Looking for good Headphones

[supremor]

As the title says im looking to replace my soon-to-die Steelseries 5H V2 and this time im steering clear of gaming headsets and looking for just a good quality set of headphones. Budget is around 150$ but willing to go overboard, currently thinking about getting Sennheiser HD555's and would love to hear opinions about them and other good suggestions as well.

 

[God Mode]

Sennheiser HD650. HD600/HD580 is also fine if you can find it. Expensive but worth it. I'm still using my 10 year old HD580 and they still impress me everyday. IMO, unless you plan to use the headphones with a weak output like most soundcards or mp3 players where high efficiency is required, the HD5xx series sound like consumer crap in comparison.

 

[schenley101]

Personally for that price range, I would get some audiotechnica M50's. They take a while to burn in, but they sound very good for the money ~$110. You should go check out headfi.org.

 

[nataku00]

Some more details will probably be needed to offer suggestions. Do you need it to be a closed back headphone or can you have an open back headphone? With an open headphone (like most of the higher end Sennheisers), people around you will hear what you're listening to. The ATH-M50's are a good choice for a starter audiophile headphone, and they are pretty much closed back, in case you don't want to share your audio with the people around you.

For gaming, a commonly recommended headphones are Audio Technica ATH-AD700/900 ($90-100 for AD700, upwards of $180 for AD900, both open) and Beyerdynamic DT880's (probably the 250 ohm version for ~$200, closed).

 

[supremor]

Well I would prefer closed back headphones since im not interested in "sharing" what im listening to. I plan on using the headphones with an older model X-Fi XtremeMusic (the original baseline model PCI card from about 5 years ago) with no amps or anything like that. Sadly its hard to find any good non Sennheiser headphones around here, the ATH-M50's are too expensive for me (prices here blow so my budget is abit misleading probably) however the M40's are in my budget so how do those compare to the M50's or the HD555? could also hardly find anything by Beyerdynamic and its all way too expensive so my choice really boils down to the Audio Technica ATH-M40's or the ATH-T500's.
EDIT: after some more digging it seems i cant even buy the ATH-AD700's or AD900's here unless I order from overseas...
The best Sennheisers I could find in my price range are the HD485/HD515 and HD555's so its really between those and the ATH-M40/T500