7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Great bang for the buck
Date of Review: May 9, 2001
The Bottom Line: Not the holy grail for audiophiles, but great performance for a good price. Can be driven by a variety of sources.
When I started looking for a better sounding replacement for my ear-crusher $20 Sony MDR-V100 headphones, I narrowed my list down to a few requirements. They were as follows:
-Around the ear design (circumaural).
-Efficient enough to be driven by a portable or sound card without an amp.
-Closed from the outside world.
-Comfortable for several hours a day.
-Little or no sound leakage, since I primarily listen at work.
I found a few headphones that would meet my requirements from researching epinions, headwize.com and headphone.com, but I disqualified all but the Denons due to a variety of factors:
-Beyerdynamic DT831 and others: Impedance too high to drive effectively with my soundcard, and price.
-Etymotic ER-4P: I came close to getting these. The cost was much higher, though, and the insertion process can be a problem if you take them out often to converse with co-workers. Also, they may offer too much isolation. (I don't want anyone sneaking up on me!)
-Sony V6: I had read reports of unnatural bass, and I also already have a lot of Sony products, and I wanted to try something different.
Sound
I am very happy with the sound of the Denons. It is very smooth and even through the audible range. The bass is very clean, not boomy, and the mids sound natural. I can get plenty of volume from the computer's sound card, and the system as a whole sounds very good using CDs or clean MP3s.
Isolation
Isolation is good, but not excellent. If you look at a picture of the Denons, you can see a small grill on each headphone can. This lets a very small amount of sound in and out. You may disturb an office mate in a very quiet environment with loud volume levels, but I have not had a problem yet, and my office is pretty quiet. The grills are necessary for the sound reproduction of these 'phones. When I cover them, the bass sounds very thin. I assume that this is because the enclosure is supposed to be ventilated, and when you seal it up, you limit the movement of the driver. Overall, I think Denon made a good compromise between isolation and good sound. Higher end headphones are mostly open design, but they let in a lot of outside noise, and they might as well be desktop speakers as far as your neighbor is concerned!
Comfort
I am not quite satisfied with the comfort of these 'phones after 45 minutes or so. Although they are an around the ear design, the earcups are neither deep enough nor big enough around to not put pressure on my ears. From my measurements, the inside of the earcup is an oval about 1.5" x 2.2" and 0.6" deep. Try to see if your ears fit in that volume. I didn't think my ears were that big (no one thinks that _they're_ the funny-looking one, right?). Of course, an earcup designed to totally contain anyone's ears without pressure would be very large, and perhaps too heavy to be comfortable. Also, a lot of 'phones are an on the ear design anyway, and people seem to struggle on regardless. I think I need to experiment some more with positioning and perhaps bend the headband out a little.
Conclusion
I would recommend these phones on the basis of sound quality and acceptable isolation. It would be in your best interest to try them on first if you can find them locally. I bought mine from consumer-direct.com for $120.
