Hi guys...

Being a student, i don't have the cash for all the great sets of Sennheiser headphones, but i want to purchase some of the budget headphones. Being in the UK, maplins have these headphones in stock, both around £30. I was wondering which set would be the best, for flat responce and clarity in sound. Vote above and leave me some comments as to why you think they are better...

The 457's are at £24.99 and seem to have a better frequency range than the 477's, which are £34.99... Seems odd to me but i guess you guys will tell me why the apparently underspec'd 477's are more expensive...

Cheers!

For questions about headphones you should try this forum: http://www.head-fi.org

Big_Berny

I have HD-477 - I still think that HD-500 are not much more expensive, I should buy HD-500...

HD-477 are quite good headphones.

According to Sennheiser, the 477s are good for a strong bass response, like in Rock music. How much are 497s where you are at? They are very nice for good across-the-spectrum play.

Looks like the 477's then... as for the 497's i'm not sure of the prices here in the UK, but i know that maplins don't sell them (maplins is the british equivilent of radioshack i think).

I'll have a search round and ill get back to you..

The 497's appear to be about £43.99... Its starting to get into the more expensive range and being a student find it really hard to justify spending a lot of money on headphones After some reading i've found that some people think the 477's can sound better to people into rock music due to the walm sounding bass... Seeing as i'm into rock music, the 477's sound reasonable.

Thanks for the help folks!

Looks like the Senn PX200 should be in your budget as are the Koss PortaPros. Have you considered either of these (pretty respected for their price points).

A second vote to take a look over at Head-Fi.

Ok then, which would you say is better? The HD477's or the PX200's? My main use will be for home listning, i rarely use portable players but when i do i use my MX400's.

I just took a look over at head-fi.com. Man, the placebo effect audiophilespeak
wore me out after 20 minutes of reading. people claiming great benefits from new headphone cords, colorful metaphoric descriptions of headphone "quality" etc. You don't know how much you are missing when you venture away from HA for too long.....

I asked for and got the HD-457's for Christmas, only because I think that if I had asked for a more expensive set, I wouldn't have gotten any. This is my first high-end pair of headphones--meaning the first pair I've used that didn't come with the CD player--and it's definitely an improvement in clarity and sound from what I was using before. However, everything they say about the 457 having really heavy bass that drowns everything else out is pretty much true. In Winamp, I have to set the Equalizer to basically be a gradual diagonal slope upward to make it sound normal. Supposedly, this is less pronounded with the HD-477, so unless you like really heavy bass, I'd probably go for the more expensive one.

I own the Sennheiser PX-100's, which are simiilar to the 200's except they are "open" design. Basically this means they sound better but do not block outside noise as well. They are very good headphones, and pretty cheap (I bought mine for $32 on Amazon.com). The Koss PortaPros and Koss KSC-55's are also both supposed to be good headphones.

Try the website www.headphone.com for reviews. They seem to know what they are talking about.

- Matt