Expensive headphones pointless when using with mp3 players?

Vegeta

Vegeta

Vegeta

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I've read a lot of threads on here and most people seem to conclude to get the best out of headphones that are £160+ you need to spend £120+ on a soundcard.
Therefore I'm thinking it's completely pointless buying an expensive pair of headphones to use with my iPhone as I'm 99.9% sure the hardware in that is inferior to most modern day motherboard on board sound cards? Would a budget of £50 be more sensible?
 
Whilst the iphone probably isn't the best device to power high end headphones, I'm pretty sure that you would still find £160+ headphones will sound a lot better than £50 headphones despite the dirty apple hardware ;) hehe

If you want to go all out you can probably buy some kind of external DAC that connects to the iphone and that would probably sound better.

I guess people are saying that you wouldn't get the most out of those expensive headphones with just a phone to play from but they would still sound better.
 
Evga_Gamer said:
What ever headphones you use with an iphone the sound quality will be the same
Click to expand...

Nonsense. The headphones have a far bigger part in the over all sound quality than the device itself. Admittedly, one wouldn't be getting the best sound quality from £160 headphones by using a phone though.
 
Most high end phones are open back which makes them rather unsuited to a portable/outdoors set up anyway. In terms of high quality closed ones, then that's what portable amplifiers are for... although some of the higher end digital audio players (like my iBasso DX100) have a powerful enough internal amp to drive most of these.
 
Open or Closed can headphones don't really matter if you want to use them with mobile devices. Obviously you might head noises around you when using open headphones and the people on the train will hate you but I wouldn't say they're unsuitable for mobile use.

You can go out and spend hundreds of pounds on kit to allow you to use any high end headphone with a mobile device or you can just get a decent pair of headphones designed for mobile use and get decent enough performance.


Also, lol @

Evga_Gamer said:
What ever headphones you use with an iphone the sound quality will be the same
Click to expand...
 
in regards hi-er end headphones it can come down to how difficult they are to drive . sennhiers hd600 for instance only sound there best with a headphone amp , the iphone would work with it , but would be a waste of good cans
 
Best bang for buck is a Sansa Clip or Zip and spend about 50 on earphones. Save the battery on your phone.

I dunno whats the best deal on earphones at the moment. I've only got older earphones. The Sony M1HC are fantastic. If you can get them to fit. I couldn't get mine to say in my ear at all. But they are fantastic for not much money. If you can get real ones.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/632892/review-sony-mh1-the-best-kept-secret
 
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Evga_Gamer said:
Its all down to the phone, not the headphones. The sound quality won't get any better.
Click to expand...

So wrong.

Try the original iphone headphones and then try the new version. Night and day!

I personally have a pair of AKG cans for ipod/iphone listening and they sound great! and not over expensive.

If you want noise cancelling ones then they will be more expensive. but does make a huge difference when out and about.
 
Yeah, decent headphones on an iPhone make a massive difference.

However on a PC, the bigger bang for buck is an external audio interface. That and a cheap (but decent pair of headphones) sounds better than cheap / onboard sound and really good phones.

I use a Roland Cakewalk USB interface and a pair of £30 Senny HD202s on my PC. The set up sounds great.
 
It is more down to amplification and ability to drive bigger headphones... The DAC and distortion figures in an ipod are massively lower than any speakers, if the ipod can drive them sufficiently (eg. in ear monitors, low impedance portable headphones) then the headphones will still sound good out of an ipod and it is worth spending moew money...

Where you run into problems is trying to power bigger headphones which need a proper headphone amp such as Sennheiser HD650, Hifiman etc.... But the quality from an ipod is good enough to power high quality in ear monitors and they will sound good.... For example a pair of £300 headphones will still sound better than a pair of £30 and will still be about 80-100% of the best they can sound. Getting a better source would improve quality further but by far the most important part is the headphones.

The best value setup would be this...

Sansa clip+ with Rockbox
64gb MicroSD card
£100-200 in ear monitors...
 
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