A thought or two on headphones

 

Well,
it has been a long journey. Looking for the right headphones has spanned a
couple years’ worth of trips to Best Buy and a couple days of internet
searching. After several purchase and return moves at Best Buy I first went
with some Sony MDR-EX300's. (About $80) The bass was deeper and the sound was
great compared to the stock buds that come with the Zune 80 GB I was
using.  When the ZuneHD came out I
upgraded my Zune. For a short time believed that this was as good as it could
get.

Nagging
at me was the idea that I could get better headphones. I wanted my music
experience to be even more rich with tonal range and louder than I could get
stock so I even tried to purchase a portable amplification unit for use with
MP3 Players. I did some research. The amp didn’t help. GIGO was definitely in
full effect. The Amp took poorly compressed audio files and made them loud. It
was returned.

I
started to look around at different industry websites related to Pro-Audio
equipment and sound reproduction and compression. How could I differentiate
between the different products if I didn’t really even understand what was on
the box right?

Well
after some additional “taste tests” I settled on the Monster Turbines. “Man, it
cannot get any better than these things.”  Small amount of sound leakage from the driver
units. Nice cord holding them all together. Great power response; they are
plenty loud on my MP3 Player. The Sony ear buds were great and still are in use
when traveling.

Hey
what’s better than those Monster Turbines? How about my recently acquired Dre
Beats Studio’s. Ok, these things leak sound like you wouldn’t believe. People
next to me tap me on the shoulder and when I lift the headphones off my head
they say, “I love that song.” But with that in mind, I don’t care. They are
awesome. The bulk of the Studio’s makes use while traveling burdensome. I would
hate to break them, so they typically get used at home.  When I travel I use the Turbines.  Whether it is with my COWON x7 or V5HD, The
Turbines and the Studios are amazing.