Best studio headphones?

[reggie1979]

Man, thread is ALL OVER the map

I'm in the camp that I think open cans makes very little sense to what the OP described.

I'll throw the ones I've used for years (and I've tried most of the mentioned ones) .. the KRK 8400. Warning, if you like hyped cans you won't like these. They are flatter than a sewer hub. But the best part is I've had the same pair for long time. You can get the parts at like zsounds for everything so that you don't need to replace. I don't know about anyone else but my cans get worn pretty easily. Pads, chords, the top portion, all replaceable.

[BerryLaCroix]

For me any decent headphones in combination with Toneboosters morphit for headphone correction and simulation of hundreds of other models to see how my mix translates to what people will actually be listening to.

Personally a great fan of Beyerdynamic DT series (I have 770s and 990s).

[D Midas]

Seriously....... just get these, they are designed for mixing, for isolation, for comfort. They are 300 bucks and they check all your boxes and will last. I also have a pair of oppo planar magnetic cans that sound divine but I paid so damn much for them I barely want to use them. The Focals come close. Separation of instruments is wide and clear, bass is deep and full and highs are crisp not harsh . They are custom made for rugged studio use as they fixed the breaking headband issue of the last model and they have a very neutral response so what you hear is what you get

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... headphones

[SparkySpark]

Hi again,

Inspired by the discussion in this thread, I have taken a few screenshots from MorphIt (https://www.toneboosters.com/tb_morphit_v1.html). Full disclosure: I use the demo version of MorphIt, as I am not convinced it actually makes my headphones sound flat. I'd happily buy it if it really leveled out the differences between headphones. (My AKG 240 Studio still lacks bass and my MDR 7506 still sounds harsh, so something must be wrong - with me or with MorphIt, or perhaps we're just not comapatible. )

What you see in the graphs is the _correction_ of each pair of headphones, so it's the inverse of the hype of the particular headphones (i.e., headphones with too much bass would have a bass of below zero in the graph).

I'll upload the graphs for some of the most talked-about headphones in the thread separately, and then a graph with a few headphones overlayed. If anyone would like to see some other brand, then let me know.

[SparkySpark]

Sony MDR 7506 (remember the graph shows the CORRECTION, that is, the INVERSE of the hype)

[SparkySpark]

Beyerdynamic DT880

[SparkySpark]

AKG K702

[SparkySpark]

Focal Listen

[SparkySpark]

All of them (colors: see other screen shots)

[enroe]

Hi again,

Inspired by the discussion in this thread, I have taken a few screenshots from MorphIt (https://www.toneboosters.com/tb_morphit_v1.html). Full disclosure: I use the demo version of MorphIt, as I am not convinced it actually makes my headphones sound flat ...

Yeah, nice diagrams!

But the frequency response doesn't say much. Also because you can correct
any frequency-line with any good eq.

Much more important are the distortion diagrams, intermodulation diagrums
and impulse-response diagrams. These diagram correlate with the sound
of a headphone.

[enroe]

Man, thread is ALL OVER the map
I'm in the camp that I think open cans makes very little sense to what the OP described.

Might be so.

In my experience the best sounding headphones
regarding analytics and transparency - for less than
1000 € or $ - are the Sennheiser HD-600, HD-650 or HD660.

Of course if you want to go over the market place
you need something else.

[andymcbain]

Hi again,

Inspired by the discussion in this thread, I have taken a few screenshots from MorphIt (https://www.toneboosters.com/tb_morphit_v1.html). Full disclosure: I use the demo version of MorphIt, as I am not convinced it actually makes my headphones sound flat. I'd happily buy it if it really leveled out the differences between headphones.

I tried Morphit after trying Sonarworks and the curves for my Sennheiser HD650 were very different. I know the Sonarwork's guys are doing their own measurements which gave me a little more faith in Sonarworks - plus I preferred the sound. Does anyone know where the data for Morphit's curves comes from?

[andymcbain]

Yeah, nice diagrams!

But the frequency response doesn't say much. Also because you can correct
any frequency-line with any good eq.

Much more important are the distortion diagrams, intermodulation diagrums
and impulse-response diagrams. These diagram correlate with the sound
of a headphone.

There's certainly more to it than frequency response, that's true. I had the Focal Listen (not the pro) for a while - the sound was very revealing and the instruments had separation and space in a way that I hadn't heard before and couldn't put my finger on. Though of course I ended up getting rid of them because I didn't like the frequency response...

[JCJR]

Thanks SparkySpark for the charts. If you have time, could you post a chart for DT990?

Re headphones (or speakers) which seem to have the psychoacoustic property of being "unusually detailed and revealing": I have speculation/wild guessing about that--

Headphones or earbuds interact acoustically with the ear anatomy such that it is difficult to measure mechanically, the same frequency response perceived by the ear. Actually the same problem with speakers interacting with a room, though a well-treated room or even anechoic chamber can seem to get the measured speaker frequency response to somewhat agree with the ear.

OK if we have a speaker that measures fairly flat, low distortion, reasonable impulse response in a well-treated "fairly dead" room. No psychoacoustic tricks trying to make the room sound "better than neutral" with diffusors, live-end-dead-end designs or whatever.

If such a "typical flat well-behaved speaker" has a certain amount of "clarity of detail"-- Now if there are some speakers that have "lots more clarity and detail" than you can get from a flat, reasonably-dead impulse response speaker, then I suspect that such a speaker gets its "extra clarity and detail" by being non-flat in some way, having some ringing in the impulse response which tends to exaggerate the detail in the mids and highs between different instruments.

If such a "wild guess" has any merit, then it doesn't condemn the ear-candy appeal of "unusually detailed" speakers or phones, if that is what a person is after. But if a person is after flat and neutral, then "truly flat" speakers or phones will not necessarily make it easier to pick out the difference between three different interlocked finger-picking guitar parts or whatever. If ya got three finger-picked acoustic geetars and the speaker or phones makes it trivially easy to hear the nuances of each part, then maybe that is a useful property of a speaker or phones, but it isn't necessarily evidence that "unusually detailed" speakers or phones are "more accurate" or "more flat". It could be a symptom of "less accurate" and "less flat" but executed in a way that sounds good to the ear (at least on some kinds of music).

A silly listening test on this point-- Find a speaker or phones that has "remarkable clarity and detail" on acoustic folk ensemble, letting you hear every nuance of every plucked string. Turn it up "fairly loud" but still comfortable non-painful listening level. Now put on a big band swing recording with a loud trumpet section. See if this "remarkable clarity and detail" turns into pain and torture with a wall of brass blasting thru the same freq response and impulse response.

If you get a "flat speaker" or phones that is no more annoying/painful listening to a brass big band, than listening to the same thing live at the same spl level, then when you put on the acoustic folk record, whatever level of detail you hear is likely the "natural, un-hyped amount of detail" that is actually in the recording.

Another thing is "room curve". I'm not interested in running EQ on phones, so phones that have a listenable "room curve" without EQ would be nice. For speakers, in the amateur-treated studio room, I first EQ the speakers flat in the room. But flat measured at a 1 meter nearfield listening position in the treated room is the same as some phones-- Too bright. So after speakers are EQ'd flat in the room, the next step is finding a room curve atop the flat response which makes the widest possible range of music "not unpleasant" to listen to. It is IMO necessary to have not necessarily EarCandy, but at least "not unpleasant" neutral sound in which to learn to mix. If the sound you want to get just naturally sounds unpleasant on ruler-flat speakers, then it would be torture mixing to match just exactly the right amount of unpleasantness to get the right result.

This varies among listeners, speakers, and rooms (or listeners and phones for folks who want to EQ phones). In my room and speakers and ears, its been a few years but I think the low-to-high-freq rolloff listening curve experimentally turned out to be about -1 dB per octave.

A tradeoff arrived-at after a few months of listening and EQ tweaking. Just a matter of getting the speakers "as bright as possible" for well-mixed dark music, without making the speakers so bright that well-mixed bright music is not unpleasantly harsh. Doesn't sound too dull on the acoustic folk stuff, or rhodes piano or mellow singer. And doesn't fry the ears too bad from a trumpet-heavy big band tune or aggressive synth filter sweep or a screaming vocalist.

[DrGonzo]

I know my AKG 271s aren't the most expensive and high-end there is, but damn I love them
I used them for so long now that I already can guess how things will sound in the monitors.

/C