Headphones list only for people in the Dark ends of the Abyss

What are your favorite SOUND-wise headphones?

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I mean theres not really a “current” best 10 after all this is a highly sunjective hobby. I guess people could list their personal top 10… I’d be curious how many people here have even listened to enough pairs to construct such a list

Yeah that’s totally valid. I’m just trying to get an idea of what’s considered end-game. I’m aware of all the uber headphones. But there’s no way for most of us to hear them. So I suppose this is more of a question for those few who are lucky enough to have tried a bunch of them.

It’s sort of like (for example) is the Focal Clear considered an end game headphone? Or do you have to step up to an Empyrian or something like that?

Top 10 Headphones list only for people in the Dark ends of the Abyss. Great list to see who it is.
You should give it a better title a more catching one.
I think i can already hear them coming, screeching in the 10khz treble region.

I mean any headphone could be considered endgame, just depends on the person and their bank account. Currently I consider my focal clear and zmf eikon endgame, will that always be the case, definitely not. But for now it’s good enough.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that endgame is not some defined objective standard amongst the community, its personal and subjective based solely on the individual and what they consider to be “enough”.

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DMS just dropped a new tier list video you might be interested in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1iOdHUgWwg

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Just look at M0N’s profile…if he’s got it, it probably deserves to be on a top x list (Edit: this is intended to be read as being a bit tongue in cheek). I can certainly vouch for the LCD-24 after spending about a week with it now. Timbre isn’t perfect, but it’s far and away the most complete and impressive sounding headphone I’ve ever heard.

This is not true lol, it’s entirely preference at this point 100%. It’s really hard to call stuff better than others, it’s pretty much dependent on the person, it’s really hard to even say a top 10 because that would be different for anyone. Anyone looking in this price point shouldn’t be looking at a best list, this is something that really you need to demo yourself or try yourself imo, and to find that stuff you want to figure out what you are actually looking for and what might suit preferences in the first place. Also it would strongly depend on your source gear as well for what actually would go well with what you plan or have (as stuff in this range is extremely picky or dependent on your other gear)

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Good title :+1:

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Yea man and no other hifimans besides sundara and Ananda included. I would have liked to See Arya or something on that list.

Yeah that list is pretty limited. A TON of other HPs out there.

His list is really wonky!

A few seconds and placing headphones in a category is not a very objective analysis at all…

I would recommend you look for reviews from others in the hobby that provide a much more insight into how particular headphones actually perform…

IMO this list is reallty a primitive attempt at best…

There’s nothing objective about a tier list its all opinions and preference based.

I really dislike tier lists honestly.

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Exactly, pretty useless imo, really you won’t get much value out of a general tier list or “best” list as this isn’t an objective hobby (you might be able to pretty easily make like a gpu or cpu tier list based on like raw performance but even then it won’t really account for the user, in audio it just doesn’t really work at all), you will just end up with a list that is only helpful to the creator. But I’m not going to continue to rant about how I dislike tier lists in a thread dedicated to making a tier list lol

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There is no way you can do objective analysis on audio. And people like DMS do in depth reviews, but again, none can be objective. So use it as an idea of what heaphones people are interested and ultimately, you decide for yourself.

Sometimes a person can turn their nose up at a 120 day dry aged rib eye that you can plop $500 at an upscale steak house, and they’ll tell you that a 14 day wet aged, 65 oz tomahawk perfectly grilled is their idea of heaven. Saving themselves $350 in the process.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that enjoyment is not directly proportional to cost. That being said, today, knowing much more about what kind of sound signature I prefer I think I’d pick up an LCD 24.

Who knows, I may stop at the Eikon once it gets here.

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One size does not fit all…

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I get everything you guys are saying. But there ought to be some consensus no? I was just perusing another site and found exactly this type of thread. People were listing their top 5 HPs and if you read through all of them, there are a few cans that show up consistently. HD6… series, several ZMFs, Focal Clear, Eligia, Utopia, RAALs. Interesting to me was that the Empyrean, HD800, HD820 and a few other top tier models only had one or two mentions.

If people did list their top headphones you most likely would see commonalities, I would assume they would be higher end headphones (or some of the really well respected classics), and they would most likely be the brands you would expect for the most part since there really are way less higher end headphones than there is the sea/ocean of different higher end speakers. I feel like if you had people list their top speakers they have had or their higher end setups you would see more variety. There are prob more high end iems than high end headphones at this point lol. If you really wanted to get a general consensus, you would want to find as many of those lists as possible and compile them, and then choose the best as the most mentioned, as going from only one forum really would skew results because of the different demographics (if you asked like ltt forums for the best headphones vs like head fi the results would be different for sure (or would they lol??))

also I noticed this list getting smaller lately lol