I decided to embark on this exercise out of curiosity and the fact that people were coming into the forums and asking for advice on which headphones to get for beginners. People would recommend headphones that seemed so cheap and lame to me. I wondered why don’t they recommend better headphones like the Sundara or the M570? So I went and bought them. The ones everyone talks about. Sennhieser 58x 150$. Hifiman 4xx130$. Beyerdynamic DT880 160$. 1More Triple Driver 150$. Meze 99 Noir 160$. And wow. What a long strange trip it’s been lol. I have learned so much from this experience. Too expensive to attempt this with midfi. I’m going to release a review of each headphone on its own. This is an overview and comparison.
I ended up liking the headphone the most that is mentioned least lol. The Meze Noir. I got it on sale for 160$ so i do think it belongs here. The Meze Noir. Flowed by the 1More Triple Driver. Followed by Sennheiser 58x. Followed by the DT880. Followed by the Hifiman 4xx.
There’s one headphone I haven’t reviewed here. It’s in china. Won’t be here for a while. It’s the Audio Technica ATH-AD900x. Price dropped to 150$ It may be a good contender for beginner audiophile recommendation. I’ll review when it gets here. Let me know if theres a better AT headphone to recommend.
These headphones made me appreciate my higher end headphones much more lol. But these headphones are no slouch. Some of these like the 99’s, Triple driver and Sennheiser 58x are very good. They won’t compete with the big boys in the next tier. But close and very fun to listen to.
Hifiman 4xx 7.5 - Ok when i first heard these i thought wow. Thank god these exist. But as i listened more and more i began to realize something was missing from them. They got the treble and bass. Midrange is there. But they dont sound as good as the others. Why? It’s like the dynamic range is not there. Like DMS described in his explanation of Dynamic Range. The colors are washed out. The contrast isn’t there. These are the weakest of the sub 200$ headphones.
DT 880 Score 7.6 - These headphones bothered me in that certain mixes and genres don’t sound good on them. They lack bass and body. As a consequence they have a lightness to them i didn’t like. They have great treble extension though but can be very sibilant on certain tracks.
Sennheiser HD58x 7.8 - These impressed me. I thought since it was a model down from the HD600 that it would be a much lesser headphone. But it comes close. Very close. Range on this is great. And it’s almost a bassy headphone. There’s a lot of bass here and the rumble is nice. Great midrange. Yeah very impressive for the price and range.
1More Triple Driver 7.9 - Great balance. Everything is here plus bass. Headphones like these are making me a basshead. And these headphones are special. They got 2 separate drivers and a bass reflector. And you can hear that specialness. It’s striking.
Meze 99 Noir 7.9 - I heard about these a lot. And despite a minor hiccup I found they were quite impressive. The best sounding of the lot. They remind me of the Triple Driver. Balanced. Everything is here plus bass. Also has a great soundstage. All of it combines to be a classy sounding headphone. I’m keeping these.
So I’m sending most of these back. I’m keeping the Triple Driver and the Meze 99 Noirs. They lack detail. But they have clarity and great dynamic range and make everything sound good. And I like that they’re not trying to compete with the big boys. I already have a HD600 so the 58x are going back too. This is the beginning tier for good sound quality in headphones. Great impressive sound for under 200$
Good under 100$ headphones are SHP9500’s, Grado SR60e, Creative Aurvana, Sivga headphones, Superlux, Koss. But i don’t think those compare with this level of quality. But DMS said expensive headphones are getting cheaper and cheap headphones are getting better. I’ve certainly witnessed this with this group of headphones. And though i don’t think they compete with the next tier up we can recommend them with confidence to the beginners coming into this fantastic hobby.
Scoring rating: 20$-300$ 7.0 / 300$-700$ 8.0 / 800-1000$’s 9.0 / 2000$’s and up 10.0
Word description grading: Poor, Mediocre, Fine, Good, Great, Exceptional, Phenomenal
