Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Head Phones Recommendations

And of course, I meant to say that I find it very hard to compare any headphones to speakers. There is just something about hearing music in the middle of your head as opposed to hearing it presented from in front of you that changes everything for me.

The main reason I have been thinking about headphones is that my desktop speakers have been on the fritz for the past few months and I haven't been able to listen to music while writing reports, which I have to do all day 2-3 days a week.

This thread has made me think about and clarify a few things: 1) I guess it might be hard to find a pair of headphones I love because with many if not most headphones the soundstage seems too small to me to create much in the way of ambience. 2) I was listening to the Grado SR225s and they actually do sound quite good (aside from the somewhat constricted soundstage) if I crank them up to a distracting degree while working at the computer, which of course I knew but the point being: 3) the main problem is that I don't really like having loud transducers blasting into my ears in order to achieve a musical sound, but it occurred to me, duh, to play with the EQ on the PC and create a subjective loudness curve, now I am getting a very nice sound at very low volumes.

This is also giving me some ideas about possibly how to tweak my automotive system as well, because the issue there has been somewhat the same, of having to crank up the music to get a pleasing sound, and then it becomes oppressive in a small space, on the other hand it seems to lack dynamic impact at low volumes. I've had little luck playing with the car stereo EQ, which unfortunately is quite limited, but it's easier to hear what's happening subjectively with the EQ at my computer desk than in the car with all the additional ambient noise, I'm hoping the results that are working at the desktop may help establish a baseline for my own subjective loudness curve that I can transfer in part to the car stereo EQ settings, because it definitely was not what I expected and it definitely sounds much better across a wide variety of music.

I still prefer a big space with surround sound ambience (e.g., Audyssey, Dolby PIIx) but with the EQ going the headphones now sound quite acceptable and even very good at low volumes. It's seems obvious to me now that if I was in a setting where I needed to plug in the headphones while watching HT late at night I would most likely want a considerably different EQ curve for the headphones than for listening to the speakers.

I never have time to tweak anything these days so it takes me forever to make the most elementary observations.

Thanks for the recommendations, I was reading about some of those Audio Technica models last night on the internet and wondering if they were as good as people seemed to think as far as opening up the soundstage goes. I'll probably try out one of the budget models, e.g., ATH-AD700, to experiment and then go from there.

These headphones aren't blowing me away, either, which I attributed to being spoiled by my Axioms. They can sound nice, but like you, I think I must need to spend quite a lot more to where it competes with my main system.

You can't get any closer to her than that without actually meeting her, that is .