(Edit: scroll to the end of this post to find current contenders with relative pricing.)
Hi, guys. This is my first post to these forums, so nice to meet you, and I have to say I’ve probably never come across a community as friendly and inviting as this one. I first noticed its existence when looking for 1v1 comparisons of specific headphones I was considering, and then I noticed you good folks were having just the conversations I need — just the right 'phones, just the right kind of advice, just the right way of going about it. After scrolling through and reading the threads, I noticed the (very kind) invitation to join — and I was sold. I’m ehh… palpably happy to be here, which is a feeling I haven’t had in a looong time, let alone from an Internet community (15 years, I guess…).
My starting point was AD500X, as a recommendation from an experienced seller of all sorts of used audio equipment. A different guy, make it two guys, independently from each other, suggested HE400SE as a better fit for the same needs, although of course on the more expensive side. Recently, someone else has suggested HD560s might be an even better fit for both my needs and taste. And then there’s TYGR as an interestingly tweaked bro’ of the cans that drew me into this whole thing, being the DT990 pros. And some folks suggest Fidelios, the X2HR.
So when I saw a thread pretty much titled ‘Upgrade from my AD500X’, I knew I was in the right place — pretty much an eerie feeling, considering there was also a similar thread about the AD700X and also one for TYGR vs 560S vs 400SE — a perfect logical path of progression. And everybody was talking in a down-to-earth, common-sense way, though clearly knowing what one was talking about, plus without the kind of lingo that poses an imepenetrable barrier to a n00b like myself. So, let me just wipe the tear from my eye (no, literally), and let us go on.
I’ll do my best to try to help you help me, and after thinking long and hard, the following is what I feel (meaning ‘think but can’t prove’ ;)) is going to be the best way:
First: We need to stick with my existing amps, as a budget limitation. They are probably weak but better than nothing.
In my PC, I have an x-Fi Titanium PCI-E (not the higher-end ‘HD’ version). My audiophile best friend (a ‘take my salary and give me that Denon’ kind of guy) is in the process of offloading his old Soundblaster Z to me. Not sure which one has the better amp/DAC. And then there’s my voting and drinking stereo, the JVC MX-J500 (which I got for my 18th birthday in 2001), which is my daily driver. It reportedly has a good amp in that class of equipment (‘that class’ being key here, or ‘that WHAT?’ as my best friend put it, immediately proposing to donate his own old stereo in its stead ;)).
So, we need to write off any cans that these amps will not be enough to drive and drive well. Reportedly, the Z boasts to be able to drive 600ohms, which I’m taking with a grain of salt, but I guess 250 should be safe, though can’t be sure.
Next: The budget. I suppose this is roughly $200 as a preference and $300 as cutoff point, more like €300 — buying from Europe (overseas shipment plus customs plus VAT could easily double the price of any cans, thus pointless).
I could perhaps stretch my budget if I was really, really convinced I was making the right decision and able to justify the expense. In which case I would be looking at:
Cloud Orbit (because Mobius)
AudioTechnica R70x (because HD600 but better and because <3 AT)
Sennheiser 600 and up
Sundara
Normally, however, I’m focusing on HD560s vs HE400SE vs TYGR vs something or other from Beyer vs Fidelio X2HR. And indeed we could think of this in terms of upgrading from AD500X. Kind of like getting the AD500X as the first step and upgrading it into something better, just skipping the first step and starting my hifi trip immediately from the second. But we could start from the third step, I’m not excluding this possibility and there could be advantages, because YOLO. 
And because e.g. starting from $300 is still cheaper than starting from $150 and upgrading to $200, so cutting a shortcut looks like a good idea. Except I don’t have the kind of experience and knowledge to make a good decision unassisted. Also because taking overtime at work and increasing the budget is more productive than spending the same time overthinking the comparisons between the various compromises made on lower-priced headphones.
You can probably already get a pretty narrow guess of my needs from the models I’ve mentioned, so right now let me say — and this is kinda important to me — that I would be inclined use ‘reference/neutral’ headphones as a starting point to take it from there and learn more about my taste and my needs and how to satisfy them as I go. For the same reasons I feel it would probably be better to start from something that’s good out of the box, without equalization, or can easily be equalized to Harman curve.
My two uses for these headphones — like two lungs of the same body — would be music at work and gaming after work.
For music, I usually prefer orchestral classical, movie, epic and game tracks, as well as historical and ethnic music (mediaeval, Byzantine, Armenian, Chinese, Scottish, etc.), including lots of those Eyna/LmcK-style female vocals, followed by jazz and related genres. No metal, no rap, no hip-hop, and I don’t even know what RNB is. Some stuff I listen to probably qualifies as electronic or close to techno but not sure really (not a type of person who would listen to JM Jarre all day, or Frank Klepacki’s game tracks). I like high resolution, accuracy, detail, clarity, separation (but also harmony) and as few distortions as possible, but at the end of the day I’m there to enjoy the tracks, not judge them. Most of the time I’m listening for motivational purposes, sometimes (the first time) curiosity and pretty much never critical or analytical purposes. As a matter of taste, I would probably prefer something closer to analytical tuning and neutrality than most other consumers, but I’m definitely a consumer and not even a prosumer at that.
For gaming, that’s mostly RPGs and strategies. Think Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls, Might & Magic, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic and Fallout series, along with Kingdom Come: Deliverance. If you simply watched someone play, it would be much like watching an action move in a historical, fantasy or sci-fi (or rarely post-apocalyptic) setting. However, if you’re in there, playing, it has a lot of similarities with FPS/TPS (50/50 I’d say, or even more TPS) and in some cases RTS or games like Commandos or Desperados (tactically managing small teams in an isometric view).
Other than RPGs, I play strategies, usually RTS (Dune, Warcraft, Starcraft and similar series) and grand strategies (Europa Universalis and spinoffs such as Crusader Kings series). I would say strategies need the same things as RPGs, just not all at once and generally fewer of them. RTS benefits from positioning and clarity (like FPS but differently) and good music for campaign/casual play, grand strategies are essentially about listening to the soundtracks with the occasional symbolic sound effect or piece of ambient that serves to eeerr… acoustically visualize some sort of idea (e.g. selecting an army or finishing construction or getting a diplomatic offer). So as you can see we can easily just simplify all this to RPG and strategies will also be covered.
And then there’s rallies and car racers. Not much to say there, except to say I need the car sounds to sound natural, or rather immersive and fun and giving the impression of sounding natural or perhaps exaggerated in the epic direction. But the bottom line is that I need car and road sounds to not be distorted. This will also help with sci-fi RPGs and RTSs in which there are a lot of machines, especially vehicles and aircraft, all with engines. Natural, hi-resolution, rich and rewarding engine sounds go a long way toward making me happy while playing those games.
Back to RPG, spatial awareness, resolution and accuracy — stage and imaging, including vertical and including movement — is very important. Most of the time I can see the sound source, but visual-acoustic co-ordination helps my own co-ordination and improves my experience (in the way that congruity is conducive to immersion). If I can rely on acoustic feedback, I often catch myself having switched to relying primarily on it in preference to visual feedback. So I’m not a competitive CS player, but the combat use is there. And then there’s the atmosphere. Basically, when you’re exploring vast open worlds, walking through cities or space stations, or forests, or beaches, the sense of space is a great part of immersion and atmosphere. If streets and plazas sound different depending on how narrow or wide they are, if in a space station’s corridors you can get a sense of the walls, if you can feel the transitions from narrow or closed spaces to big halls, yards or totally open outdoor spaces, that’s a huge plus.
So in terms of stage, I need it broad. Ideally the phones would cover my character’s hearing range the same way the screen covers the sight range. The full extent of it. But I would also need it to convicingly cover all sorts of indoor spaces, many of them small, even claustrophobic. In terms of accuracy, I will perhaps sometimes indeed aim my weapon solely on the basis of what I hear (think a gunfight with fog and smoke or a blinding effect/debuff — the RPG classic), but the accuracy is mostly needed for immersion and atmosphere, not for cheating the system to get aiming aids by ridiculous equalization artificially highlighting stuff like footsteps. I am for a full reflection of natural human hearing capacity, not for a simulation of superhuman levels. No ‘Witcher sense’ unless my character is actually supposed to have it.
Oh, and there are weather effects. Weather effects are roughly as important to the atmosphere as the proper acoustic handling of weapons, armour and everything else combat-related or travel-related (think horseshoes, chainmail jingling, character panting, horse occasionally neighing, road surface changing, etc.).
So in terms of effects we have: all sorts of fighting, travelling and weather sounds. All sorts of weapons, all sorts of armour, all sorts of enemies (humans, fantasy creatures, constructs, droids), mounts, vehicles (motor or otherwise), all sorts of surfaces (various types of metals, woods and more), weather and water. I don’t need all these to sound completely perfect, but as close as we can get — and as distortion-free as possible. I suppose it’s inevitable that some will sometimes sound slightly mudded, slightly low-res, slightly insufficiently separated or unclear, slightly off-key, slightly not the right surface material, maybe just a little too metalic or plasticky, and I guess that’s okay within reason (read: budget limitations), but at least no crackling, no hissing, sizzling or anything else immersion-breaking.
I would like the effects to be accurate, but I need them to be fun more than I need them to be analytically informative. You know, more PowerPoint than Excel. I’m a gamer, not a producer. I may be saving the world, but I’m not at work. I’m trying to have fun.
One supremely important thing to note about effects, apart from their huge diversity, is that they’re often gonna stack. They’re gonna stack on top of each other — sometimes each coming from a different direction, often moving — and on top of the music. And sometimes the stacking is supposed to be more like blending, but not always. I guess this is called ‘separation’, and I guess I will need tons of it.
Another supremely important thing re: separation and clarity is the comprehensibility of human speech in all sorts of acoustically complicated situations. Think all sorts of strange accents, tiredness, bodily damage, illnesses and other conditions, as well as competing with a plethora of other, usually battlefield, sounds. And the soundtrack. Dialogue is of key importance in RPGs and, although there is less of it, it is even more important in RTS.
The effects are probably more important than the music, though the quality (overall high sound quality more than anything else) of the soundtracks is extremely important as well. But at the end of the day game soundtracks, just like movie soundtracks, have a practical purpose, which is to provide an atmospheric presentation background. I don’t need to be able to judge or analyse.
Note that the soundtracks are played from in-game, so they’re often going to have the same spatial/3D effects applied on them as the ambients but perhaps to a lesser extent. Basically, the soundtrack is often made to feel like it’s coming from inside the game, so to speak, rather than merely accompanying the game. It will not normally be completely just the same as listening to the music for music’s sake.
In terms of lows, mids, highs, bass and treble, etc.: I’m not sure I’d be able to tell mids from highs or put trebles on the same scale, TBH. But I’m supposed to have a broader hearing range than most people, and I tend to favour trebles. In terms of bass, it’s not like I don’t need quantity, but I’d like to feel it, not just be ‘informed’ that bass is now supposed to be played. Within reason, but if I’m in the landing zone and a medivac or transport chopper is landing, I want to feel it. Dragons or catapults, I want to feel them too. By no means exaggerated, not augmented, but not gimped or reduced or merely symbolically sketched in, either. A life-like punch and some earth shaking may be preferable to analytical clarity and separation (you know, like when a cannonball hits the wall one foot from your head). In terms of potentially piercing or shrieking highs, I guess we have to take fatigue into account.
Speaking of fatigue — and comfort (and we’ll combine this with durability) — we’re talking about 12-hour work sessions and 12-hour gaming sessions, as well as a large head, glasses getting in the way and the armchair headrest getting in the way especially when shifting positions in the chair. I can be clumsy and forgetful (and not good at soldering), so some durability and resistance to less than careful handling would be welcome or even necessary. Another reason to be mindful of durability is the budget. I need them to last a couple of years. Something like one year of warranty and breaking just the day after is not an option, however good the phones might be.
When reading reviews, I tend to react positively to associations such as ‘bright’ (or even ‘sunny’, like the HE400SE) and ‘airy’, but then I react positively to ‘body’ (think thick coffee) and ‘warm’, so I guess I don’t even know what I’m talking about and am just a confused noob, which feels strangely accurate. There is a reason I appreciate layman’s terms so much.
Now as to what I can get close to where I live (i.e. no cross-continental shipment, customs or VAT to be added to the price, which generally defeats the point of buying from America or Asia). The prices are converted from local currency (PLN) and mostly just for relative reference to assist with comparisons:
Fidelio X2HR/00 — $78 used, $118 new
DT990pro 250ohm — $120 new
AKG K701 — $98 used, $147 new
AKG K702 — $87 used, $160 new
AKG K612 — $128 new
HD 599SE — $107 new
Arctis Pro + DAC — $140 exhibition piece, $148 respectable outlet/unpopular colour/visible scratches
AD500X — $109 used, $136 new
AD700X — $160 new
HE400SE — $167 new
HE400i — ~$140 used, no cable
Sony MDR-1AM2 — $172 used
other DT’s — most at $140–170 new, sometimes up to $200 (more advanced 770/880s), full ohm range is available (32, 60, 80, 250, 300, 600, etc.)
HD560s — between $109 used and no cable and $185 new
above-budget (reluctantly doable as a tie-breaker):
Orbit — used $210
Mobius — used $250
R70X, AD900X, K712, Orbit — roughly $270 each, new
Tygr 300R — close to $300 if even available, which it usually is not
really above-budget (reluctantly doable as skipping to the end game if it’ll last through 10 years of semi-rough treatment and spare me the selection headache):
HD600 — $313 new, not much less used, just for reference (no pun intended ;))
HD660s — hitting $400 and really beyond my budget
Sundara — roughly $300 used, $360 new
The TL;DR is that I (probably) need big stage and precise imaging (including vertical), separation and clarity for all sorts of various sound effects stacked in multiple layers and coming from everywhich direction, as good overall sound quality as possible and as few unpleasant distortions (crackling, hissing, sizzling, veil, blatantly off positioning, etc.). For singleplayer gaming — serious but not competitive (atmosphere, not advantage) — and for music (classical, movie, epic, ethnic, mediaeval/historical and jazz). Budget $200, $300 if you convince me, at $400 I’ll shy away unless skipping to end game and to last me a decade.
On a final note, since we can already see that even $300 is not completely off the table, I suppose, after all, we could also talk about e.g. those used K702s or some sort of 300/600ohm DT and a used amp to drive them, why the heck not, especially considering that’ll work with my laptop too. But only if that’s really going to be better results for less money than just buying phones.
Thank you for reading my novel. 
