Will £500 buy me a much better headphone experience?

[Charlie Jefferson]

A bit of context:

I use a pair of B&W P5's for travelling & listening.

Until very recently I haven't needed to bother with headphones at home, but building work will soon necessitate the dismantling of my system. Even when my hi-fi is reassembled, it's likely to be in another space, so more headphone listening could be on the agenda.

I've never much enjoyed headphone listening other than when travelling. At home I prefer the superior experience my speakers give me. I owned a pair of Sennheiser 650s but didn't really rate them. I added a Musical Fidelty headphone amp but that didn't sway me either.

So now that necessity dictates, will £500 do much for my headphone at home listening?

The usual suspects are on eBay and elsewhere. New and used, Grados and Sennheisers et al.

Any suggestions?

 

[eggontoast]

It would be helpful if you could elaborate on what you didn't like about the HD-650's before making any recommendations.

 

[Charlie Jefferson]

It would be helpful if you could elaborate on what you didn't like about the HD-650's before making any recommendations.

The 650s never seemed to open up the music for me. Above all, anything beyond moderate volume created a brittleness in the sound presentation.

Currently, I'm using my iPod/iPad headphones (B&W P5s) to listen to my home system in its last few days before boxing it all up. They sound marginally better than the 650s, from what I can recall, but not by much.

I want more than marginal gains. Please!!

 

[dalethorn]

For that kind of money I can't think of anything better than the Shure 1840. Great detail, yet non-irritating for sibilants etc. Much better sound than Sennheisers (I have had the 580/600/650/800) and way more comfortable too.

 

[quadpatch]

I would worry that prefference is going to be swayed by presentation in a big way, it's not something that goes away at this price or even more. I for one fins a lot of these more expensive headphones a bit boring and lacking in body.

With a budget like this and wanting "big improvements" you really have to try out the headphones any way you can. Spend a bit of your budget on getting yourself to a showroom that can help you choose. Otherwise read a lot of reviews and be prepared to be disappointed.

 

[Charlie Jefferson]

I would worry that prefference is going to be swayed by presentation in a big way, it's not something that goes away at this price or even more. I for one fins a lot of these more expensive headphones a bit boring and lacking in body.

With a budget like this and wanting "big improvements" you really have to try out the headphones any way you can. Spend a bit of your budget on getting yourself to a showroom that can help you choose. Otherwise read a lot of reviews and be prepared to be disappointed.

Your last five words are my watchwords. In HiFi more than life, that is.

I'm trying to achieve the impossibe, namely, wanting something that approximates my speaker listening experience. And for £500 that's not going to happen. So yes, time to listen to some headphones. I'll give my local dealer a call and ask if he can let me try out a few pairs in my price bracket.

 

[Covenanter]

Without wishing to start another cable debate, one of the reasons I ruled out the HD650s when choosing headphones was that quite a lot of reviews said that you need to replace the cable to get good results. It was also often said that they really need a seperate headphone amplifier but that is said about most better headphones. The cables that were most often mentioned were Cardas and Stefan AudioArt so I thought well that will be ok and then I looked at the prices! Both these cables cost as much as the phones themselves and that doesn't seem right.

Having said that, the vast majority of reviews thought the phones were great!

Chris

 

[dalethorn]

With headphones you don't really approximate the speaker experience. You don't get all the sonic smearing and softening with headphones like you do with speakers. The little drivers are small and have much better transient response, much less distortion, and are right next to your ears so you will hear much more detail.

The analogy from headphones to speakers can be extended one level farther: From ordinary speakers to speakers like the Bose 901, which projects a really huge sonic image, yet smears the sound much more than ordinary speakers. It isn't hard to visualize.