he measured two 250 ohm models and compared them to each other, they would also have a different graph.
In DIY Audio measurement the 600 ohm has less treble than the 250 ohm, in Resolves measurement the 600 Ohm versions has tons more treble than the 250 ohm. The unit variation with this old drivers is quite big.
Well, I´d rather trust the accoustic enginer Oratory1990, who listened and measured many units, than random people who just listend to some units.
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That while good to know, is quite bothersome as that makes it hard to understand whether you got a good working model at that point due to such a huge difference in the variation.
And here come the graphs…
I understand it’s convenient to pull them out and think you understand a given piece of audio equipment. The whole apparatus down to a single line…
But
All you’re looking at are the levels of static TEST TONES applied across a frequency domain. Often times just a single 5Hz-50kHz (let’s say) white noise test tone is used for the whole spectrum. That’s literally it.
You know what FR graphs don’t take into account?
Time.
Now if we’re eventually running dynamic (i.e. time varying, musical) signals through headphones, doesn’t that seem like a REALLY important thing to leave out?
Frequency Response graphs are not going to allow you to draw reliable conclusions based on impedance differences within a headphone line. So if you brought your FR graphs to this discussion, you’re at the wrong meeting.
Impedance differences within the Beyerdynamic 770 line will, however, reflect in the headphone’s ability to satisfactorily resolve a dynamic (i.e. TIME varying) signal.
Properly amped, higher impedance 770s do this better.
End of story.
That’s… great? I guess? While spinning this topic further off into more information involving graphs… the graphs were not brought up for any reason other than to talk about the variations of models that jurgu brought to light. Information, of which I didn’t even know about and was while very informative(thank you for that btw @jurgupower) very disappointing to me as that makes me lose a bit of faith in the brand since I never know what sound the headphone will have from beyers lower models in that regard as the deviations from the black line are rather huge. I use graphs just to show a rough example of their respective signature… that’s about it as graphs tell you extremely little to begin with and I usually trust my ears over a graph 99% of the time.
However, we should probably try to keep this a bit on track here and not get into the whole huge technical talk over graphs and more on to the fact of the person wanting recommendations towardsa V shaped closed back, with all due respect.
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FYI, a nice $200 option for a simple DAC/amp I like is the CEntrance DACport HD:
https://centrance.com/store/DACport-HD-p53351211
Just make sure the switch is set to high-gain for full-size headphones.
If you end up getting more seriously into the hobby, you’ll probably want a more desktop-style setup, but a small portable dongle is pretty nice place to start. 