Is This Thing On?

I recently decided that I needed to invest in a new pair of headphones. I really liked my pair of Shure SRH-840s, but had begun to find that I couldn’t really rely on them for mixing or critical listening work. The sub-bass extension was weak and unreliable and the highs sort of tapered off which, combined with the liquid smooth midrange, resulted in a pair of headphones that were very pleasing to listen to, but would smooth over imperfections in audio rather than highlight them, which is the opposite of what I need. I also began to think their sound-stage might be a little suspect as they seemed to have some weird cross-feed with hard panned material. If I hard panned a source to the left, I could still hear a little of it still coming out of the right. As I started panning back to center, the right side would fade for the first few clicks and then start increasing as expected. So, if I panned something to 97 in Pro Tools, it would actually sound like it was panned further than if I had panned it 100. So, while I had a great pair of headphones for listening (and tracking) I didn’t feel comfortable trying to mix on them. Since my monitoring situation at home is less than ideal (good speakers but a crappy room) and I’ve found myself doing more and more mixing while at work, where headphones are a necessity, I felt that an upgrade was warranted.

To help me make my decision, I turned to my good friend, the internet. After hours of research on HeadRoom, Head-Fi, and Gearslutz, I discovered that trying to make a decision about which pair of headphones to buy based on what’s being written about them on these sites is a surefire way to drive yourself batshit insane. First, you know the old maxim about how talking about music is like dancing about architecture? This applies to talking anything relating to sound as well. Second, the sites themselves were all flawed as sources of information. Here’s the breakdown:

HeadRoom is a professional review site and dealer that also allows user reviews. They do pretty thorough reviews with graphs of stuff like frequency response and square wave reproduction which you can compare for up to four pairs of headphones at a time. However, since they are a dealer, most of the reviews seemed to heavily emphasize the good qualities of any given set of cans while minimizing the bad (if they were mentioned at all), the result being that no matter which pair you were reading about, you would get the sense that you’d be happy were you to purchase them. Also, every single review would inform you that, while these headphones are fantastic, they’d sound even better if you power them with a dedicated headphone amp/DAC that you can convenient purchase right from HeadRoom! Bitch, please.

Head-Fi ended up being essentially useless to me. While they do generate some editorial content, it’s mostly based on user reviews and forum interaction and while this doesn’t condemn it in and of itself, the Head-Fi user base is primarily pleasure listeners and “audiophiles” who are looking for headphones to just listen to music with rather than for audio engineering uses. As such, most of what they had to say didn’t help me very much, not least because it seemed like most of the people on there didn’t know a damn thing about audio. There were a few useful posts though, such as those I found that compared the Denon AH-D2000s to the 5000s and rather thorough analyses of the differences between the Beyerdynamic DT770s, 880s, and 990s, their Pro versions, and the different impedance versions of each. 

Gearslutz, a forum for those interested in audio engineering which features a good number of professionals in its user base, was better but also full of landmines. While the general user mindset was closer to what I needed, you could be getting advice from either a seasoned studio owner or some guy who just bought an MBox and has decided that he’s the second coming of Bob Clearmountain. On top of that, the slutz seemed particularly eager to start bickering as soon as anyone questioned anyone else’s clearly unassailable viewpoint and the bevy of suggestions left me almost more confused about what to get than before I had started reading.

After coming to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to reach through the internet and strangle the people writing this crap, I decided the best way to make a decision would be to actually get some headphones on my ears and come to my own conclusions. Based on what I could glean from my research, I ended up testing six pairs of headphones: the Shure SRH-940, Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro and DT990 Pro, AKG K702, and the Denon AH-D2000 and AH-D5000. I first got the K702s and AH-D2000s, then the SRH-940s and DT880s about a week later (and returned both after a few days), and finally the DT990s and AH-D500s about a week after that. I tested for overall timbre, soundstage, detail, and comfort.

Before I share my thoughts on each pair, I want to give a quick note about burn-in time. One things that you will definitely hear people talking about with headphones is that before a pair of headphones reaches its full aural potential, they need to be “burned in” for some given amount of time (generally somewhere between 50-200 hours) by having either normal program material, noise, or frequency sweeps played through them at reasonably high volumes. The idea is that certain components will move around due to the vibrations and eventually settle into place, yielding the final sound. There is some disagreement as to whether this is actually a real thing. In the video below, Dave Rat, a giant in the world live sound who has worked with The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, The Mars Volta, Soundgarden, Blink 182, and many more, discusses his hesitance to believe in the burn-in phenomena and gives some pretty compelling proof as to why. Dave also went on a quest to find a great pair of headphones, one of which the scope and thoroughness dwarf my own, though his was intended for live sound which has slightly different requirements than the studio work I intend to use mine for (i.e. no open backed cans). You can read about it on his awesome Rat Sound Blog. This video came from that search.

I certainly have a hard time disagreeing with someone like Dave who has probably forgotten more about audio than I will ever know, but I do feel like I have to mention my own experience. I saw this video after I had already had some of the headphones for a while and had been burning them in. The only two that I gave any reasonable amount of burn in time (probably around 100 hours) were the Denon AH-D2000 (which Dave pulls out in the video) and the AKG K702. The Denons I can easily say I didn’t notice any real difference, but I feel that I definitely heard a difference with the K702s, which are renowned for having a truly epic burn-in time of 300 hours. When I first put them on, they sounded very muddy and murky, lacking clarity and having a huge bent towards low-mids. Listening to them now, however, they sound significantly clearer and more balanced, to the point that I could actually see myself using them, which was not the case when I first got them. So, I think that maybe burn-in might be something that only affects certain sets of headphones. I would love to see someone do an actual study of this (or point me to one if one exists).

Anyway, without further ado, here are my thoughts on the headphones I tried in order from least to most acceptable for my purpose.

6. Shure SRH-940 - $275

I had high hopes for these, since I had been happy with their predecessor. Unfortunately, I was ready to return these almost as soon as I put them on my head. First the good: they were just as comfortable as my 840s had been before them. That’s about it. I found they suffered from the same hard panning cross-feed issue as the 840s and rather overcompensated for the 840s soft highs by cranking them to earsplitting levels. Cymbals became almost painful and aggressive electric guitars dominated pretty much everything. The low end was an improvement on the 840s, but not by much and they still didn’t seem to extend low enough for me to be able to accurately EQ a kick drum. Their soundstage wasn’t awful, but was on the narrower side of the ones I tested, besting only the D2000s. However, unlike the D2000s, they had a very close and immediate sound that I actually found to be almost claustrophobic. There seemed to be no sense of space, everything was just thrown right in your face (ears?) and mushed together, which I felt smeared detail quite a bit. Overall, these were my least favorite pair. Maybe some of these issues would smooth out with burn-in, but the initial impression was far enough away from what I wanted that I didn’t feel too bad about not putting in the effort to find out.

5/4 (Tie). Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro (250 ohm) and AKG K702 - $320 and $280

I’m giving these two a tie because I found them to be fairly similar. These two pairs were very highly lauded by pretty much everything I read on them. They are both open backed headphones, which are generally considered to be better for critical listening purposes. However, the open backs mean death to isolation making them useless for tracking (The K702s are supposed “semi-open” which should theoretically decrease the amount of bleed, but they easily had the most bleed of any of the headphones I tested). I didn’t really want to have to buy a second set of headphones for tracking, but I decided that if the sound quality was really that good, I could swallow that.

The first thing I noticed is that the open backs gave both of these headphones a massive soundstage. When stuff was panned wide, it was wide. The guitars on Jimmy Eat World’s “Cut” and blips on The Postal Service “Such Great Heights” had me wanting to turn my head because they almost sounded behind me. Both do a fantastic job of revealing things like reverb and delays and have great detail, making it really easy to pick apart individual elements of a mix. However, they both have a rather warm sound with a noticable low mid presence that I couldn’t help but find slightly disconcerting for the way I hear and neither delivered the low end extension I was looking for. Both also had what most people describe as an “airy” sound, probably because they do such a good job at detailing reverb and ambience. The problem I had with this was that it had a habit of making things feel a bit more distant and occasionally murky sounding (which is weird because they were still detailed). I found that this was awesome for more acoustic based music like classical or jazz, but didn’t serve well for the rock and electronic stuff I tend to find myself dealing with most of the time. Coheed and Cambria’s “Welcome Home” and Chevelle’s “Vitamin R” just didn’t sound right on these headphones, kinda softened and lacking punch, and I took that as my cue that these probably weren’t the right cans for me.

I also found the K702s a little weird to wear because the head strap would press into the top of my head in a way I didn’t particularly like. The DT880s were pretty comfortable though, so I guess that puts them slightly ahead?

3. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro (250 ohm)  - $170

These pretty much sounded like the DT880s but with the frequency response flipped. The bass and highs are cranked and mids are not nearly as present. When a kick hits, you feel it. It’s very fun, but not particularly balanced. The bass extends a bit too high for my taste and the highs are kinda sharp. Detail and soundstage are there however, and they leaked less sound than the other open backs, to the point that I could consider tracking with them. The bass extension goes as low as I wanted and I felt that I would be more comfortable mixing on these than the previous headphones, though it should be noted that they put your head in a goddamn vice. The premium version is supposed to be less tight though and have the same specs otherwise, so I would probably go for that if I were to choose these.

2. Denon AH-D2000 - $350

The Denons, interestingly enough, aren’t really considered “pro” headphones, but rather high end consumer. Still, I read enough good things about them (to say the HeadRoom review gushed is an understatement) that I wanted to give them a try. I was very pleasantly surprised. These were basically the polar opposites the of K702/DT880s, closed back and with a noticeably scooped sound, but more balanced than the 990s. They sounded much more correct to my ears on the rock and electronic sources that the AKGs and Beyers failed on, but the high end was noticeably hyped at the expense of some mids. This, combined with the narrowest soundstage of any of the cans I tried, ended up costing them some detail. Reverb sounded much more hidden on the D2000s and I once again found myself thinking that these might be better for listening than mixing. However, their sound was still much more natural to my ears than the headphones I’ve mentioned previously, they get low enough for me to reliably EQ a kick drum, and they are fiendishly comfortable so they get rated higher than the others.

And the winner is…

1. Denon AH-D5000 - $400 (used)

Holy shit. These basically combined everything I liked about all of the other pairs and put them into one. They delivered the low end I needed without it becoming overpowering, clear transparent highs that didn’t become painful, and a smooth, warm midrange that doesn’t hide anything. The soundstage is not quite as wide as the open backed cans, but is damn close and the detail is just as good. They do everything the 2000s did, but are more balanced and left the 2000s sounding kinda wimpy when I switched between them. Everything that I listened to on them sounded right on them, without any unexpected muddiness or sharpness. Re-listening to old favorites on them had me open mouthed at things I had never noticed before in the mix. They’re closed back so I can use them for tracking and I can wear them for hours forgetting that they’re there. For me, they’re worth every penny I spent on them.

So, that’s the end of my Bogus Headphone Journey. I’ve been using the D5000s to mix for a few days and have been thrilled with the results. I feel super confident and happy and ready to do some great work with them. If anyone has an questions, comments, protests, etc, feel free to comment or drop me a line.