Impedance vs loud music

[bluenite]

Please recommend headphones with parameters:
-home listening
-around the ears
-open or closed design
-classical/new age/jazz (more quiet than loud)
-neutral sound
-do not need headphone amplifier
-no bluetooth/wifi, but can be an option
-as light as possible - comfort for extended use
-price under 400usd

I suppose lower headphone impedance means more distortion at higher volume and vice versa, higher impedance is needed for louder music, which I don't listen to anyway.

I generally observe that with age (61) the perception of higher frequencies is lost and the perceived sound is flat, but that's another topic.

Could something from AudioTechnica or Sennheiser, or a similar midrange be a good fit?
Can anyone comment on this? Also on the impedance?

Thanks for the advice and recommendations
Peter

 

[Vincent Kars]

Damping
Most of the time the headphone out of an amp is a matter of connecting the headphone out to the same power amp as used by the speakers. To avoid frying the headphone, a resistor network is used to reduce the power substantially.
Nothing wrong with this approach but the result is an amp with a high output impedance.
A rule of the thumb is that the damping factor, the impedance of the headphone divided by the impedance of the amp, should be 8. Often this value is criticized as being to low.

This is the reason why traditional headphones do have a high impedance. You can drive them with a high impedance output and still have a decent damping ratio.

Driving high impedance headphones is no problem for a stationary amplifier. Power consumption is not an issue. Cell phones, however, don't have big amps as this will drain the battery.
Tiny amps being frugal on power is what they need.
This gave birth to a whole new type of low impedance headphones, often 32 Ohm or less.
They can be driven by a couple of milli watts hence by any mobile.

 

[bluenite]

OK, I could move around this impedance. Sometimes I assume when connected to my mobile. It is the quality of the sparkling sound without unnecessary increase in voice. Thanks for the reaction.
btw nice website

 

[Rodolfo]

Welcome, bluenite. The Beyerdynamic DT900 Pro comes in both 250 and 80 ohm impedance: you may find a comparison test interesting if you can arrange it.