budget headphones

Sennheiser PX100 at £18 or HD495s at £19???? They will be powered directly from the amp, as I lack the resources to buy a dedicated headphone amp. How is sound leakage? At the moment, I'm vearing towards the 495s as the price is very good.

 

i'd say hd495s- thats about half retail price iirc. The px100s are more for ipod/iriver users tbh. The 495s also have a much longer cord.

 

Having owned the HD495s I am not so sure, they were the worst pair of head phones I ever owned. They required a lot of power to drive, my old Marantz PM4000 used to cut out when driving them. In the end I had to send them off to Senhieser for a new driver which they replaced under warranty.

I also own a pair of PX40s for portable use they are the best sounding portable headphones I have ever heared.

The HD495s have open mid range and the treble was good, but the bass was far too loose and wooly for my liking. My Philips HP890s were 10000 times better.

I had some Beyerdyamnic DTX900s now, they are brilliant but cost at at least £50.

Also the HD495s are open backed and leak a lot of sound.

 

Koss KSC-75 are very, very good for the money. Almost as good as Grado SR60's according to some...

Search headfi, and you'll see what i mean.

 

I hope they are more comfortable than the Grados though, thats why I've never bought the SR60's they clamp my head.

 

did you like the sound though AT?

 

It was in a shop and the amplification didn't go that loud, they sounded quite warm but detailed but all the phones did and I think they were being coloured by a poor setup in the shop.

I just like to be able to wear my head phones for at least an hour without getting uncomfertable.

 

Agree on the Grado comfort issue - a friend of mine has SR60's and I wasn't able to wear them for more than about five minutes at a time. The (circumaural) 600's I've got now OTOH I can happily wear for hours at a time with no ill effects, other than getting a bit sweaty if it's hot. I used to have Sennheiser 495s and they weren't bad comfort-wise either - the sound was pretty fair for the £30 I paid for them too.

 

Did you not find they really needed a dedicated headphone amp to drive them though? I found the bass quite wooly but that was on dancier/faster tracks. They were very good for simplier music which has more mid range in it.

 

Couldn't say - I didn't have one at the time, I was running them through my Marantz 6010KI IIRC. At the moment TBH I've only got the Creek because - try as I might - I can't plug my headphones into my NADs. Certainly with the 600s I haven't noticed any great problems running them off pretty much anything, though they need the Creek to go seriously, gratifyingly loud.

 

don't miss out on Beyerdynamics ......check out there range I use there top of the range but they say some of the lower models give the top ones a close run. I prefer these to sennhisers...though I do own a very nice set of pcx250[?] the noise cancellers, there a good headphone too.

 

http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=126957

 

i used my sr80s on a sharp personal md. Sounded lovely. I certainly couldn't class them as warm sounding either AT- they were fairly upfront tbh

 

With the head amp I was referering the HD495s, the Grados should be fine with any HIFI amp. I have had many headphones and the HIFI amps have been fine driving them, but the HD495s caused my old PM4000 to cut out.

 

Yep the best sounding headphones I have ever had always been Beyers and perhaps my Philips HP890s. The only think I don't like about Beyers is I am not sure their build quality is the as good as Philips or Senhieser.

I like my Beyer DTX900s a lot though. I can wear them for hours and hours, they have nice solid fast bass, warm vocals and a warmish treble. So they sound great with anything from dance to folk. They should be could considering I paid £65 for them though.

 

That might be a considerable issue, as I have the PM4200, which is very similar, just a later version. Thanks for the hints.

 

The new range of Beyers isnt as good as the old range in terms of build quality, and if comparing like with like, sonics. There wasnt an older equivalent that I know of to the DTX900 but they all feature that silver cracking headband that is less comfortable and more fragile than their older stuff. Certainly the upper ranges of the Beyers have battleship like build quality.

If you can get a pair of DT531's for less than £50 on the second hand market, then i think they'd be very difficult to beat, but on the down side, they do really need a decent amp to sound as good as they can.