Headphones for use with Squeezebox Radio

Mapman,

Did you give up on IEM at this point?

I have heard the B&W P5 headphones at the Apple store off of an iphone (mine with losses files). So take my comments with a grain of salt. They were built very nice but I found them pretty uneventful. They sounded pretty run of mill to me. They did not have any glaring flaws but they did not shin at all. I run my Ultimate ears off my iphone most of the time and they sounded MUCH better. Lower bass (cleaner too) more detailed and better impact from top to bottom. For $300 there are better headphones than the P5.

When looking for headphones that are easy to driver look at how many ohms they are, and the sensitivity. The lower the ohms the easier they will be to drive but the louder the noise floor (hissss) will be from the source too.

If you are not against on the ear headphones and need something easy to driver, Grados will fit the bill. They are sort of like horns to me though, a little colored, a little bright, but have great dynamics and impact to off set the flaws. The Grado RS-7 is the one headphone I wish I did not sell.

A brand called Alessandro (link below) takes Grado headphones and modifies them to be a little more flat. They keep all the good points of Grado but make them a little more tonally balance. I owned the Music Series Two before I bought the Grado RS-1. But the Alessandros also fall on the bright side of neutral but are a lot of fun. Built quality like all Grados is pretty iffy though.

Alessandro High-End Products

Headroom (www.headphone.com) is an assume site with reliable reviews of the headphones they carry. You can also overlay frequency graphs of different headphone phones they cary on their site. They measure them in-house.Their own line of amps holds their own too.

Also Head-fi.org is a very helpful and knowledgeable headphone forum.

Mapman,

You may also want to look at the Denon AH-D2000. They are only 25 ohms and pretty efficient. But like all headphones a real amp would improve the sound (more dynamic, better bass) but you may have luck straight out of your Squeezebox. I have never heard the AH-D2000 but they are suppose to be 95% of the Denon AH-D5000 at 1/2 the price, that I thought sounded very nice. For what it is worth Head-room (www.headphone.com) has a 30 day trial period so you could exchange them for something different if they do not work out of the Squeezebox.

James,

THanks for the info.

I have been getting by with the Nova 45s pretty well, so I am taking my time.

Still not sure which way I will go other than avoiding big bulky over the ear types.

Having reviewed the options, and given my limited usage needs for these,I may test the waters with a pair of Klipsch Image S4 in ear phones.

These get almost universally good reviews for both sound and comfort. They are also only 18 ohm which should work well with the Squeezebox radio.

My expectation is that these should be at least as good or better (but a lot different sounding) than the Nova 45s in regards to sound quality, plus will hopefully be unobtrusive and comfortable enough to wear in bed and fall asleep to.

As a bonus, they should be a step up on my daughter's ipod as well when I use that on occasion at the pool or when running of biking, etc.

Th Klipsch are ordered and on their way.

I'm very interested to see how these stack up with what I have (30 year old Realistic Nova 45 on-ear open back phones with Titanium drivers that these are targeted to replace and also 20 year old rock solid sounding Stax sr80 electret "earspeakers" that I run off my 2 channel a/v system in the family room via Roku Soundbridge from the same music server that the Squeezebox Radio connects to in the bedroom).