Maximum PC

So my friend have me a pair of $300 Bose Quiet Comfort 2 headphones that were broken. He said they were mine if I fixed them... so I did. It was as simple as re-soldering a wire that had broken loose. Now, I have a pair of Sennheiser HD280s, and when I plugged this in... I was blown away by the difference. Normally I don't recommend Bose because they're good but overpriced, but I'm extremely impressed with these. Impressive bass, noise canceling, and amazing reproduction quality and range. It really puts my integrated sound to shame.

thouse cans should be powered by a xonar then you would be impressed

I know right? Someday I'll buy a D2X.

It's not really apples to apples. The 280's being for monitor usage and the Bose units geared towards consumers.

I'd normally have a negative comment to toss towards Bose, but you can't beat free!

I'm looking at getting a new pair of headphones for my computer (gaming mostly, movies, TV, ect)

I have been looking closely at the HD280's, but still am not sure.

I would like to spend less than $150.

Any good suggestions?

me too, I've really smashed Bose a lot in the past. I know the HD280s are for monitor usage, etc etc, but I think the Bose offers just as accurate of sound reproduction but with punchier bass and noise canceling to boot! I mean, I would never buy it... for a fair improvement in quality and noise canceling... you pay 3x as much as the HD280. But free... completely amazing! My HD 280s are probably going to go where they are intended- to use as a monitor. (computer keyboards aren't the only kind I play )

That depends. If you want very accurate sound reproduction and fairly good (though I wouldn't say stellar) bass, I don't have higher praise for anything under $200 then I do for the HD280s. However, they are very accurate headphones. If you're used to more consumer-level cans, you may find the HD280s sound somewhat "flat", kinda dull, because of how accurate they are. Consumer-range cans tend to emphasize midtones and drop off in bass and high ranges, which means an accurate set of cans might sound funny. But I would give the HD 280s a spin. I bought mine about 6 months ago and I'm extremely satisfied.

EXACTLY! I have the HD280's and I love them. People always say that they dont have bass, but they have tons if you want it, they just dont sound like it because they put out an unmodified EQ. But thats what an EQ on your stereo is for, if you want the bass then turn up the low end frequencies, I run my 280's through my HI FI stereo with I BASS when I want that big bass cinema sound. The 280's are better built and sound better then the bose for alot cheaper.

Bose are good, but a one trick pony, with an EQ the sennheisers can do anything

So you would say the HD280s (~$70) are superior to the HD600s (currently $295)?

I never did I said there better then the Bose headphones

errr... no. But I don't have $300 to shell out for a pair of headphones. If I hadn't gotten these Bose headphones for free I would be sticking with my HD280s.
EDIT: ah, I see where I erred there. I haven't heard the HD600s myself, and didn't know they had dropped under $300. So I guess you can adjust that to not having higher praise for anything under $200.

You know what's nutty? The 595s are now $180 on amazon. O_O

As I understand it, the 570-650 range all use the same drivers, just manufactured to a different tolerance level.

Trouble with that is that additive EQing sounds terrible (generally).

I just use the one the comes with the soundblaster XFI and it seems to work good, but as I said, im lucky and just use my stereos amp and use I Bass, sounds great

Well, I was in the same boat you were. I was strongly considering going with Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers (Best Buy has them, but I only found one that was open-box, and I don't normally trust open-boxed items), but since I found that Newegg and Amazon don't sell those, I decided that well...I'd take my chance with the Companion 3s, they were on sale for the past couple of weeks, and they probably won't be doing those for a while, so maybe I could give them a whirl. Chances are, to really make the Companions worth the money, I may probably use them with a Y-Adapter, and turn them into bedroom television speakers, and see if that may work out. Might hang on to my Z-2300s for the PC. At least Companion 3s are far cheaper than CineMates, and the sound quality may not really be THAT much different, I have a hunch.

I'd much rather spend the $225 on Companion 3s for connecting to a television rather than $300 for headphones that will probably bust up after wearing them on an off after so many times using and wearing them.

Then again, I'm wondering if Sennheiser is any better bang for the buck in terms of headphone. It seems like they are about half the price, and have almost as good, if not better noise-cancelling capability without the need of battery power. Not sure if that's true or not. I have the PC 350 models from Sennheiser, so that's got me thinking whether or not these may do the trick.

yeah definitely. Sennheiser is a lot better then Bose. If you're going to be paying for the headphones, don't pay big bucks for a Bose set.

I can't put Noise Canceling and "great headphones" in the same sentence. It's useful for portable players, but then that's what Shure's are for IMO. At home, I've got Miramar airbase and some traffic, but don't need noise canceling.

The Senns are good until you run across your old crummy rips and it highlights all the flaws. IMO, a good set of headphones DO make your bad music sound bad...that's it being accurate. Until I get all that re-sourced and re-ripped, I go to the Plantronics 377. They're just damned good sounding headsets, even if you never want the mic (it tucks away very cleanly). All the poor Senns have dust on them.

8Iron, using a Y-connector could lower the sound level quite a bit. Also, if it's you or your mate watching TV at night in there, Sennheiser HDR130's can be quite a bargain on re-sale sites like e-bay. They're RF wireless, comfy (until you wake up with them still on), and always have one of the 3 bands work in any given room. Doesn't work well if you both want to hear it, but that's just not the case on this end. I don't want to hear NCIS and she doesn't want to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos...so we swap.

Other than that, the little Sony bookshelf radio/DVD player unit does well enough. I don't exactly desire Klipsch level quality or 5.1 in there at this point. Maybe later if we get a bigger house that includes bigger rooms.

Totally agreed as that if not, Sennheiser today will not be producing anymore headphones.

I owned the HD-600 for almost 10 years coupled with Musical Fidelity X-Cans headphone Amp and changed the original tubes to Mulard using Monster series 400 interconnect with my stereo setup!

I also owned the PX-100 for going outdoors.

!'d bought the Sennheiser CX-500 for my kid as well.

But currently using the UE superfi 4 with my iPod Touch when I goes to work.

Bose in-ears I've tried but just don't like the high & mids!!!

Definitely a negative on Bose!

The Xonar STX with its built in amp would be more suitable (or the new Xonar Xense). You can also pick up a Nuforce uDac (amp and dac combo) for $100 to get more out of those cans for cheaper.

Yeah, but I want to get a nice set of speakers at some point too. The D2X is better in that case.