Audio quality headphone for around £80, any suggestions?

[Dark Light]

I am looking for a heatset\headphones for around £80. The main focus is accurate reproduction of audio with good balance, so it doesn't necessarily need to be a headset with a mic. I was looking at the HyperX Cloud Alpha, does anyone know what the difference is between the HyperX Cloud Alpha and the HyperX Cloud Alpha Pro?

 

[EsaT]

Do you have quiet environment?
While budget falls little short of £100, where there are some very good choises, there's AKG K612 which can be found for little over that ~£80.
Have zero doubt of it completely curb stomping 99% of gaming stuff.
(£100 level K702 is pretty much aural god mode/wall hack with binaural sound)

 

[Dark Light]

Do you have quiet environment?
While budget falls little short of £100, where there are some very good choises, there's AKG K612 which can be found for little over that ~£80.
Have zero doubt of it completely curb stomping 99% of gaming stuff.
(£100 level K702 is pretty much aural god mode/wall hack with binaural sound)

Quite-ish, although I think a closed back set would be better because having an open back set sort of defeats the purpose of using headphones in a lot of ways. Blocking out room noise and sound from the other headphone seems on balance better. As for gaming headsets I am not really into the whole "gaming" culture rubbish, having a set that looks a particular way, rgb lighting, ability to carry them around etc... From the reviews I have read on the Cloud Alphas, while they do seems to have decent audio quality and good value for money the whole focus of he reviews and the product seems to be geared more towards the "gaming" culture rubbish than audio quality. The reason why the Cloud Alphas seem to be a good option is because they do offer decent audio quality and very good value for money, at just £60 on sale. I'm just wondering if its still a good deal when you remove the "gaming" markup and if there could be a better non-gaming option for around the same amount of money. I did forget to mention that it is for gaming, although not e-sports\multiplayer\pvp "pro gaming", "lets distort the sound so you can hear footsteps to win" rubbish.

 

[PapaLazaru]

AKG K550 MK3 are currently down to £79 at Richer Sounds which is quite frankly, a stupidly cheap price. They were £200 when they came out. You will not find better for the money and you can trust me, I have tried loads.

 

[EsaT]

I did forget to mention that it is for gaming, although not e-sports\multiplayer\pvp "pro gaming", "lets distort the sound so you can hear footsteps to win" rubbish.

Beyond easy to achieve strong lowest "rumbling" bass closed design is major challenge for sound quality even to actual audio makers.
With binaural sound good open headphones give very good feel of distance besides directionality.
Closed headphones have lot harder time in getting decent level on that.

And even lot more expensive open headphones tuned for some fancy inaccurate "audiophile" sound don't do well in that.
Stereo content like music simply forgives even heavily inaccurate reproduction without instantly sounding bad, but binaural cues suffer fast.
And with typical gaming trash just forget it.
https://uk.hardware.info/reviews/60...gher-quality-testresults---frequency-response
Roller coaster's loop wouldn't look out of place in some of those.

 

[Dark Light]

From what I have seen it seems my suspicion that "gaming" headsets being overpriced unbalanced rubbish seems to be correct. So the HyperXs are out despite the excellent value for money at just £60, and dedicated headphones seems the way to go, from what I've seen the AGK K702s seem like a decent choice although I'm just worried that my system's noise might detract from the open back advantage. Although I am still waiting on my RMA'd AX 860i the other components are a Silver Arrow SB-E and a GTX 1060 3GB.

 

[Dark Light]

How do the AKG K702s compare to other headphones around the same price? Such as the Sennheiser HD58X, Beyerdynamic DT 770\880\990 PRO or AKG K612. From what I've read they are all entry level headphones so are not perfect, with the Beyerdynamic being described as harsh on the higher end, the AKGs as flat or lifeless and the Sennheisers as over-sharp. But it does seem like the Sennheisers are more expensive in the UK with the HD58Xs being on Massdrop for $150, $50 less than the AKG K7XXs. Has anyone ever used Massdrop? Only heard of them from looking into headphones.

There is also the issue of an amp\dac, although with the AKGs being just 62 Ohms I don't think I'll need a amp to get more volume. Would onboard audio from the motherboard be ok? Only thing that I'm not completely sure about is the number of channels, ideally if the game has a proper positioning system, like CSGO, then that would be best. But most games don't I would need to either use stereo or get 7.1 from software. There are some 7.1 dac\amps but this might be a stupid question, but there doesn't seem to be a way to connect many of them to a TV or set top box so I wouldn't be able to say connect it to my TV to get 5.1\7.1 audio?

 

[olivier renault]

In terms of sound, something that would compare favorably to the Grado SR60e. They are kind of reference in that price point. They are also completely open design.