Chaos Project

I have some decent earphones that I bought for about $15 and an ok set of speakers that I use to check if my music is mastered well, but I'm getting the feeling that they are starting to limit me in music production. So I am getting some quality headphones for $100+. Any recommendations before I start researching myself?

EDIT: Around-the-ear headphones only.

Take it from an audio engineer: the big companies we trust are, among others, Beyerdynamic, Ultrasone and AKG. If you want clear sound and isolation isn't an issue, go for open headphones. Closed ones will have stronger bass and isolate better, but sounds less clear. Avoid Beats and Skullcandy at any price. They're overpriced and don't deliver quality that would suit the price, at all. If closed is okay with you, go for the Ultrasone Pro series. The only open headphones they have are the Edition 10s, but those are around 3000-4000€, so pretty much out of your league. :L For open ones, go for Beyerdynamic or AKG. Mind that professional level headphones will have a big audio jack as opposed to the small one you're used to, so you might need an adapter for your equipment. Those break easily and can actually damage your plugs, so make sure to get good ones that won't.

That all said, producing on headphones isn't really to way to go. A good set of studio monitors (you can get a set of Yamaha HS50m or KRK RP5's for around 200€ on ebay) will help you far more when it comes to producing, mixing and mastering, because headphones don't create a proper stereo image (why would take a while to explain), barely ever have a true flat frequency response, and simply are physically not able to recreate the lowend properly. But it's your choice. :P

From what I gathered, Sennheiser and Grado seem to be well known as well.

More on the HiFi market though. Though for Sennheiser, there's some exceptions. But I can guarantee for the brands I listed. Me, and every professional I met yet. :P
Concider the studio monitors though.

For now I just want some decent headphones. I'll get to better equipment later. Maybe after I released Perfect Chaos. I'll be sure to check out those brands then as well. I already found a model from Sennheiser that seems good for a fair price. In fact, it has some sort of "best buy" mark on top. xD Looks like I unintentionally found exactly what I was looking for. xD

What's the model name?

HD 280 Pro. (http://www.sennheiserusa.com/professional-dj-headphones-HD-280-PRO_004974) When you click on "Technical Data", it has a "Best Buy" logo there.

That's not a good one for making music. It's fine for listening to music, but the frequency response isn't flat at all:


Now as I said, headphones never get truely flat, but that's a typical HiFi curve, with the sharp roll-off above 10kHz, the boosted bass and the unsteady mids.

Harmonic distortion and squarewave response look fine to me, but that frequency response is a no-go. You won't be making good mixes with that.

Then what do you recommend? As far as I can see, most of them have a crappy response. Are there even any decent headphones that don't cost $300?

For that price you could get a used pair of Yamaha HS50m or KRK RP5, that would actually help your mixes. But your decision. :P

In that price area, all you'll get is "not as bad". None of them will be really flat at all. If it has to be around 100 dollars though, the KRK KNS 6400 looks pretty acceptable. It's superior to the Sennheiser in every aspect, and especially the squarewave response looks exceptionally nice for the price.



Did not include any Ultrasone, Beyerdynamic or KRK because they're out of your price range. :P 300$ is cheap for professional headphones, sadly.

Quote from: Subsonic_Noise on June 19, 2012, 08:54:17 am
300$ is cheap for professional headphones, sadly.

I'm aware of that. ._.

I'll check out the KRK KNS 6400. I just hope I can find them here in Croatia somewhere. >.<

Dammit! >:( The only company I can find in Croatia is AKG (and Sennheiser, but you said they are not offering what I am looking for). Well, better one than none. >.<

I have some of the K 3XX, K 4XX, K 5XX, Q 3XX and Q 4XX models available. Here's the list: http://www.nabava.net/slusalice__830?&se=235018
Which ones would you recommend? BTW, $100 is about 600 kn.

EDIT: K 518 DJ looks good, but I can't find any frequency response graph around the Internet. >.<

 Well, the DJ in the name already implies that you'll have far too much bass and highs and nearly no mids.
I don't know. Except for the KRKs, there's barely any headphones with a flat frequency response  in tha price area. If you really want to enhance your music production, you should wait until you can affort better ones. None of these will really enhance anything.