Heaphone Woes

One of my favorite things to do while coding is listen to music. Most likely this is a topic I will cover in a later post; but for the time being just note that it's filled with almost everything. Regardless, I've fallen into a very bad situation with my current headphones. After lasting for 5 years; my pair of Bose over the ear headphones have now fallen apart. The rubber surround has completely fallen apart and I'm left with headphones that look like they've gone through a war with the surround exposing the foam composing the surround. Needless to say I need to replace my headphones at this point.



Of course I'm very picky about my headphones and how my music sounds; I play guitar and am very picky about my tonality being exactly what either I want it to be or as close to the original recording as possible. Most audiophiles like to have their music reproduced in specific ways; as close to possible with flattening equalizers and wide frequency responses etc... Me on the other hand, and I think one of the things that makes me a fun musician is that, I just want it to sound good. I don't really care that when the record was recorded, the treble was completely even with with the bass on this record. Instead, I just want it to be a very enjoyable experience; I like completely zoning out to my music (both when I'm playing and when I'm coding) and just letting my mind be solely encompassed.

Of course this doesn't work so well as my headphones die; as such, it's time to buy some new ones! At home, I have a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre Studio.



That's $300 for a pair of damn headphones, which is definitely expensive, but until you actually hear these things you will not understand just how well they take you to your own little happy place. The Bose headphones I previous had were about $100 and the price has now increased to $150. The problem is that; I'm not sure if I want to spend that amount on another set of headphones that will last for 5 years.

So, what other headphone choices to I have? The thing that I've seen takeover are the earbuds; but I'm never a huge fan of earbuds. They are always uncomfortable in my ear and it's not easy to take them out as opposed to headphones which let me go back into reality at work. Now there are other headphone makers such as Sony who make a decent pair of headphones. The headphones I had for my entire college career and into my professional career before I got the Bose were some simple $15 behind the neck headphones which were fabulous. They worked, they were easy to take one ear off and were also fairly comfortable. They also had a pretty good bass response. For the $15 you really couldn't beat them! That plus they fit into my backpack and I could crunch them and they just stayed alive for years.

Now the question that I have is if I buy the $150 headphones that I know will last (at max because I don't believe quality has gone up) 5 years at a maximum; which means that my headphones will cost about $30 per year. But if I were to go with the behind the neck headphones; I can actually replace them twice a year and still end up with the same amount of money spent over time as the one time cost of the Bose headphones. So the big question is; are the behind the neck as good as the Bose? My answer is no, the Bose are fantastic at blocking out all the noise around me (even though they are not noise cancelling).

Now Sony does have some other headphones that are closer to what I'm looking for (over the ear) which also include noise cancelling. I've tried the on ear version of Sony's noise cancelling but have been quite underwhelmed by the overall sound quality.



So I'm not sure if I'm going to end up with the same quality as the on-ear headphones. So what about Sennheisers? Well, I would be all over Sennheisers if I was running a music studio and needed to hear exactly what instruments were putting out and I wanted absolutely no equalization in my headphones.

I've been seeing Skullcandy but I have yet to actually explore them. My first thought is that I dislike them; their over ear headphones have a triangular look and feel to them. I've tried them on, and it always feels really odd on my head; so I'm really not thinking that I would be comfortable with them for an extended period of time. So this leaves me with the dilemma, do I want to buy some Sony's that may or may not underwhelm me with sound; some cheap Sony's that I will be replacing at some point in the near future. Or go buy the exact same type I have now with an increased price? Or maybe I spring for an extra $50 and get some on-ear Beats that I know will sound good even though I'm not a huge fan of on-ear headphones.

EDIT 1/16/2012:
Broke down and bought a pair of the Beats Solo (HD) headphones. Had a great sound quality, although no noise cancelling and not over the ear does a good job of drowning out the background noise. Also, the on ear is not that uncomfortable; and are actually pretty small and come in a nice carrying case. Looking forward to another 5+ years of headphone usage.