Can't decide which one to upgrade to

Hi everyone

As the title suggests I’m having a hard time which of these three to upgrade to…

I mostly play FPS games and I also do casual music listening (via Tidal mostly). When it comes to games, I play TF2 competitively where audio isn’t as important as in other games such as CS or Valorant (although I do play those a lot too…). I also generally play for very long sessions almost every day so comfort matters a lot.

My current setup consists of an Ifi Zen Dac with an additional power supply and HE-4XX.

The headphones I considered upgrading to are:

Hifiman Sundara

Beyerdynamic 1990 (or 1770 since closed-back might be better because of where I live)

Neumann NDH20 (this was discounted to the point that it’s the same price as the Beyer in my country although I heard a lot of people found it uncomfortable so this looks like a no-no for me)

Which one do you think would fit my use case best?

PS.: I don’t know a lot about audio but is it worth going balanced for me? I do own a custom 3.5mm female to 4.4mm male cable but I always felt like it was not the correct way doing it so I’ve never used it.

Kind regards, tekszi

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Hi, i played tf2 for 3k hours, im a nerd as well :smiley: .

If you want something serious for tryhard and are not sensitive to treble, the 1990s would be a good option for sound and comfort. On the other hand Sundara in my opinion are better in terms of sound for music, they are a good all-around but as you already have about 4xx I would probably go to Beyers.

You have a database / opinion here that may help you by @Falenkor.

tf2 is ded btw :slight_smile:

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It’s more like it’s a walking corpse at the moment, but I guess that still falls under the dead category lol

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Not to be taken like the gospel or anything. I need to sit down and rewrite it. Been super busy of late. May help OP find what hes looking for though.

I’ve been playing the game for almost a decade and quit dozens of times but I always came back to it and it’s quite depressing seeing the game as it is right now

Yeah for sure, also I feel you on the going back part lol, played some recently, and pubs are just ass right now, just been screwing around in mvm and trade/achievement servers, want to leave but find myself coming back for some reason lol

I actually read through this guide before but even then I still can’t decide which one to go with since the 4XXs were not mentioned a lot (as far as I remember at least). My biggest problem is that I can’t tell how much of an upgrade would it be if I invested in any of these headphones and I’m also not sure if I can justify their price if they are just a minor upgrade.

Yeah, pubs suck nowadays but some of the Creators.tf pubs are actually pretty decent and there aren’t any cheaters and bots playing there. You should check them out imo

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