AKG K271 MKII Headphones  

I bought these in preparation for recording a country/bluegrass album in a small cabin.  I knew I wouldn't be able to monitor on speakers - or even in a separate room - so I needed something that would provide an honest representation of the sounds I was recording while having enough isolation and blockage to hear over the volume of the performance.  These headphones did the trick very nicely.  When I returned to my studio to begin mixing I discovered that these were more detailed and less fatiguing than my KRK Rokit 6 monitors (I promptly rented a new pair of speakers). These excel at clarity, definition, and stereo imaging.  I find them to work particularly well with acoustic music.  If your primary interest is in finding a pair of "exciting" headphones for listening to modern, hyped sounding recordings then I would suggest looking elsewhere, as these are rather lean in the low end.  I use a pair of DT770 Pro headphones for enjoying big kick drums and for tracking electric bass.  I would never use those exclusively as my headphone reference however, as they have a rather scooped midrange as well as slightly more aggressive upper-mids and highs.  When I want to hear what's happening in the midrange or to enjoy the "natural", woody qualities of instruments I turn to my AKG 271's.

I'm going to start this off by saying I have used a huge amount of crap headphones.  I've been through Boise, Sony, and some nockoff brands looking for true clairity.  These blow what those brands make out of the water (including Sony Studio headphones). For "easy listening" with a standard jack into an mp3 player or computer they are top notch.  I watched a movie with them and could hear even greater definition then in my 5.1 surroundsound system, which was impressive. For music applications they are perfect in every way.  I have hooked this into my Line 6 Pod and everything I throw at it is amazing.  Perfect for practicing late at night, sounds better then any practice amp I have ever owned. The most impressive thing about these headphones is the clarity while may things are happening.  With cheaper headphones clipping can occur when many instruments play in unision (such as classical) and it can dull the clairity of the indivudual instruments.  Not so with these.  During a playback of Mozart's "Marrage of Figaro" I could easily pick out all the seperate instruments playing out  their part, the closest thing to a live performance I have ever heard, period.

I recently received these headphones as a graduation gift and couldn't be more happy with them.  Every instrument is heard with clarity.  I am still breaking them in so the sound will continue to get better.  I was listening to "Bang Bang" by Dispatch and it felt like I was in the recording studio with them.  Don't buy these headphones if you have low quality music (125 kbps) because it will sound mediocre.  Use these for high quality (225 kbps) music.  Dave Matthews used these headphones to record his new CD.  If Dave uses them they have to be good.