Mixing headphones

You should be fine whichever one of these you go with. Sonarworks has average profiles for all of them and you can get them all to sound very similar - nearly flat. There are differences, though, open/closed pads etc.

Do be careful about impedance, and make your choices depending on how loud you want to listen to. Also, I don't think Focusrite provided actual specs for anything beyond 2i2 (which is USB-powered), so you might be in the dark. Expect DT-880 to be much quieter than M50x at same volume settings. Here's a great post about impedance which might help you further.

Since these are all great cans and like I said with Sonarworks calibration they can come out pretty close to each other, you should definitely also take a look at comfort and durability. I can only speak for M50x as they're the only ones that I've used extensively. I've had them for 3 years. To me, very comfortable out of the box. My friend said they clamped his head too hard, but I didn't feel like that at any point. I've used them less frequently over the past year, and it was around last summer that they've started to show signs of wear on the cups (everything else is fine).

 

Depending on what exactly are you looking for.

Open ended cans isolate noise very poorly and leak like crazy. They usually sound better because they leak like crazy (sound doesn't become "trapped" inside the pad). I've used Allen & Heath XD-53, and these became uncomfortable quick because they actually sit on your ear, and these were clamping pretty hard. I'm sure the more expensive and studio-oriented cans are more comfy. I've only heard good things about DT880 and HD650.

Close ended have great isolation, some are comfortable to the point that you don't even physically sense that you're wearing them. After a few hours your ears can get pretty warm, though.

So pick your poison. I am seeing the HD600 on Thomann for €320 but they don't seem to be on sale over there, so I guess you might still have time to make your decision. That price does look good and I'm very tempted right now.

 

Generally, yeah, AC is better.

The XD-53s I had some time ago were very leaky - you could hear almost everything around you, and you could hear them pretty clearly when someone else had them on. But in the end, that's what I bought them for back in the day.

Oh man. Too bad I can't get them at that price, I'd have to pay customs duty and tax - combined with shipping it would turn out much more than the Thomann deal.

 

Oh ..... let me ask a tech question:

My main need for good sound is music transcription. I use for headphones

for a amp:

I mainly use it via USB. Do I need to plug in the adaptor too ? Does it make a difference. Anything else I need ?

I gotta roll like a big boy you know.

 

Cool. I already have the HD 598. I own the Oppo too. The guy at the high end headphone store sold me.
All I had to do was put them on. I just said " This is Ear porn" .

God knows I need all the help I can get !!!

 

These cans are fairly sensitive. Their specs and tests rate them at ~99.0 dB SPL/mW. Do you think they're too quiet?

I mentioned that I used A&H XD-53 some time ago. They were used for monitoring in very noisy environments. To do that, they needed to be louder than other sounds hitting my ears, and I needed them to be open ended so that I can talk with everyone else without having to take them off every few seconds);they needed to be super loud. I still remember to this day how my entire jaw vibrated on every kickdrum because of these cans. Of course, I used earplugs. There are people who do this kind of stuff without earplugs. I don't even wanna imagine.

For a comparison of loudness to your cans (this'll maybe help Rohann too), a quick calculation using 1.00 V RMS will put us at (HD 598 is 300 ohms, XD-53 36 is ohms with ~102 SPL/mW sensitivity) at:

HD 598:

1.00 Volts/300 ohms = 0.00333 A * 1.00 V = 3.33 mW applied to headphones.
3.33 mW is 5.23 dB louder than 1 mW so that puts us at 99db + 5.23db = 104.23db.

XD-53:

1.00 Volts/36 ohms = 0.02778 A * 1.00 V = 27.78 mW applied to headphones.
27.78 mW is 14.44 dB louder than 1 mW do that puts us at 102db + 14.44db = 116.44db.

As long as the signal isn't clipping, XD-53 are ~12.5 db louder than HD598 at the same volume setting. That's more than twice the perceived loudness at the same volume setting.

My M50x have 38 ohms. I hardly ever turn the volume knob past the halfpoint. Unless you have hearing loss or you're transcribing under a jet engine, I think you're good.

 

I think you're gonna have a great time.

I'm sure they will do more than fine.

When the drivers burn in after ~100hrs of use and you get used to them, it'll be beautiful (you can cheat a bit on the burn in by having all different types of music play loudly on them and put them in a drawer or another room during the night).

 

It allows for small custom adjustments to the general correction curve.



What makes you think it over-corrects? They guarantee the average profile +/- 3db, which is essentially a 6db range. Depends on the cans I guess. Some may be a off by quite a margin in some areas. Others might just happen to hit the curve perfectly. Even if you send in your cans, you'll only get 50% more accuracy guarantee.

But for me the average profile feels good - as I've probably said, switching from monitors to the cans feels very natural in terms of tone.

 

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, Equalizer APO for OS level sound on Windows. In a DAW, just add your preferred EQ after the Reference plugin.

But you're overthinking the whole deal too much. You're not gonna get centibel-perfect frequency response with Sonarworks or any other way, either from headphones or speakers.

And that's not the point of the tech. The point is to make it sound or rather feel natural. So that you don't have ridiculous spikes and nulls which would make some keys and notes sound better than others (that very much goes for bass response in speakers due to an untreated room). You don't want to waste time thinking if you're right, thinking about your cans' response and if the notes you're playing will translate well because of the spikes and nulls in your freq response.

You don't want to think, you only want to do. And a near-flat frequency response will let you do. It doesn't have to be perfect. It can be 1, 2, 3 db off. That's much, much better than 10 db off and you'll have a much better time getting it right.