I need new headphone recommendations/advice

[darwin006]

My 5 year and 5 day old ATH M40x headphones broke today and now I need some new ones, one of the plastic hinges broke where left cup rotates. I am looking to spend $100-150 USD. I am looking for headphones that are over ear, wired with replaceable cord, closed back and hopefully more durable then the M40x.

 

Right now I am looking at Sennheiser HD569, maybe Shure SRH840A or ATH M50x but now I am concerned about hinges braking on headphones that rotate like those.

 

Any other recommendations? Thanks.

[Goodmen9008]

buy Bluetooth headphones

[Landvader07]

1 hour ago, darwin006 said:

My 5 year and 5 day old ATH M40x headphones broke today and now I need some new ones, one of the plastic hinges broke where left cup rotates. I am looking to spend $100-150 USD. I looking for headphones that are over ear, wired with replaceable cord, closed back and hopefully more durable then the M40x.

 

Right now I am looking at Sennheiser HD569, maybe Shure SRH840A or ATH M50x but now I am concerned about hinges braking on headphones that rotate like those.

 

Any other recommendations? Thanks.

I would recommend The AKG K240's. if you want to use them with a home HIFI setup or a amp I would say you get the K240 sextets or the monitors. those are 600 ohms but for using them with anything I would say the K240 mk3's or the studio's. Those are 55 ohms and will run out of everything. They are amazing headphones and they have very good reviews. Personally I would say get used ones that are made in Austria because they have the best build quality and where made before AKG was bought out by Samsung and now all of AKG's engineers work at Austrian Audio. But when mine arrived the cable was broken and I had to order a new wone but the cables are only 15 dollars so you should be good. And the headset is usually 50 to 100 dollars.

[Psittac]

I would recommend the Rode NTH-100, it fit's all of your needs.  When they first launched there was an issue with the plastic fitlock mechanism breaking very easily but this was due to a bad batch.  This issue has since been fixed and if they do happen to break you can get replacement 3d print's for $13 on etsy.  Also if they're going to break it will be the fitlock which as mentioned is easily replaceable. Everything else on it is super solid.  The sound is excellent and they are supply chain agnostic meaning they'll sound great on anything at all.  The drawback to these in your case being that replacement parts are difficult to get should you need a headband or ear pads.

 

I don't like to contradict people most of the time, but ime the akg k240 studio is a horrible headphone with literally no bass, I don't know if that problem is unique to the studio version or not.  I gave mine away almost immediately.  The AKG K361-bt is excellent with the option to be blue tooth or wired with a removable cable, they're very sturdy as well.  I would recommend getting some upgraded pads for them because the stock ones are pretty thin.

 

If you're main concern is longevity I would also look at Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic, both being solid builds with beyerdynamic being notorious for serviceability.  I would recommend the dt770 however it has an attached cable.  I just looked on amazon and apparently they upgraded them with a detachable cable but are $200usd, they call it the dt770prox.

 

Another good closed back, which I haven't heard, is the Fiio FT1 but it's supposed to be pretty good.

[darwin006]

Update, I have found a guy on Etsy that 3d prints replacement hinges for the M40s and I am going to repair them. Thanks everyone for your advice.

[Cocococo]

21 hours ago, Psittac said:

I don't like to contradict people most of the time, but ime the akg k240 studio is a horrible headphone with literally no bass, I don't know if that problem is unique to the studio version or not.  I gave mine away almost immediately.  

There is a lot of differences between old AKG headphones and what they make now, the K240 Sextett's are surprisingly decent, but they're not common and you can get much better sound for less money. The K range of budget "studio" headphones is absolutely atrocious, literally everything that isn't a K361, K371, K612 or K702 sounds so... terrible, K52 and K72 in particular are some of the worst headphones i've ever tried, modern K240 is down similarly low in the rankings.

 

It's kind of amazing how the samsung buyout actually had AKG making good headphones for once, usually when a huge brand buys out a smaller, older company all the good tech and ideas flow uphill. But instead the K361, K371, N700 NCM2 and N400 were all class leading headphones, the N400 were praised as the best sounding TWS buds on the market for a long time, N700 NCM2 would still be the best ANC headphones of their price bracket if AKG hadn't discontinued them (i gave my pair to my mother, she's hated every other pair of ANC headphones she tried) and the K361/ K371 stood firmly at the top of the budget closed back hierarchy for years (ngl they were the best closed backs up to roughly $1,000 for a LONG time) and have only now been legitimately dethroned by the FiiO FT1 (better sound and much better customer service/ spares department, AKG sucks for spare pads) 

 

Literally all AKG needs is a new model of N700, perhaps with bigger earpads, better tuning and better ANC, maybe use them as a test bed for some deluxe Samsung Galaxy headphones, maybe refresh the K361 and K371 to better compete with the FT1, launch a higher end closed back to challenge Sennheiser's HD620 and Focal's Azurys, and maybe launch a good open back headphone for the first time in over a decade.