£200 budget for headphones - recommendations

[Rifters]

Hi folks, looking for recommendations for a £200 pair of open, circumaural headphones.

Currently have a pair of Audio Technica ATH-AD700's but wear and tear for my uses is leaving the cable in a bad way.

Usage is all round; PC\gaming\music\movies.

Have been looking at Sennheiser HD600, seem to tick all the right boxes, plus it looks like you can unplug the cables on the headphone end? which may suit me so I can unplug when not in use and avoid messing up the cable.

I will be using an Auzentech Forte soundcard, which has an onboard headphone amp, and swappable OPAMP's (National Semiconductor LME49720 (front audio output) and New Japan Radio NJM4580 if it means anything to anybody!) the spec of which I list below so I would hope that headphones such as HD600 would not only be driven by the Forte they would also be able show their full potential\range as much as possible?

Thanks.

Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1

Dynamic range
115.0 dB A-weighted (1kHz @ -60dBFS, 24-bit/48kHz) for stereo analog outputs
109.0 dB A-weighted (1kHz @ -60dBFS, 24-bit/48kHz) for Analog outputs
98.0 dB A-weighted (1kHz @ -60dBFS, 24-bit/48kHz) for Analog outputs

Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise
0.001% A-weighted (@ -3dBFS) for Analog outputs
0.003% A-weighted (@ -3dBFS) for Analog inputs

Frequency Response
10Hz to 22kHz, +/- 0.02 dB @ 48 kHz
10Hz to 42kHz, +/- 0.02 dB @ 96 kHz
10 Hz to 94kHz, +/- 3dB @ 192kHz, Stereo

Impendance
Headphone load impendance 16Ω ~ 600Ω
Line output impendance 330Ω
Line/Aux input impendance 10KΩ

[r@mside]

What don't you like about the headphones you have?

[Rifters]

>>> but wear and tear for my uses is leaving the cable in a bad way

The cable is straight and where it plugs into the headphone has bent and gone crimped\split, and every now and again I get crackles which I never had before so am fairly sure it's because of the cable\wires around that area.

Nothing wrong with them sound\comfort wise.

[r@mside]

All headphones I'm familiar with have cables attached at similar place - bottom of the earpiece. To change the cable often requires taking the earpiece apart and resoldering cable, but you can buy headphones with replaceable cables (plug in).

I know that top end Ultrasone and Sennheiser have detachable cables, but maybe it's worth giving consideration to the way you use the headphones (lying on your side?). Because putting pressure on the point of where the cables are attached may well have the same outcome at a much higher cost.

[Rifters]

I hear what you're saying. The cable on my Audio Technicas is single sided (left). It's not lying on my side that does it though (though I do listen lying down at times) it's just because the cable routes around furniture, gets twisted a lot, so the slack is eaten up so the part that enters the headphones has split and I think it has crimped a few twists of copper or something hence intermittent crackles.

In hindsight I should have tried to re-route the cable early on but it's too late now.

I also hear you about potentially throwing money away hence the interest in detachable cables on the headphone end.

Sooner or later these will 'go' so then I'll be forced to buy a new pair, if I wait till they do go, I'll be without sound till a new pair arrives as it's all I use.

I thought about trying to get them repaired but factoring in any return time etc I would still have a period without any cans.

[tudj]

Be aware that if you won't get the very best out of the HD600 without proper amplification, the soundcard is not proper amplification.

I'm not saying it will sound bad (my HD600 sound alright with my X-Fi) but they sound many times better with my headphone amp.

[StevieDvd]

The HD600 are a great headphone and although you can detach the cable at the headphone end this is for replacement of the cable and should not be done frequently.

Sounds like you need a decent extension cable so you can plug the headphone into a jack and unplug when you store the headphones away.

There is now quite a selection of external dac/amps which will connect to a PC via usb and drive decent headphones. Most will tend to be built in soundcards especially given that they are outside the interference the workings of the PC can generate. You can llok at Ibasso for the lower end (I guess there are cheaper ones but I don't tend to look at them) up to models like the Benchmark USB-Dac and the like, which are more orientated to hi-fi than PC usage.