Best Headphone system under $1000???
I believe there are some trickle-down technology benefits from some of the companies that offer megabuck phones, i.e. Focal, Hifiman, Sennheiser and others, in their lesser-priced models. I would start with used phones in my price range and move up from there. Try to hear as many as possible before buying the pair you will probably use for many years. In my experience, I started with Stax Lambda, moved up to Lambda Pros years later, and now use Stax 009s w/T1S tube driver unit. Again, try to buy phones you believe you can live with for many years. You can always upgrade later by adding a dedicated tube amplifier when your budget expands. |
I can help you. I have owned a ton of headphones. The probelm with going over to forums like head-fi is a lot of the people do not have any good two channel experiance for reference and get used to the colored sound of headphone and make questionable recommendations, Imo of course... Your Vandersteen 2CE Sig will be far more neutral than a musical set of headphones. A lot of the popular headphones now are crazy dark so you might need a more neutral headphone than you think. Anyway I would without hesitation recommend the Focal Elex for $700. It is from a company called mass drop that does bulk buys and adds some of their own design changes. It basically sounds the same as the $1500 focal clear but with a hint less sub bass. It has the technicalities to hang or better headphones in the $1000-$2000 range. I also own the HD800S $1700, LCD-X $1200), Grado PS500e $600 and I would choose the Elex as my only headphone if I had to. The tonal balance of the Elex is that the bass from 30-150 has about a 3 dB boost and the highs are very detailed but a little shelved down. Some would call them neutral in the highs but I would not. The mids have a slight rise at 1-2k so vocals pop out a bit which is nice. They are easy to drive and can run off an iPhone but still scale well with good electronics. The Elex have more bass and softer highs than my Thiel 2.4 for reference, and tonally I would say is close to the sonus faber Olympica iii. A little round and a little soft with leading edge impact in the sub base but very very good at the same time everywhere else. https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-focal-elex-headphones?mode=shop_open&utm_source=shopping... Some quick comments below. HD800S (used in your price range), weak bass and recessed mids can make these sound thin and bright. Crazy good soundstage. Almost as good as a near field speaker setup. But I would pass based on your comments for musical tates. LCD-2C. Very rolled off highs but ruler flat from 20hz-1k. Crazy good sub bass with great leading edge sub bass impact. Pretty soft everywhere else though. Think magnepan softness... the vocals sounded wonky to me and I could not get passed it. The LCD-X sounds about the same with more balanced highs (still shelved down) and about twice the price. They also have odd mids and I can’t realy recommend them unless you value bass detail/impact above all else. Grados, a hard pass for your tates. Very aggressive sound with forward mids and highs. Bass rolls off early. I really like the PS500e (darkest of the grados, still bright) but is easily outclassed on technicalities by these other headphones. Sennhieser HD650/HD660s. The long running reference headphone any only $300ish. Mass drop sells a version for $200 I think. They are good but a little boring and lack impact/dynamics. The Elex is turned about the same and much punchier and fleshed our across the entire frequency range. With a VERY good amp you can get dynamics out of the HD650 but not worth the effort. The Elex is already dynamic... So all in all I would choose the Focal Elex for a good balanced yet warm sound with good sound stage only bettered by the HD800S sound stage. The LcD-2C or X if you value great sub bass and bass definition above other technicalities, HD650 if you want something cheep and already own a good amp. |
