Need headphone recommendations

[kitty]

I just bought a digital piano, a Yamaha DGX-620, and since I have roommates and thin walls I figured it'd be best to get a new pair of headphones so I can practice without bothering them. I also play electric guitar so the headphones will double for that as well as for casual music listening. I'm not an audiophile or anything so I have no idea where to start. I want to something that's really up there in quality. I already have a decent headset I use for gaming (Sennheiser PC151) that I've been using for the past 8 years; so something better than this would be ideal.

 

I did have someone recommend me AKG K 240 headphones, but I don't know how these compare to anything else. I'm looking at spending around $75 before tax and nothing over $100 before tax.

 

EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention is I wear glasses, so a pair of headphones that doesn't crush my ears against my earpieces would be great.

[timaeus222]

I often recommend the Grado SR-60i (32 ohm) for about $80 MSRP to people who want to spend less than $100 for good headphones. Yeah, they're discontinued, but some people are still selling them. They were actually my very previous pair, and while my most recent pair (Beyerdynamic DT-880, 250 ohm) is great for bass mixing, it was hard to hear the difference between the two when I first switched, and I think they're pretty comparable. (it was more evident after 6 months that the difference was about half an hour of bass mixing on the Beyers compared to about 8 hours, I think it was, on the Grados)

 

I actually used this ReMix (listen to the bass synth and the background percussion) when comparing headphones before switching to the Grados, and this song (listen to the kick drum and snare at 1:01) before switching to the Beyers, if that helps. What I heard from the Grados was clear bass (but not well-defined) and crisp treble, while what I heard from the Beyers was more well-defined ("rounded") bass and cleaner treble (easier to distinguish between, say, 14000 Hz and 16000 Hz).

 

Here is a comparison of the Grado SR-60i and Beyerdynamic DT-880:

http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=0&graphID[]=393&graphID[]=963&scale=30

which I think shows they're pretty comparable at 36~15000 Hz and the major differences are outside that frequency range.

 

Even though it seems like you want to use them for things other than mixing, if you wanted to use them for mixing, that'll work too.

 

Ideally, for mixing, I think you should be looking for the headphones with the flattest frequency response. I would also recommend the lowest impedance if there are multiple impedance "versions" of the headphones you want (I've seen 32, 250, and 600 ohms); basically, the higher the impedance (600 ohms is higher than 250 ohms), the more the treble frequencies are attenuated (like a low pass), and the more powerful a headphone amp (in watts) you may need to hear through a pair of headphones at a suitable volume with an accurate frequency response.

 

If you want me to show why that is, feel free to look here for a simple mathematical runthrough (you might have to just download it if you want to see the square root symbol):

https://app.box.com/s/4rczycc5poqybjwpqtao4yr1sml2nvn0

or it's here too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_impedance#Resistance_vs_reactance

 

Sorry, the headphones website I showed you doesn't have the same AKG K240 version, so there's no frequency response graph on that website for it.

[Jakos]

I used to have the same question, but thanks to Timaeus I got the Grados and it was a total change .  I got glasses too and they don't smash my head or ears so don't worry about that (It also depends on your bone structure of the face). I'm not saying that you should buy the Grados, I just tell how well they worked for me.

[timaeus222]

The Grados actually are adjustable to your head size, and you can also bend the earpieces in and out to loosen or tighten the fit on your ears. I have glasses too as you could tell from looking at my artist profile, so yeah.