Studio Headphones 2021

[KnightBrolaire]

I'm looking at prices, and man.....We're getting gouged out the eyeballs on prices here in Canada. mmm..... if I can get vaccinated by end of summer here, it may be better if I just buy some back home in the US if I can hold out that long.

The 650's are $599 CAD...on sale. (reg $650).

USD those are $399.. lol what the heck....seriously ridiculous how high prices are in Canada right now.

yeah you guys are getting screwed. I paid 300 usd for my Hd6xx.

 

[thebeesknees22]

oh i didn't pay attention to that @gnoll Yeah i want closed back. lol

that's what i get for shopping while working

 

[Furtive Glance]

If there's one thing that never goes down in price in Canada, it's Sennheiser headphones.

I was looking at getting 650s back in 2011... They were $600 even back then. But open backs are not for me. I have the DT770s and I can vouch for them. They also let you modularly replace pieces, which I am about to do because my ear cups are getting kind of worn.

 

[thebeesknees22]

ouuch. $600 for headphones. Maannnn...... I'm notoriously bad with keeping headphones in one piece. I was lucky my focals lasted almost a decade.

I've gone through at least half a dozen cheap headphones for work because I'll get up to walk away and forget to take them off or unplug them lol. *Rrrrrip, there goes the cable.

The detachable cable actually saved my focals on more than one occasion.

Those 770's don't have a detachable cable so that makes me hesitant with something in that price range. I know me...and I know I will rip that out one day.

 

[Drew]

Those 770's don't have a detachable cable so that makes me hesitant with something in that price range. I know me...and I know I will rip that out one day.

Another vote for the 770s here, too. They're the most cmfortable headphones I've ever worn, and sound and feel quite a bit better than my backup set, a pair of ATHM50x's. As far as the cable, I wouldn't worry - it's a seven-foot long coiled cable and I don't know how far exactly it'd stretch as it uncoils, but it's pretty fucking long, and you'll get some tactile feedback LONG before it's under enough tension to worry about.

EDIT - of course, now I'm eyeing the 1770s.

 

[DudeManBrother]

It’s really easy to mod them for a detachable cable. It probably took me 15 minutes and cost under $10 for the mini trs jack and cable

 

[Furtive Glance]

Mine have a straight cable. Interesting that you have a coiled one.

 

[thebeesknees22]

mod like this? I don't trust myself with that lol




and that is a huge cable. That shoooould be safe with me lol

 

[Drew]

Mine have a straight cable. Interesting that you have a coiled one.

the 770s? Looking at pictures on the Sweetwater page, it looks like the 32 and 80ohm are straight, and the 250ohm are spiral.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...C2oPIIRy_dV_g4mwE0caAt9aEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

[sakeido]

worth noting that the treble of Beyerdynamics is hyped. Very, very bright sounding phones

my 880 correction looks like so


above the line is a boost, below the line is a cut. from 5khz above they're attenuated by -9dB or so. Also, thin in the bass. Boosted by 9dB down there.

I find them very enjoyable to listen to but I wouldn't mix on anything Beyerdynamic without a calibration. I remembered the 770s are a bit better balanced from when I demo'd them but looking at rting's measurements, still appear to be on the bright side Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO Review - RTINGS.com and the 990 got the lowest review "score" on ASR Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro Review (headphone) | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

as far as headphones bein a ripoff in Canada, they sure are! Buy online and have em shipped in from outside the country. Just make sure they use a postal service and not UPS/Fedex to avoid the high brokerage fees.

 

[thebeesknees22]

as far as headphones bein a ripoff in Canada, they sure are! Buy online and have em shipped in from outside the country. Just make sure they use a postal service and not UPS/Fedex to avoid the high brokerage fees.

Ahhhhh that's why I got hammered on import duties on a bridge i had to order from the US. The one I ordered was $194 CAD and I got brutalized with import duties at almost half the cost. It came through FedEx.....

never..again...

I was looking a the sonarworks headphone reviews the other day. The Focal Listen Pro's looked like they had a massive mid range bump. I was pretty surprised. I expected something a lot more flat from Focal if they're marketing them for mixing.

 

[DudeManBrother]

mod like this? I don't trust myself with that lol




and that is a huge cable. That shoooould be safe with me lol

Yeah that’s the mod. It’s really not very difficult, but also not worth the hassle if you’re unsure about your ability to do it.

 

[sakeido]

Ahhhhh that's why I got hammered on import duties on a bridge i had to order from the US. The one I ordered was $194 CAD and I got brutalized with import duties at almost half the cost. It came through FedEx.....

never..again...

I was looking a the sonarworks headphone reviews the other day. The Focal Listen Pro's looked like they had a massive mid range bump. I was pretty surprised. I expected something a lot more flat from Focal if they're marketing them for mixing.

I suppose mixing tools don't necessarily HAVE to be flat... the Yamaha NS10s are legendary studio tools but aren't even remotely flat. As long as you learn your tools, you can use anything.

imo as long as you listen to all your music and mix on the same setup, you'll be able to work with anything eventually. As long as it doesn't have some other serious problems, like too much distortion, phase problems from driver alignment, lots of delay in the bass.

UPS actually dropped their flat rate brokerage down to $33 + applicable taxes so it's not as bad as it used to be but fedex is still brutal

 

[thebeesknees22]

@sakeido - yeah true. good point.

@DudeManBrother - yeah I'll need some practice on some junk pairs before I'm ready to jump into that kind of mod. lol

 

[nickgray]

my 880 correction looks like so

I have 880s and having tried Sonarworks, imo, it's pretty useless. The sound is not even remotely similar to being flat, the correction makes them sound different and weird. I just use my own EQ with a high shelf that decreases the treble by around 2db, a 1db boost at 1khz, and some low shelf to add more bass. Personally, I wouldn't trust these correction programs.

 

[sakeido]

I have 880s and having tried Sonarworks, imo, it's pretty useless. The sound is not even remotely similar to being flat, the correction makes them sound different and weird. I just use my own EQ with a high shelf that decreases the treble by around 2db, a 1db boost at 1khz, and some low shelf to add more bass. Personally, I wouldn't trust these correction programs.

I posted it mostly because it agreed with a few other sets of measurements. Beyerdynamics be bright.

From what I've learned of headphone EQ, I think Sonarworks attempts to EQ things you can't actually fix so some things don't sound right. I usually set it to between 40-60% corrected because yeah 100% sounds weird.

Room correction though is absolutely worth it. Night and day difference every time. Even a basic correction done with a measurement mic and a software EQ is a giant improvement. I'll never run a system without it again.

 

[nickgray]

Room correction though is absolutely worth it

Well that's the thing - room correction makes sense as you're actually measuring it with a mic. As far as I understand it, headphones are way more finicky. The position of drivers relative to the ears (in all three dimensions), the fit and seal of the cups, the anatomy of your particular ear plays a role, there's very likely some variance between the drivers in terms of frequency response, and probably just the shape of the head itself will play a role too. Not that you couldn't get a result out of it all, but personally, having tried several of these correction plugins with several headphones, they just never sounded right. Doing a rough correction with EQ by hand is way better, imo. Still won't sound natural, but somehow it just doesn't sound as weird as these plugins.

 

[Flappydoodle]

Another vote for the 770s here, too. They're the most cmfortable headphones I've ever worn, and sound and feel quite a bit better than my backup set, a pair of ATHM50x's. As far as the cable, I wouldn't worry - it's a seven-foot long coiled cable and I don't know how far exactly it'd stretch as it uncoils, but it's pretty fucking long, and you'll get some tactile feedback LONG before it's under enough tension to worry about.

EDIT - of course, now I'm eyeing the 1770s.

My floor cleaning robot grabbed my DT770s and yanked the cable, dragged it literally out of the room and around the corner. Was tugging on it for several minutes before giving up. They survived, and I can confirm that the cable is surprisingly long!

 

[gnoll]

I'd rather the cable was detachable on DT770 but it's fine and I'm not really worried it's gonna break, it feels solid. Length works for me just putting it rolled up a bit on the table next to me or something if I'm in front of a computer, and it's usually long enough not to feel restrictive.

I actually had the "drum version" of DT770 which is way more isolating and sounds kinda crap, and funnily enough those had a volume control on the cable and THAT ONE crapped out on me, it seemed really bad quality. Luckily the normal DT770 doesn't have that, just a cable that's never been a problem for me in any way.

I wouldn't really want only DT770 for mixing since they're closed back and not so flat, with kinda heavy bass and that treble peak at like ~9-10k or so? But maybe if you got to know them really well you could make it work.

Personally I'm just about to get some HD600 for mixing, because my apartment has a bit thin walls to use monitors a lot. So I'll likely do most mixing on the HD600 but DT770s are nice for tracking and stuff. (And for listening to music at work or I even take them on commutes/trains etc. Very comfy.)

 

[sakeido]

Well that's the thing - room correction makes sense as you're actually measuring it with a mic. As far as I understand it, headphones are way more finicky. The position of drivers relative to the ears (in all three dimensions), the fit and seal of the cups, the anatomy of your particular ear plays a role, there's very likely some variance between the drivers in terms of frequency response, and probably just the shape of the head itself will play a role too. Not that you couldn't get a result out of it all, but personally, having tried several of these correction plugins with several headphones, they just never sounded right. Doing a rough correction with EQ by hand is way better, imo. Still won't sound natural, but somehow it just doesn't sound as weird as these plugins.

I've been testing the new Acustica Sienna Rooms calibration for 880 Pros and I find it to be way way better than Sonarworks. The Sienna calibration is just a generic one based on random pairs of 880 Pros and it sounds far more natural than my Sonarworks calibration that was done individually for my specific headphones. 30 day trail is worth checking out.