ATH M50x are a bargain, as are HD25.
HD25-IIs have the added bonus of being more or less indestructible and easily fixed if they do break.
ATH M50x are a bargain, as are HD25.
I really really like my B&W P5 wireless, I think they’re around £150 and can also be used with a cable! The cheaper P3 is also ver6 good, I listened to my neighbours pair before choosing the P5. Jay
I’m not sure whether these count as a luxury buy, but Oppo pm3s are imho as good as closed back headphones need to be, and work great with an iPhone. I wouldn’t bother with anything else unless you want to shove something in your ears.
That says headphones are quite personal....
Thanks everybody for the suggestions - what I was really trying to establish was the point at which it gets crazy to spend a lot of money when the source is a simple tablet.I’ve no idea how good your tab’s DAC is, or whether you’d notice the difference streaming mp3s, but i’d think about sticking in a usb dac to drive the headphones - something like a Dragonfly. I’m very happy with my DF black for use on the go - and the red sounds even better.
See my latest reply - how much to spend was my question !Wow, loads of suggestions, surely asking how much budget OP has in mind, OP, are you still there? Posted thread on Wednesday and nothing since.
I’ve not gone down the wireless route with headphones yet but based on my experience with B&O H6 and H3s, I’d be pretty confident in going with a B&O model. I’ve found the sound and build quality of their headphones to be excellent, they’re comfortable and look good too... and B&O customer service is excellent. In all, they offer excellent VFM.Headphones really are like buying clothes, they are the most intimate technology as they are attached to you so how much to spend really is the sky’s the limit. I think it is personally reasonable to spend whatever it takes based on:
Looks
Features
Materials
Ethical concerns (materials and labour)
Future proofing
Headphones can be really technologically complicated purchases, and getting to right means they are some of the most complicated audio purchases because like clothes you are not in the same clothes all the time, the same goes for the tech inside your headphones — not only in terms of wired only vs wireless leading to a hot mess of codec support (AptX vs AAC vs Bluetooth 4.1-to-5.0 upgradeablitity) but also the efficiency of the external noise filtering, gesture controls, proximity sensors and battery life. It’s just not enough to go “Noise filtering, ewww” and disregard at all costs if your use is airplane as well as subway, trains and office because no good the transducer, no matter how hifi and natural those open backed planar magnetics are, it’s going to need noise cancelling and closed back if used in noisy environments — unless you like a vice like grip and gaffa tape over the open back which destroys the purity of the noiseless open back experience.
I think it’s ok to have several headphones which adds further to the notional cost of “how much to spend”. Jogging with earbuds is vastly better than headphones, big over ears for home and travelling listening but on ears for transportability. My only fixed criteria these days is no cables, I just won’t have them after a comical 5 minute detangling session on a flight only to find the adapter would not fit my iPad in its case and then the cable proved to be faulty... so for me I went for B&O h9i headphones. £450 or thereabouts. I didn’t like spending that much but boy are they good and I feel money well spent. Sure I have Hifiman HE400is but those are locked at home as they are useless for travelling with and the Beyerdynamic Tesla t51p on ears are going to get butchered for a bit of DIY Bluetooth capability at some point.
Wireless Earbuds are the very hardest of alll to decide upon and again, budget wise the sky’s the limit.
I’ve not gone down the wireless route with headphones yet but based on my experience with B&O H6 and H3s, I’d be pretty confident in going with a B&O model. I’ve found the sound and build quality of their headphones to be excellent, they’re comfortable and look good too... and B&O customer service is excellent. In all, they offer excellent VFM.
Thanks everybody for the suggestions - what I was really trying to establish was the point at which it gets crazy to spend a lot of money when the source is a simple tablet.
As vinylmonkey suggests above, that then starts to demand an improved source such as a soundkey/dragonfly. I don't figure its worth going for extras like that for casual listening. I've actually tried using an external soundcard (with dac) for the tablet but that doesn't make much difference to the sound quality.
Looks like I might get the Momentums if I can get a listen somewhere.