Headphones - Page 3

Well, I've been busy grading essays and writing final exams, but after checking out comments here and following links to head-fi.org I ended up getting a pair from Atlec Lansing of all companies, albeit designed by Etymotic Research and favorably compared to Ety's ER-6. I paid for them with amazon.com Visa kickbacks dating from my MacBook Pro.

The last Altec product I owned were vintage 605B coaxials, which are very similar to the venerable 604, including the multicell horn, except that the 605 had a ferrite magnet instead of the 604's AlNiCo. While they were more colored in the midrange and less extended on the bottom than the best of the current active midfield studio monitors (Genelec, ATC), they were arguably more fun to listen to. I sold them along with my old home, as they were built into the wall and the incoming resident was an audiophile who decided to buy the house after hearing DSOTM on those 605's.

I thought hard about the Sennheiser CP-300B's, and probably would have went that way if they had still been $40. Part of me just didn't want to pay $55 for something that I knew others had recently gotten for $40 with no value added for me. Infantile, but we all have flaws.

I can't believe how many Grado fans there are around here. I'd rather listen to iPod earbuds than any Grados, personally. I'm just not into that incessant boom-tizz. Honestly I think the $20 Koss earclips are much better sounding than Grados. (Or Sony EX-71s, or Shure E2s, but those have isolation advantages over the Kosses.) I could write a 1500word rant on how much I hate the colored house Grado sound, but I'll spare everyone...

I've treated my HD-600's very badly, carrying them around the world before I wised up and bought the Etys for travel. Though I have had to replace the cord once or twice, they're still in great shape. They are carbon fiber and not plastic, though.

If it's only been 8mos I assume Senn will replace them for free. My first cable broke after about that long and Senn did right by me. And this was in Germany, not the US! (At the time, to echo the Vass thread, HD-600's were about the DM equivalent of $250 over there, and $350-400 in the US. So guess where I bought them.)

Everything else you've written is a matter of taste, though I'd urge you to listen to the Koss KSC-75's, which are now only $15 at amazon.com, before dismissing them out of hand. A quick survey of head-fi.org suggests I'm far from alone in this assessment. But beyond that, this sentence makes no sense to me. I'm not a studio guy, I've always thought that isolation/lack of leakage would be important in headphone studio monitoring, and closed cans such as Sony MDR-7506's would be far preferable to something that's basically wide open like the Senns.

Indeed, the super silky liquid smooth and lush sound of the HD-600's would, I think, be a very bad thing for people mixing music. You might get a feel for how it'll sound to people with Quads at the end of their stereos, but it will tell you nothing as to how music will sound on boomboxes or car stereos. Or boom-tizz machines like iPod earbuds or Grados...

Then again, maybe my tastes are off because except for the Gradient Preludes on my desk at work speaker I've ever really loved has been a midfield studio monitor or dressed up version thereof.


Right now, I'd say that I actually use the cheap Kosses the most. My division of labor is Sony MDR-EX71's for commuting (hopefully to be replaced by the Altec IEM's I just ordered), Koss KSC-35 for exercise. Etys for air travel, and Senns for home listening. Rarely does a set of headphones see use outside the above parameters.

I would say no, absolutely not from my experience, but that's just my experience. The real answer is that you need to listen to them for yourself. Unless you need headphones that will isolate you from external sounds and avoid leaking sound, neither of which Grados do. In that case, you'll want something with a sealed cup, or a canalphone/IEM. Unfortunately, hi-fi places don't typically stock a lot of headphones. Usually you'll see Grado OR Senn OR Beyer OR AKG, but rarely two of the big four niche headphone makers. And the places that do have walls of headphones you can listen to on music of your choice (Guitar Center and other music/pro-audio stores) never carry Grado because Grados are way too colored (keeping in mind that one man's "too colored" is another's "euphonic") for that market. Even then, you can't really audition any of the canalphones.) The best solution, maybe, would be to listen at a music box store with a good return policy, buy the ones that appeal to you most, and then take those to a hifi shop to compare with the Grados if you're still interested. I'm not familiar with any of the offerings in that price-range except for the Sony MDR-7506, which is pretty decent (good overall frequency balance with maybe a bit of midbass bloom, but a very closed in sound even with a headphone amp employing crossfeed) but also getting on in years. All of the four major pro-market headphone makers listed above (Sony, AKG from Austria, Senn and Beyer from Germany) have die-hard fans, so I'd recommend listening to all of their options.