[SOLVED] Headphone preferences

[badaxe2]

Following up on this lead,

Looking for more feedback on what kind of listening gains are typical with mid-hi fi setups, ie beyond the MDR-7506's mentioned

At what point would a DAC/Amp be beneficial, if ever?

As noted, my PC is a main listening station
Z270 Mk1 board with Evga GTX1070 and core i7 7700

I read reviews of high end models and there are complaints to be found there as well, so it seems like a matter of personal preference more than anything. To get rhetorical do $500 headphones sound 5x better than $100 pairs? The law of diminishing returns applies of course, but how much can be expected to gain beyond say, the MDR-7506'sor Grados SR80e's which I currently use? I had a pair of more expensive Sennheiser HD555's before but personally have never heard as much range and detail as with the MDR-7506's. So if I were to get something better, I'd lean towards those tonal characteristics. Although having said that, they do seem lacking with finer details found in classical music, so anything that plays well there would be an improvement as well. I also prefer closed unless there are open models with equally responsive low end.


Thanks in advance for any insight or recommendations.

 

[hang-the-9]

Since everyone likes different sounds, what they can hear, what they like to hear, it's all a guess as to what you would like.

Only real way is to actually try things out yourself. Otherwise any search on headphones will come back with the same 5-6 pairs recommended in each price range, there is nothing new to be added really.

"Better" in audio and anything that is a personal decision is based on the person. I have swapped around a bit with using several DACs and amps, on a few computers it made a clear difference, on some they made a small difference that I would not pay extra for, on some it made a larger difference depending on the headphones used. My Dell tablet PC audio was clearly improved by an external DAC, on any headphone including ear buds, on my desktop PC half the things I tried on them were very close to using an external DAC. Same thing for difference between the DACs used. And the headphones / speakers you use with them makes a difference. Aside from going out and trying several dozen combinations, no way for you to pick anything from suggestions since you will get 40 different combinations from 20 different people of things they like.

Is a $50 burger 5 times as tasty as as $10 burger? How do you quantify personal feelings? Do you like Ferrari 5 times more than Porsche or maybe it's 4 times, or 2.1 times or .2 less? No way to count that.