Sennheiser HD 280 Pro

currently using these for producing. good starter headphones.

These babies have been in my studio for a few years. When I moved to Tennessee, I accidentally broke my AKG mixing headphones. I know, it sucked. I went to my local Guitar Center and essential said "I need something cheap and I need it today, what ya got". Naturally, they tried to up-sell me immediately to which I said (in my head) "get fucked". But, one of the guys in pro audio recommended the Sennheisers and I bought them immediately. Now, several years later, they are all I will use. Not the perfect mixing/tracking headphone, but for the money, you can't beat them. SUPER flat response! My only complaint is that they are pretty bad about handling (sub) low end. If you are mixing any tracks with heavy lows, use monitors. These aren't gonna get you there. Other than that, these are great!

The Good (aka, what it does better than ATH-m50): - outstanding isolation from exterior noises - tons of detail and separation... for better or worse, instruments don't smear together with these - no complaints on the bass end, and I love 808 subs... but, uhm, I wouldn't judge my sub bass mixes with just headphones no matter how good they were. - specifically designed to be field-serviceable... this means all OEM parts are easy to find and install by hand or with a small screwdriver. - very durable to boot... things don't disintegrate like on my ATH-m50s... I've only had to replace the headband after 8 years, and that was a very simple procedure. I travel with these because they can take a beating.

Bad: - More sensitive to the type of headphone amp driving them than ATH-m50. When paired with consumer-grade headphone amps, the sound quality is still great, but you lose a bit of fullness and sounds can sometimes feel like icepicks in your ears... making them more fatiguing than my m50s, which seem to stay sonically consistent across different input sources (I know impedance rating plays a role in this, among other factors). If I'm using MacBook Pro headphone out, I go with the m50s... if I'm plugging into the headphone out on a good sound card, I reach for the HD 280s.

In Closing: I still recommend m50s when people ask me about general-purpose passive phones, but I'm so glad I have the HD 280s for a whole host of situations in which they are a better fit than anything else in this price range. I know I could spend $300 more, and another $500 for a dedicated headphone amp, and have my mind blown, but I'm too hard on headphones... these are the only pair that have held up to all my years of abuse and accidental chord-yanks.

I think these are amazing headphones for MAKING music, just not listening to. There are much better headphones out there for that! But these are just nice and bland, so it lets you hear what your music sounds like without any special EQ's or anything applied to it! Now, my problem is the noise. You can hear the headphones a ton from the OUTSIDE! Mic's will pick up what's playing, which is bad. But for the music I make, that doesn't matter! (Yet...)

My first professional headphones exclusively for composing tunes. I am pleased by the honesty of the sound they convey, there is no bass boosting or anything(which I commonly associate with headphones/earbuds from companies such as Beats/Skullcandy/etc.). I don't think they are the TOP TOP of the line headset, but I think they are quite professional. Very cool, very honest.

Good monitoring headphones, they provide nice isolation and relatively good frequency response. The 100-200hz region is a bit dry, so it can cause you to mix in extra mud, and the MDR-7506s have better highs, but overall these headphones are not bad, all my mixdowns used go through them before release.

It is a reasonably priced headphone with good isolation. The trade-off is that the sound could be more accurate and the headphone is not the most comfortable because pressing force needed for the isolation is rather big. It is good for recording purposes.

Even though they don't sound as nice as my old Spirit Pros, they're much more durable (Spirit Pros are prone to cracks on the side if not delicately handled, which has happened to me twice now). They also give the Spirit Pros quite a run for the money in terms of sound quality.

really good budget studio headphone...low and high freq of this headphone is really amazing...best production tool for also traveling with my laptop ...

Has a nice flat frequency response. Great for mixing and mastering all genres.