How accurate is this? There needs to be an end all be all, but

>>58478514
what do you mean be all end all

headphones, even if you thousands of dollars, usually have 1 compromise in sound quality.

you will get one that has good mids, highs, and lows, on low end headphones, you get one, on higher end (150$+) you get 2 or one really good one.

What you are really looking for, more often then not, is does the presence of bass fuck up the mods and highs? or the presence of mids fuck up the highs.

speakers do this by one speaker for each range, but headphones are generally one diaphragm, and if it has more then one, its usually shit.

You want my opinion? I live with someone who has headphone autism, so I have heard the entire range from 5$ gets you 3 different headphones, to 1000$ hard to drive but damn they are nice soundin.

he swears by his AKG Pro Audio K702
I personally had a pair of sennheiser 555, then got a pair of 598's when I learned they fixed the cracking problem.

The headphones are literally on par with each other but hpg has autism over 'the veil'

I'm still able to hear frequencies age should have taken from me, if there is a veil, it's so slight and only really visible in frequency response charts.

Personally don't like akg style headband but don't like sennheisers material choice either, However, I do like the can size of the sennheiser FAR more over almost every pair of headphones he has because my ears never touch the sides, an issue most of his headphones have.

for 5$ the best you will get are monks, they have next to no bass, but god damn do they got mids and highs

for around 10$ you can get iems to see if you like the style, i have kz zs3's and they are pretty damn good, these are likely the best bang for buck style you can get as around 100-200$ will likely shit on headphones 2-4 times the price and these can get VERY good bass.

>>58478514
I have Sennheiser Urbanite. It's not an argument.

>>58478514
DT 990 600 Ohm + schiit stack = best 600 EUR i ever spent on tech

>muh flat response
Beats are shit but accurate response to various fixed frequencies is not the only metric to judge headphones by.
Music is the sum of many frequencies at many swings in amplitude and an accurate portrail requires speedy response on the part of the drivers.
This is where headphones will universally be limited as no one driver can pull this off perfectly and multi-driver headphones are plagued with too many issues to overcome this limitation.

Loudspeakers benefit from having drivers dedicated to a limited set of of frequency ranges that can have isolated areas within the cabinet to better suit the needs of each driver and isolate them from the others. By nature they can improve percieved sound stage by better adjusting amplitude independently of the other drivers.

My etymotic research earbuds that are heralded as having an excellently flat response (ignoring the obviously anemic bass) sound boring and compressed in highly dynamic music where one instrument is clearly meant to have more presence than the others.

I've tried some high end headphones and while they generally provide excellent detail that's easily lost on loudspeakers, it comes at the compromise of presence.

Tl;dr if you really like music headphones are a dumb meme anyway, get some speakers.

Suggestions for a gaming headset brand? Not specific models unless you prefer one, I'm alright not getting optimal cost/performance, but I like supporting companies that care about what they're doing.

>>58478514
I don't understand the question but I will say that the image you posted is poor.

Isolation can be beneficial but it's not a factor in headphone performance. It's not the point of every headphone to attenuate external noise.

THD+Noise plots are as good as useless. Distortion is not supposed to be "flat", it's supposed to be low. Amount of THD doesn't tell us how audible it is and especially not when it's measured against a single sine tone.

Square waves are useless if we have a frequency response plot. They are just a limited view of the same information.

Impedance as a function of frequency can tell us something of use but it doesn't tell how the headphone sounds like.

>>58479643
>speedy response on the part of the drivers.
That speed is shown by the frequency response. It's not really a limit of fidelity with headphones.

Headphones have various kinds of issues of staying accurate and consistent. Breakup modes of the driver and modes caused by ear are the most challenging, sometimes seal too. Modal resonances are individual and often not even consistent on one person so not even an equalizer can tackle them effectively. Same applies to seal on certain models.

Headphones by design omit various kinds of positional cues and destroy the stereo image. You will not get soundstage with them without using crossfeed and other signal processing operations.

Etys have more or less flat bass. New ER-4XR has boosted bass. It's nothing an equalizer can't fix regardless of model.

>>58478514
God you headphone general autists should really just kill yourselves. I'm a music producer and I'd recommend beats over any of the shit you guys recommend if they're just going to be listening to music with them.

Your tier list is great for people who need a flat frequency response and need to hear flaws in their sound(Producers, Mix/Mastering Engineers, Sound crew, audio technicians etc.) Anything other than that and you're wasting your money, you'll get a much better sound out of beats and other headphones that are DESIGNED FOR LISTENING.

>inb4 distortion
You are talking about clipping/over-compression. Believe it or not, there is more than one type of distortion. Some of the other distortion types include tape, tube, saturation, amp, etc. Harmonic distortion is what makes or breaks a track. For example, this track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5souw4K5UQc
Normies would be like, OMG, so much bass xDxD. When in reality, the main synth drops around 3db when the distorted 808 comes in and the bell provides a good harmonic juxtaposition.


>"buuuuut why do beats drop off at 30hz, don't people want bass? HAHA PLEBS."

Everything under 30hz is mostly rumble, most producers cut around 30hz anyway. highpassing 30hz stops the rumble and cleans up the sound. If this wasn't done, the mix would become muddy on most systems.

>>58479901
We really should just make a bingo about titles and trying to act expert on some topic.

>Anything other than that and you're wasting your money, you'll get a much better sound out of beats and other headphones that are DESIGNED FOR LISTENING.
What makes these headphones more "designed for listening" vs the ones you use in a studio(as if there was any standard at all which they adhere)? What were the producers, mixing and mastering engineers doing if not making the content sound good? Why would you have no point of reference to which to calibrate and design your sound system so that the music you create will sound like the music you create everywhere and to every person who listens? What if I told you that listeners overwhelmingly do prefer flat and extended response when listening to music? Do you think it's a coincidence? This entire idea of having different sounding gear at different points of the production chain is downright idiotic and it's undermines the effort that goes into both creating music and designing good audio equipment.

>distortion
Distortion of the equipment you use to play back audio is entirely different from distortion used to create music. This isn't related. You do not want to have your playback equipment to distort, ever. Music is the art, equipment is a tool to reproduce this art and coloration of your equipment hampers it.

>30Hz
Mostly rumble yes but still audible and still possible to make a difference in the music. I agree that having your equipment go down below 30 Hz makes a very small difference if at all depending on the content you play back but for the rare track which does have content that low, it's good. Should not be your point of focus obviously.