Good Studio Headphones & DACs, which should I buy?
I’m having thouble to listen to music with my notebook’s speakers, and buying some external speakers would bother my family too much haha. So I decided to buy just a DAC and a good studio headphone.
Now, what are the best ones?
Doing some research I found that Audio-Technica ATH-M50 is a good choice… is it?
What about DACs, is there any difference at all between them?
Are you planning to use these studio headphones for mixing or producing? DJ/production sound cards often include a decent enough DAC+headphone amp as well as additional IO for other equipment.
yeah- nearly every production oriented soundcard made in the past several years is going to have pretty decent converters. Dont believe all the hype around “sound quality” of recording interfaces and DACs since it’s usually all confirmation bias and people can rarely tell the difference with proper ab testing.
Also shameless plug i’m selling a komplete audio 6 for real cheap at $160, only selling it since I needed a new interface with ADAT out or I would have liked to keep it- the sound quality is excellent and it is a great interface
oh I see, and how does it work with the notebook? I just buy it, plug it in on the USB port and I’m done? does it need some advanced knowledge to “install”? I just want to use it to hear the best from what is happening inside my pc, either poor quality tracks on soundcloud or wave tracks in Ableton Live.
yeah I have a pioneer HDJ-1000 and it sucks when plugged in my notebook hahaha it is a lame notebook. And I don’t need any MIDI or anything else, I just want a way of plugging a very good headphone on some kind of “sound card” that is plugged in my notebook so I can really hear the whole quality that Ive been missing all these years. And want to know what are the best Studio Headphones, so I can use them for hours (something I can’t do with the HDJ-1000).
I’ve got Beyerdynamic DT880, I’ve done quite a bit of research they’re very good headphones just be careful I got the top en version and you need a powerful headphone amp to drive them. So paired with the Dangerous box they sound a little quiet at times depending on what I’m mixing.
If you’re budget is about $1000 you’ll want to divide it up like this:
Audio Interface - Any decent interface with the minimum features you need (pre-amps, inputs, outputs, etc.)
Headphones - Throw all the rest of your money at this.
INTERFACES
There are plenty of good 2x2 interfaces that would be perfect for just listening and in the box mixing. If you ever want to expand to using an interface for DJing with 4 tracks you’ll want a 4x4 interface. I’m just adding that since the price difference is often small between the two, so if you ever think you’ll be expanding it might save some money in the long run.
The only thing to focus on is the simultaneous I/O you get. Once you step up to these higher 6 or 8 channel audio interfaces, they aren’t always talking about how much I/O you can use. The Komplete Audio 6 is a good example. Most people would assume you get 6x6, but you actually only get 4x4, it just happens to have 6 inputs and 6 outputs. Manufacturers often count in stuff you wont use often to make it sound like a better deal (SPDIF anyone?). What is weird however is that nobody ever counts in headphone outputs, so always remember you have that as an additional output to monitor on. (Which in your situation you’ll be using for your headphones)
HEADPHONES
I probably sound like an old record at this point, because whenever anyone asks about using headphones for monitoring, I usually say: “I don’t ever recommend it for doing any pro audio work”. But you mentioned you would be using this setup to primarily listen to podcasts, and actual speaker monitors aren’t possible because of noise.
Couple of pointers to keep in mind when buying headphones:
Comfort - If you can’t keep them on for long periods of time, you’re just making things harder on your ears.
Ear Fatigue - Ties in directly to comfort and quality of the headphones. You want something that doesn’t physically wear your ears out too quickly.
Quality - Please consider build quality. Headphones often take a lot of abuse, you want something that will last.
Response - Just like speakers, every pair of headphones sounds different. However, headphones suffer from skewed frequency response (hyping) more so than good monitor speakers. You want something that sounds clean, and doesn’t alter the original sound too much.
With all that considered here are my recommendations:
Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro These are the only pair of headphones I seem to constantly find in recording studios, and the only ones me and my co-engineers seem to agree on. They are old, proven, clean, comfortable and extremely light on the ears.
Audio Technica ATHM50 Another pair of headphones a lot of people swear by. Fits the bill in terms of comfort and quality, and if I see other engineers using them for reference I can imagine them being pretty clean in response.
Sony MDR7510 & Sony MDR7520 Sony makes an excellent line of headphones that are often used in studio environments. Their MDR-7502 is something I see musicians wearing all the time when tracking.
Sennheiser HD25 mk2 The iconic tracking headphones. I’ve actually owned a pair of these for a while. Though I’m actually not a very big fan of these for various reasons (on-ear design, skewed frequencies, ear fatigue, etc.) I’m listing them because they make for a good measuring stick. In my opinion you should never settle for anything less (though preferably better) than these when doing anything remotely pro audio. If you ever work on these you’ll know exactly what I mean.
CONCLUSION
You probably won’t need to be spending $1000 on such a simple setup. It will most likely only cost half of that. Also don’t be fooled by Hi-Fi people telling you to buy a headphone amp. The built-in amp inside any of those Audio Interfaces is more than enough to drive a pair of headphones properly. My only recommendation is to try and stick with using 1/4" jack connections. If you’re bothering with Mini-Jacks then you’ll probably be getting into using conversion (Mini → 1/4") and that’s just a mess. You end up adding all these points where the connection can potentially not be fully seated. Same goes for any other outputs. If you ever do use the line outputs on an Audio Interface, stick to 1/4" Jack or XLR.
I certainly hope this helped clear up any questions you had, have fun getting your gear!
I get that, but the weak link in this story isn’t the gear between his PC and his face, it’s the source media. The only way you’ll hear a difference between $100 and $1000 headphones is if you’re using DVD-A source media in the first place.
