[swashmebuckle]

I don't recommend spending a lot of money on headphones in general.  They are very useful to have and they do have a couple big advantages over speakers, letting you hear a lot more detail and tending to provide nice low frequency accuracy for the amount of money they cost.  That said, I think they hit the point of diminishing returns really quickly, and no matter how much you pay for them, they just don't move your diaphragm like the sound in modern PC games (or the majority of music from the past 50 years) is supposed to.  In any case, I'd make your own personal physical comfort the most important factor in deciding what to buy.

I got a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M20s in a package deal along with my studio monitors, and I've been very happy with them over the past couple years.

[FlamingCobra]

Brand isn't really always the best indicator of sound quality. Though in general, SkullCandy are awful, and that by the company's design direction and target audience simply being contrary to quality sound - and Beats would be alright headphones, if they sold the Solos for about $35, and the standard model for $80. At their current price though, they are outclassed by heaps of heaphones in their respective price classes.

I loved my pair of Panasonic RP-HTX7's, until they wore out (Edit: after 3 years of heavy abuse), and they run about $50 if you can find them. Not an analytical/flat sounding set by any stretch, very dynamic and playful. Though if you're a fan of a flat-response set of headphones, these won't be for you. Also a great example of why brand isn't the best indicator of quality - most of Panasonic's sets that I've used, except these, were bass-heavy and muddy sounding.

Other than that, I've not spent enough or really any time with Grado or AKG sets to make any comment beyond having heard good things. Sennheisers please some people (and I would imagine their higher end product is better), but not me personally - most of the set's I've used lacked almost any sense of dynamic sound.

What is flat response and what is dynamic headphones?
Dynamic means changing but how...... how does that apply to headphones.

[LHN91]

Flat response refers to (I'm paraphrasing, anyone feel free to correct me)  having a sound output that equates to a flat equalization. Most headphones produce sound that has more gain in some frequency bands than others. Many audiophiles are picky about having speakers and headphones that produce a flat sound by default.

When I refer to a dynamic sound, think of it as "punchy" or having individual sounds and instruments "pop" out of the music. Some headphones produce a sound in which the instruments all kind of blend together and the sound, overall, is laking (imo) "liveliness".

[jr2]

...Isn't that what your EQ is for?  I mean, bass is great, but not if you happen to be listening to a speech by someone with a deep voice (for example).

Usually audio playback devices either have some preset EQ settings, and/or a Bass Boost function.  Of course, a 5+ band EQ would be nice to always have...

[The E]

There's your equalizer settings, and the audio properties of the speakers. Just as it is possible to build "flat" ones, you can also design ones that have particular sound qualities, which may or may not be desirable to you. Depends on your taste, really.

[pecenipicek]

there's also the problem of horrible horrible compression in almost all modern music. (and no, i'm not talking about the format compression ala mp3, flac, ogg or others.)

you might have the best speakers in the world, but that wont mean **** if you have only total and utter **** to play on them, and thats where no equalizer will save you.

[jr2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_compression

Audio compression (data), a type of lossy compression in which the amount of data in a recorded waveform is reduced for transmission with some loss of quality, used in CD and MP3 encoding, Internet radio, and the like

Dynamic range compression, also called audio level compression, in which the dynamic range, the difference between loud and quiet, of an audio waveform is reduced

...Although I'm disappointed that apparently Monkey's audio and FLAc don't count as Audio data compression...

[Ghostavo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_compression

Audio compression (data), a type of lossy compression in which the amount of data in a recorded waveform is reduced for transmission with some loss of quality, used in CD and MP3 encoding, Internet radio, and the like

Dynamic range compression, also called audio level compression, in which the dynamic range, the difference between loud and quiet, of an audio waveform is reduced

...Although I'm disappointed that apparently Monkey's audio and FLAc don't count as Audio data compression...

A number of lossless audio compression formats exist. Shorten was an early lossless format. Newer ones include Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), Apple's Apple Lossless, MPEG-4 ALS, Microsoft's Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless (WMA Lossless), Monkey's Audio, and TTA. See list of lossless codecs for a complete list.

 

[watsisname]

Yeah, FLAC format is compressed in a non-lossy way, just like PNG images compared to JPEG.

[jr2]

In other words, in the brief (disambiguation) article, wikipedia seems to state indirectly that all audio data compression is lossy.

[The E]

In so far as any translation of an analog to a digital medium is always lossy, yes, that is true. For very pedantic and nitpicky values of true.

[jr2]

Point.

[Nuke]

the resolution of most dacs these days is good enough that the human ear doesnt know the difference. if 16 bits arent good enough there is hardware out there that will do 24 bits, for the average wanker. what matters more is the signal to noise ratio, isolation analog components from digital components, accuracy and stability of analog reference voltages, and quality of the filters in your crossovers.