Inexperienced headphones noob. Need help with headphones. - Overclock.net

unreachable · 01-08-09

Whats up everyone! Yeah I'm having a problem picking headphones which will be mainly used for:

Music production
Music
& Games

HD555 were the first ones that came to mind but it lacks bass.

I want great headphones for music and games so I want to spend my money wisely and hope for a good investment.

I've heard AKG K 81 DJ's are good but are they good for games as well?

HD212s for bass but I don't know if it will be good for games.

I'm looking for sound staging and CLOSED for late night work.

I think my budget is around 100$ but it could exceed 100$ and be below 180$

Where's a good place to head headphones like some AUDIO Technia's or something.

Also what do you guys think about the HD 280 PROs? Good for games and music? I am really into picking the right choice and not making a mistake/bad decision/wasting money. Thanks in advance all.

**phospholipid** · 01-08-09

K 81's are great for gaming, and so are the HD212's. they block out a ton of sound. most people think the HD212's have too much boom, but I beg to differ. Either way, the K81's are awesome.

check out my guide for places to buy headphones - pretty much though
newegg.com
headphones.com
amazon.com
audiocubes.com

HD280's are hit and miss. when i listened to them, they were nice. they bass well, very clear, and they block out a ton of noise. i prefer they're also more comfortable than the HD212's. since i haven't listened to them for more than an hour, i can't quite compare them.

unreachable · 01-08-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by phospholipid

K 81's are great for gaming, and so are the HD212's. they block out a ton of sound. most people think the HD212's have too much boom, but I beg to differ. Either way, the K81's are awesome.

check out my guide for places to buy headphones - pretty much though
newegg.com
headphones.com
amazon.com
audiocubes.com

HD280's are hit and miss. when i listened to them, they were nice. they bass well, very clear, and they block out a ton of noise. i prefer they're also more comfortable than the HD212's. since i haven't listened to them for more than an hour, i can't quite compare them.

Hey I appreciate your guide, I've been studying it but for my own personal preference, I like reading testimonials on experience with specific headphones. I do refer to it all the time, it's just not enough for me not that it's not well compiled but that its lacking the detail I prefer. You've helped me narrow it down that's for sure.

**phospholipid** · 01-08-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by unreachable

Hey I appreciate your guide, I've been studying it but for my own personal preference, I like reading testimonials on experience with specific headphones. I do refer to it all the time, it's just not enough for me not that it's not well compiled but that its lacking the detail I prefer. You've helped me narrow it down that's for sure.

i try to keep my guide clean cause theres so much subjectivity with headphones, a majority of my guide is me sampling cans and writing about them, but not about what i like. my preferences are tons and tons of bass. and i don't want to put for the HD555's "NO BASS AT ALL IN FACT I HATE IT FOR ANYTHING BUT GAMING". as for detail, maybe i should start linking other reviews as well? good idea sir. i just want to put the most round about ideas, you know? objective as possible.

here's a review on the HD280 pros for your :] with tons of detail.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/sen...ssions-394073/

good luck friend :]

**phospholipid** · 01-08-09

and a k81 DJ review

www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/review-3-closed-portables-compared-akg-k81-dj-audio-technica-es5-sennheiser-px200-164996/

Quote:

AKG K81 DJ

Saved the best for last. As a “DJ” headphone, I was afraid these were designed and voiced to appeal to the worst instincts of certain unsophisticated listeners, but I needn’t have worried, these are surprisingly refined cans.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m still in the early stages of ownership with these headphones, but this was a case of like at first hear. Be assured it has its flaws, nothing in this class is going to sound like an R10, but it wasn’t difficult for me to decide that these were a good solution for me almost immediately. Since there seems to be a demand for information on the K81DJ right now, I thought I’d go ahead and throw caution to the wind and share my thoughts so far. If anything changes drastically, I’ll follow up or amend this review accordingly, but I’m certain I’ve got them pretty well nailed already.

These are hard to find in stock right now, they seem to exist as a special order item from AKG at the moment, so your on-line retailer may show them as “in-stock” but the reality is that there’s a 2-4 week delay for them to get the K81 from AKG and then to get them to you.

Build, Fit, Ergonomics & Isolation
Really remarkable given the street price on these. Best build quality of the bunch, no one should be disappointed with how these things are put together. Tank-like construction, solid aluminum headband surrounded by thick durable plastic with a rubbery plastic coating all around to protect it from scratches and dings. Nice, attractive touches of brushed silver aluminum makes them look great, too. The pads are nice and thick and firm, with what appear to be thicker pleather coverings than either the PX200 or ES5, so I guess they will last longer and wear tougher.

The headband is adjustable with conventional detents that click into place and hold firm, plus there are little numbered steps on each side, so you can quickly verify you have each side extended identically. The earcups swing wide open for DJ use, but there is some tension in the joint so they aren’t loosely flapping around. The fit is snug, but very comfortable. Though substantially heavier than either of the others, I was surprised at how well the K81DJ stays in place, it provides a nice secure fit, even when I’m running I have no concern they will jiggle let alone fall off.

Honestly, the K81 DJ is a bit larger in size than I’d like. Roughly double the size of the other two phones, and considerably deeper, the earcups are ~2.75” in diameter and ~1.4” deep. While this allows for the use of a bigger driver, more room within earcups to create a soundstage, and covers more of the ear providing greater isolation, you do look a little dorky wearing them. But they are still supra-aural headphones (rest on the ear), and are smaller than some other similar supra-aural phones, so will certainly seem quite compact to folks brave enough to wear full-sized circumaural headphones in public, but for me, I still feel a little weird.

Isolation is quite good, much better than the other two, and they provide an airtight seal. If 0% is zero isolation and 100% is total isolation, the K81 DJ is at around 35%.

I do have one pretty major reservation about the K81’s build/design, and that’s with the cord length. It’s a full meter too long for portable use. Obviously it was designed to be used by DJs in clubs where they probably need a longer tether. But I did find an acceptable solution for those who want to go mobile with the K81.

Check out http://www.sumajin.com/online-Smartwraps.html, and get yourself a Smartwrap. This simple little device allows you to wrap the extra cord length around it securely while it dangles gently. I’ve put mine right under the point where the twin y-cords meet at the little plastic junction, so it rests on my chest. It’s quite light-weight, so you don’t really notice it there. Not perfect, but a decent option.

Drive-ability
Hardest to drive of the bunch by a fair margin. Despite its deceptive 32-ohm rating, the K81 DJ plays at a noticeably lower volume than the other two, and seems to suck the juice out of my iPod Nano significantly faster. Probably a good candidate for people who already own any of those little portable amps that are so popular around here. I don’t have one and have never owned one, so I can’t discuss synergy or make recommendations, etc., but I don’t want to over-state the whole amp thing, I am able to use them just fine straight out of my Nano’s headphone jack.

Treble
A bit rolled and recessed, I admit, but very refined and clean and oh-so-natural and real. OK, first things first, K81 DJ needs to be EQ-ed. If your DAP does not let you tweak the EQ, there’s a good chance they may not work for you. My Nano has around a dozen pre-set EQ settings I can choose from, most of which only subtly tweak the sound. I’ve found that the “Acoustic” setting sounds best through the mids and highs; through just this slight tweak, the K81’s treble/mids go from adequate but occasionally frustrating to darn near perfect. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that what’s especially striking (and a bit unexplained to me) about the K81 is the remarkable coherency of their sound, even when you tweak the EQ. Somehow, the sound remains balanced and fully integrated; the driver speaks with one voice no matter how much EQ you give them (well to the admittedly limited degree of EQ my Nano can provide anyway). Weird and contradictory, but that’s my observation.

Unfortunately, the “Acoustic” setting also adds a bit of bass bloom which sadly takes the K81’s bass level a step too far on some-- but not all-- tracks (more on that later). The “Treble Boost” setting is a nice compromise, not as much midrange bloom, but no extra bass boost, so the low-end is always under control.

I loaned the K81 to a friend and warned him about the need to add some treble EQ, and when he gave them back to me, in his opinion, on his DAP (don’t know what it was), no extra EQ was needed, treble was fine. So, YMMV with regard to whether what I perceive as the treble roll-off is undesirable to you or even exists at all (but I’m pretty sure you’ll notice it

).

Another important thing to note is that all the edges of sounds produced by the K81 are very noticeably rounded off. Leading-edge transients are blunted almost, and this can sound weird until you get used to it. On the positive side, that means the headphone should never cause you any listening fatigue.

Midrange
Not as recessed as the treble, but not as full and forward as desired. Vocals a little too laid back in the mix when un-EQed. But again, fantastically dead-on tone. These cans sound much more true-to-life than I would have guessed possible in this class and at this price point.

Bass
Bass is somewhat odd on the K81. Although there is a lot of it there, and it seems fairly “large” in size and it goes nearly as deep as the ES5, it seems to all occur off in the near distance somehow, just behind all the other sounds/instruments.

The tone the bass of the K81 strikes is very natural, but it’s pretty much the same tone applied to all recordings. That can be frustrating. I wish it had more upper-bass warmth to help flesh it out and enable it to present a larger number of different shadings. As it is, you get a pleasant low rumble that only seems to vary within certain parameters, never fully conforming to the actual sounds as recorded.

Also, instead of a nice clean “brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” sound, some bass guitar notes occasionally make a rumbling, juddering, quickly stuttering sound, that sounds like “jud-jud-jud-jud-jud-jud-jud-jud” instead of one smooth continuous vibration. This *may* be due to the K81 presenting too much of a load for the Nano to fully drive its bass demands 100% cleanly-- I can’t yet verify, I haven’t had much chance to listen to them on my home rig. I will update on this later.

I recognize that as DJ headphones, there would be concern that they are going to be intrusively bassy. Yes, there is a possibility of some unnecessarily over-busy bass-work during certain songs, but for the most part I haven’t found this a major issue, and I’m no bass-head either. The only time the bass level becomes an issue for me is on hotly-mastered, compressed electronic synth bass notes of the type that do not occur in nature. It’s chiefly on those ultra-low events that I get the slight juddering sound I mention above and when the bass gets too heavy and seems to start stepping a little bit on some of the other frequencies and musical sounds. So, overall, I would advise some caution for people especially wary of bass, but see much less likelihood of serious issues for everyone else.

Resolution/Detail/Transparency
Roughly in the middle between the PX200 and the revealing ES5. The same way that the ES5 presents a compressed sound, the K81 DJ provides a totally de-compressed sound. Lots of dynamic range with these phones, and because they have a relatively low noise floor and black background, plus are more isolating from outside noise, the low-level fine detail is still plenty audible even though it occurs more naturally at a lower volume.

Because the K81 is nice and clean, it can present you with solid, stable sound, allowing the little details to emerge. It won't shove them under your nose, but they are there for you to experience at your leisure. Not as focused or as laser-sharp as the ES5, a bit soft on the edges, but still above-average detail retrieval and resolution.

Reasonably transparent, the K81 will respond to EQ changes. There is a slight veiling and a bit of detachment relative to the other two, but nothing worrisome.

Tone/Timbre
These rival and can actually beat some full-sized “high-end” cans in terms of presenting a realistic, accurate sound. The most notable coloration is a slight dryness to the tone. They aren’t rich or lush or romantic, or brutally revealing and sterile, they are slightly warm-ish, natural and real. Other than the somewhat same-y bass tone, I have zero criticisms or arguments with the tone they provide, let alone at this price point.

IMO, the K81 is not a “whiz-bang”, “holy-cow” piece of hi-fi (see the ES5); it may not wow some younger ears right away looking for an instant sugar rush. Getting the tone right and making humans sound like humans, instruments sound like themselves, and music sound like music, may not be the sexiest or most noticeably ear-opening “trick” in the book, but it’s one of the hardest to get right. I can only say, don’t focus on what they aren’t doing, listen to what’s there. It’s good stuff.

Soundstage/Imaging
A bit closed in, and you are set back a couple rows, but the only one of the three to present any sense of front-to-back space and image depth. Not as overwhelmingly large as the ES5, but plenty big and coherent. There is a slight boxy coloration, some added reverb from the enclosures, but to some that extra ambience may add to the sense that it’s happening in a concert hall.

PRAT
The K81 DJ has a slightly “thick” sound to it which gives a little added heaviness to the presentation which means that although it has great body, it’s not the fastest headphone on the block. In addition to somewhat diminishing PRAT and impact, the heaviness can eat away at some note decay. It kind of sucks those trailing sounds back into the void.

Drums don’t kick as hard as they do on the ES5 (although they sound so much more real, it’s not even funny) and there’s generally less slam all around. But this ain’t no feeble headphone like the wimpy PX200. I can easily see many people finding the ES5’s PRAT over-blown, and the K81’s more natural.

Still, I’m left with the impression that the driver on the K81 is wound up too tight. It needs to loosen up and let the sound just happen; as it is, at times the grip on the sound can be overbearing and heavy-handed. The good news is that it’s very likely that with further burn-in, this should be alleviated to some degree. Again, I’ll follow up on this later.

K81 Summary and Review Conclusion
So, the K81 is not a “perfect” headphone, but at this price that’s really asking too much, and that wasn’t my expectation. At the start, I was just looking for “acceptable”; I really wasn’t expecting “quite good, actually”, which is what the K81DJ delivered for me. IMHO, the K81 provides A LOT of headphone for a very modest price indeed, the value is simply excellent. Terrific build quality, excellent sound quality, good fit, and decent isolation… if only AKG offered a model with a shorter cord for portable use, it would be close to ideal for me. I think this headphone (with subtle but judicious EQ of upper mids and highs) will please a lot of Head-Fiers looking for closed phones in this category. But again, I’ll have to leave it to others to do the comparison against the other models in this class that I haven’t heard and are not covered by this review.

Based on what I’ve heard, my thinking is that if the lowly K81 DJ manages to sound this good, AKG’s new flagship K701 must be quite impressive indeed. I hope to get to hear that one soon, my curiosity is definitely piqued.

unreachable · 01-09-09

I think i've made my choice, K81 it is. I'll post a review myself once I break into them.

DJ.BigBear · 01-10-09

ATH-A700
www.audiocubes.com

**IEATFISH** · 01-10-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ.BigBear

ATH-A700
www.audiocubes.com

Just got those ATH A700. I'm loving them. I got them here. Great deal. You will be hard pressed to find those at a better price than that. $110 shipped.