Top 7 Most Recommended Headphones

Hey guys,

I'll fully admit perhaps the word "best" is the wrong word to use, though best in this case is meant we're trying an objective approach to a subjective topic.

The list is somewhat shallow in terms of how many outlets we pulled data from, and some of them were pretty outdated. It's easy to find a lot of opinions on this topic but hard to find it from sources that I felt are "trustworthy."

And because someone asked, the list is merely in price order. The only notes as far as how often something appears goes is that the DT770 and SD800s are more frequent in their appearance in lists.

I think our goal here is to update the list every 6 months, adding more sources and occasionally removing some of the oldest ones. One of our lists specifically was a bit dated. That will likely change the results as time goes on, but the downside of this method is it will never award the "new best thing" as it will take months or years for new headphones to get the number of recommendations it will take to beat the top performers.

Still, generally speaking none of the items on this list were incredible shockers and there's a TON of headphones that we found appearing 3 times. If I had to be surprised of anything its the Creative Live 2 making the cut, while the MDRv6 shows how "older" headphones end up with a bit of selection bias. Still good cans, but some people will say there are newer, better, options.

reading lists of popular headphones is a pretty crappy way to find a headphone that's good for you.

The best thing you can do is read articles on http://www.head-fi.org/ and watch real reviews.

One of my favorite audio reviewers is Zreviews. He's a no BS, practical, and unbiased reviewer.

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Yeah its suprisingly good for the price imo.
I listen to allot of diffrent styles of music, and bass is pretty important to me.
Especialy for music like Trance, Techno, en that kind of stuff. its pretty good for those genereĀ“s of music..

Was at the HiFi shop. I might have spent some money...
Anyway. The have 7 different pairs of HD 600 and 8 different ones of the HD800 with the frequency response graphs for all of them. Except for the second HD 600, they are within 1% of each other on average.

Looked into the Marantz equip a bit more. WHAT the hell are you talking about? They got top notch components and even screening to a degree higher priced ones by their competition do not. After nearly three hours, I concluded my visit:
-HiFiMan HE6 are VERY nice.
-The B&M Line 50 are nice speakers.
-EAR Yoshino V12 looks as good as it sounds.
-Pioneer A-50DA is a nice amp.
-Im remebered why I donĀ“t like the HD800s while listening to the Shure SRH1840.

The page you sent me for marantz is in a different language, so I am going to assume you are not in the US which might be why you are not getting my point about marantz.

If you walk into any best buy here in the US, you can usually find marantz receivers and some other marantz products. Some sound like crap, some dont.

The reason is because there is a consumer grade marantz that I would guess is made in china and there is a true marantz brand that is made with decent quality.

And this is not just a simple mater of lower cost designs to meet the budget needs of the consumer. These are different products designed by totally different people, and I have been told that they are actually produced in totally different countries.

Here is an example of what I am talking about.

My point is that I do not know enough about marantz to know which one is the consumer grade crap, or real marantz.

Oh and one other thing. Top quality components don't mean much of anything. The topology of the circuit is what matters. Marantz has years of experience when it comes to designing great circuits for their amps. It is damn near impossible to tell which amp has a good topology and which one doesn't.

I did not even know Marantz makes Renkforce (company that produces it all) grade stuff. Always thought they were mid to high level HiFi components producer.