While I'm still in the middle of College Paper Hell, I wanted to mention this, because I'd assume that most of us like LISTENING to music as much as playing it.
A couple years back, I got my first computer motherboard that had 7.1 surround sound. Great, but I only had my two (somewhat high-end and long discontinued) harman/kardon speakers. I was about 6 speakers short -- and I like headphones, anyway: the wife doesn't keep asking me to decrease the volume.
Well, after briefly having wireless headphones (too much static to keep), I got the $70 Turtle Beach X52 5.1 headphones. Yes, I was still short two speakers, but there aren't that many 7.1 headphones out there. And it was good, for over a year. And then I broke off one side -- and repaired it with an awful lot of epoxy.
I did some research on NEW headphones and found that 90% of audiophiles passionately hate 5.1 and 7.1 headphones. Stereo headphones are just fine, they say, and if you've got a Realtek 885-based (or higher) soundcard, you can do VIRTUAL surround sound, which sounds pretty decent.
However, there are, literally 1.2 zillion headphones out there. The best names I heard of were Sennheiser, Grado and Audio-Technica. The Sennheisers, in my price range (around $70), didn't go completely AROUND ear. The Grado's were a tad expensive and the Audio-Technica's were ungodly expensive. Then I came across this forum. Hey: get the JVC HA-RX700. They're clones of the $113 Audio-Technica.
So I did. For $33.
* They're built much more ruggedly than my Turtle Beach cans. Metal connectors for the ear pieces to the frame, although the frame is mainly plastic.
* Gold-plated connectors.
Sound? Absolutely fantastic. I can configure my sound card to play each headphone, side-by-side, and the JVC is miles better than the TB. I played a couple of my favorite MP3s from Cowboy Bebop, "Pearls" and "Gotta Knock a Little Harder" and was extremely impressed with the clarity: I could even hear the rather faint cello accompaniment in "Pearls" without issue. Seriously, in comparison, the TB sounds like it has a layer of foam over the speakers.
Now, I'd LIKE noise-canceling, because I can still somewhat hear my computer's fan with the headphones on and nothing playing ("noise canceling" cancels out repetitive sounds, only, so that's perfect for my purposes), but it looks to me that "audiophile quality headphones" do not exist with noise canceling. Maybe the $219 Audio-Technica ones, but there isn't a JVC equivalent. And I can think of other things to spend $219 on.
The next test will be to try them with some DVDs. I might pop in The Matrix ....
A couple years back, I got my first computer motherboard that had 7.1 surround sound. Great, but I only had my two (somewhat high-end and long discontinued) harman/kardon speakers. I was about 6 speakers short -- and I like headphones, anyway: the wife doesn't keep asking me to decrease the volume.
Well, after briefly having wireless headphones (too much static to keep), I got the $70 Turtle Beach X52 5.1 headphones. Yes, I was still short two speakers, but there aren't that many 7.1 headphones out there. And it was good, for over a year. And then I broke off one side -- and repaired it with an awful lot of epoxy.
I did some research on NEW headphones and found that 90% of audiophiles passionately hate 5.1 and 7.1 headphones. Stereo headphones are just fine, they say, and if you've got a Realtek 885-based (or higher) soundcard, you can do VIRTUAL surround sound, which sounds pretty decent.
However, there are, literally 1.2 zillion headphones out there. The best names I heard of were Sennheiser, Grado and Audio-Technica. The Sennheisers, in my price range (around $70), didn't go completely AROUND ear. The Grado's were a tad expensive and the Audio-Technica's were ungodly expensive. Then I came across this forum. Hey: get the JVC HA-RX700. They're clones of the $113 Audio-Technica.
So I did. For $33.
* They're built much more ruggedly than my Turtle Beach cans. Metal connectors for the ear pieces to the frame, although the frame is mainly plastic.
* Gold-plated connectors.
Sound? Absolutely fantastic. I can configure my sound card to play each headphone, side-by-side, and the JVC is miles better than the TB. I played a couple of my favorite MP3s from Cowboy Bebop, "Pearls" and "Gotta Knock a Little Harder" and was extremely impressed with the clarity: I could even hear the rather faint cello accompaniment in "Pearls" without issue. Seriously, in comparison, the TB sounds like it has a layer of foam over the speakers.
Now, I'd LIKE noise-canceling, because I can still somewhat hear my computer's fan with the headphones on and nothing playing ("noise canceling" cancels out repetitive sounds, only, so that's perfect for my purposes), but it looks to me that "audiophile quality headphones" do not exist with noise canceling. Maybe the $219 Audio-Technica ones, but there isn't a JVC equivalent. And I can think of other things to spend $219 on.
The next test will be to try them with some DVDs. I might pop in The Matrix ....