I would love to meet the person who can actually hear the difference between balanced and single ended in a headphone.

can i use apple dongle with lightning to micro usb adapter? would making this affect the performance?

I agree, best closed back I've ever heard and I've heard most of them.

I'll back this up, nothing beats the HD800S for soundstage and imaging, particularly in the context of FPS gaming.

But the dual use for music makes it tough, especially since OP's genre preference is metal. The HD800S sounds far better than the average headphone for any kind of music, but it has pillowy bass, and shines with things like instrument separation and soundstage that pay off more with understated stuff, like classical music or acoustic. I wouldn't be shocked if at the end of the day you still preferred the XS for music. But for gaming, I don't think you'll find anything at any price point that's better than the HD800S.

ZMF Verite Closed. All day.

I think it comes down to whether the drivers perform like a beryllium driver or it’s just another dynamic driver headphones.

Honestly you've probably never heard a seriously premium set of headphones if you need to ask that question. I appreciate a great loudspeaker but I'm also an avid fan of premium headphones. It's not either or for me. I can enjoy the differences in both forms of audio reproduction.

I love crushers. You can find them for like 85 bucks for the new repair, and it does exactly what it says it's going to do.

Although there is an annoying bug or hiccup where you have to do a reset sometimes to get the base slider to work.

Obviously it's not going to be great for detail retrieval or anything! But it's really fun, not very expensive and worth having in a collection. Imo....

Would help to know the phone. And the hardware. You could have a different dac, codecs.... You could have a bad port or something.

Usually people are not able to tell the difference between consumer facing dacs in phones, unless you're using really high-end stuff and using maybe LG's quad Dac.

But we just don't have enough information about your hardware. And use case.

Is it two copies of the same phone?

If so, they should have basically identical sound, but it's possible one of them has replaced parts or the port could be messed up or something.

I don't know. There's infinite variables so we need more information.

I did not get that level of hostility in his post. Are you responding to the right person?

My personal favorite, but I can understand why some people might not enjoy it as much tbh.

Revanced/, YouTube music.

Innertune

Viimusic

Depending on where you live, you can get the entire YouTube music catalog for free with the ability to download as well. Not if you're on an iPhone, of course though.

Def Leppard hysteria is great for details. There are just hundreds of tracks in the vocals and guitars because mutt lange.

Some of the most layered production I've ever heard. I imagine other mutt lange stuff could also be beneficial, but that album in particular is just kind of a magnum opus in production value.

I also enjoy rush, dire straits.

And some avant-gard stuff like Mike Patton or Mr. Bungle where there's a lot of genre changing.

Headphones allow you to listen and won't bothers other (open backs leak sound, but nothing close to how much speaks do). Headphones are portable and can easily be taken to work, home, school, other's houses. Speakers are impacted by your room and where you are sitting in relation to them, you need to be in the perfect conditions to ge their best sound, with headphones you can use them anywhere in your house. If you want to EQ, headphones are easy to EQ and almost all popular models have auto EQ profiles, to EQ Speakers you will need a DSP and proper equipment to measure the speakers.In terms of absolute sound quality, headphones are better than speakers at the same price point, but as you spend more, speakers will outperform headphones.

I definitely use EQ. I can’t imagine finding something fatiguing if you EQ out the frequencies that give you trouble (and I’m sensitive to this as well, though more with Beyer stock tuning than Focal stock tuning).

I’ve seen all the people saying “when not if” on the headband breaking, but I’ll deal with it “when” it happens. I also have the Clear MG and no issue with it at all, nor is it as obvious to me as it seems to be to other people that it’s at imminent risk of breaking. Everything can break if you use it, I’m happy to have something that sounds and looks good and not live in fear about it.

Nice, I have almost the exact same setup I sprung for the DX3+ because it has bluetooth.

If you found 560s magical, you should get hd800s since it can be considered as direct upgrade over 560s without changing the frequency response much.

Could you imagine trying to work in a studio with no headphones??

it's just a matter of taste and use case . This is like asking why some people listen to rock music instead of jazz .

Some people need their headphones for sound isolation bc they're not in a position to play music loud where other people can hear it.

Personally, I don't need to spend $1,000 on a headphone or speaker, I'm more than satisfied at a much lower price point with both. I actually have some headphones and some speakers because they serve different purposes.

here are some resources you may find useful:

https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com (CSD plots for many headphones)

https://www.stereophile.com/content/innerfidelity-headphone-measurements (transient response)

https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/sennheiser-hd-800s.php#gsc.tab=0 (not the easiest site to navigate, but lots of transient response measurement)

Balanced vs unbalanced cables produce noticeable changes in timbre.

It's a sliding scale obviously... but my desk is roughly in the middle of an epoxy-floor garage, so I'm pretty affected by the room acoustics... I wouldn't spend even $200 on nice speakers because I already know that 30-50hz is already going to be nulled out without some additional investment there.

I mean tbf, I didn’t even mention open backs. From what i’ve listened to, I much prefer kilobuck iems to kilobuck open backs.

And I mean if you are buying speakers, no matter the price, to get the most out of them (excluding amp,source, etc since that’s case by case) you need to have a corrected room( which costs money) with good speaker placement

I guess your open back argument is somewhat valid, though unlike speakers and room correction, people talking doesn’t change the to ear FR of open backs.

Also I did say “some people”. You assumed I was talking about everyone. I’m not.

I think we can all agree that Vido is cheap.

>Beyerdynamic DT990 or Hifiman HE400SE (or HE 4XX) or Sennheiser HD560 They should all be like $100-150 or so.

I think this is a great starting point, because this is the first price bracket where headphones feel special. They check boxes and give you some extra. For many people this is all the sound quality they'll ever need or want and if they are curious, they can still upgrade to more accurate cans.

The 800S would be best for fps games but not very good for metal music. I see you seem to like Beyers, the 1990s are awesome for both metal and fps games