lauri_hoefs

I'm using a Little Dot Mk III, which, as far as I've understood, should be enough to drive the cans. The sibilance, channel inbalance and echoy sound are present with pretty much any amp and headphone jack I've tried the phones with... I suspect that the pair I got is faulty, either one of the electrets is failing, the wiring is bad or one of the cross-over circuits is damaged. I just haven't had the time to actually search for the cause of the problems yet.

Well, it seems that my problem with the K340 was actually caused either by bad internal wiring or by something obstructing the movement of the electret diaphragm. I noticed a slight channel inbalance in the phones and decided to open them up. There was no visible damage to the wiring, and everything seemed to be in order. But before i put them back together I decided to clean them and move the wires a little to see that they were properly connected. And that really made a world of difference: the echoing is gone, the soundstage is natural. Overall the sound is quite nice now, with some sibilance though. All this means that I'll have to rewise the ranking a bit, moving the K340 a couple of positions higher. DT 880 Pro (05) >> K340 >> MDR-7506 >> HD555 >> MDR-CD780 >> Porta Pro >> PX100 >> various earbuds

Yeah, it's really strange mine sound that bad considering they are exactly the same version as the others I heard... Mine are of one of the bass light variants. And they are actually a well kept and little used pair. But there's just this weird ringing echoy sound with the mids / lower highs thats unbearable with some music... Well, my skin really ain't that thin, I just want to spare this thread from the usual several-page-long arguments about the phones I mentioned Now to actually give some input that's on the original topic : the headphones listed earlier, and again below with PX100 added, were all driven by Little Dot Mk III, Onkyo TX-SR506 and Pioneer PD-7700 headphone outs. Portable source was iPod 2nd gen. nano. DT 880 Pro (05) >> MDR-7506 >> HD555 >> K340 >> MDR-CD780 >> Porta Pro >> PX100 >> various earbuds

DT 880 Pro (05) >> MDR-7506 >> HD555 >> K340 >> MDR-CD780 >> Porta Pro >> various earbuds To explain this rating a bit: The Beyerdynamic DT 880 Pro is a perfect combination of lovely sound and comfort. None of the dynamic phones it is usually compared with (HD650, K701 etc) are as balanced and pleasing in my opinion, they just seem to be a perfect fit to my ears I rate the Sony MDR-7506 quite high as it's the pair of headphones that I use most of the whole bunch as I spend a lot of time travelling by trains and busses. It's easy to drive with any portable source, it's foldable and offers decent enough isolation from outside noise. The AKG K340 was actually a bit of a disappointment, it's usually highly regarded and I actually liked it when I first heard it. Now, maybe I got a bad pair when I finally was able to get one, or maybe the lack of phones to compare the K340 where I heard them earlier made them sound better than they really are. The Sony MDR-CD780 are easy to drive and really, really comfortable. The KOSS Porta Pro still remains one of my favourite portable phones, even after trying through several similar phones that are usually graded higher. Sorry for a long post, but a had a feeling that I needed to explain myself a bit. It just somehow seems that liking/disliking the K340 or lower-grade Sonys is usually kind of a red flag on headphone forums