I've had my pair of Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro headphones for a little over 5 years. While that's a good amount of time, that's not long for a good pair of headphones. My pair broke the other day, and not sure it's worth the effort to repair them.

While I have had mixed feelings about the headphones, I am sad to see them go. They were crazy comfortable and worked well over long periods of time. Sound quality was good but didn't live up to my expectations.

Current state of my DT880 Pros

While I likely can repair these, I am not sure how well they will hold up. The cord is very poorly designed on the DT880's and is why they don't work right now. A few years ago I moved into a new house and my computer is now on the other side of me and the cord kept pulling across my neck so I decided to re-wire them. I swapped the left and right so I could keep the cord on my right side and not have it tensioned across my neck/chest. So I am very familiar taking them apart and wiring them, but as you can see the terminals are no longer connected and it isn't something you can just solder. They slide into place and the more they shift the more likely they won't hold in place anymore.

I decided I had better things to do, so I was going to order a new pair. I really wanted a pair of Sennheiser HD 700 or Hifiman HE 560's. At $500 a pair, I decided now was not the time to spend that sort of money even if I use them for 8+ hours a day.

Sennheiser HD 700

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Hifiman HE 560

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While the HD 700 was a really nice option, the HE 560 was what I really wanted to get. Unfortunately, they are very expensive and have inconsistent quality control.

I ended up settling on the Sennheiser HD 598 for two reasons, price and soundstage.

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The HD 598 Special Edition is only $170 on Amazon. They are widely accepted as one of the best headphones for gaming as they offer a very large soundstage allowing you to head footsteps and gunshots with amazing precision. There were two considerations I had when choosing my next set of headphones, gaming, and music. Both of them are equally important to me.

The HD 598 is an open headphone, this means the outside is not closed off as you can see by the grill on the sides. This allows you to have a larger soundstage but less bass. The soundstage is important for certain types of music but critical for gaming. While both can be used for both applications, closed headphones eliminate almost all ambient noise from your environment. While this is ideal in many cases, as a father it isn't ideal. I also don't live in a noisy environment so there isn't much to drown out.

Sennheiser headphones are known for being very neutral, something I look for in headphones. I don't like an artificial flavor like the massive bass Beats by Dre artificially add to your music. I prefer to have a sound that as accurate to the original music as possible. I can change it from there if I want to (I typically don't) but I don't want it forced on me.

So far I haven't had a lot of time with the HD 598 and they haven't been fully broken in yet. Something that is important for new headphones to reach their optimal performance. That being said, I am very happy with my choice, they sound fantastic, they are comfortable but not nearly as comfortable as my DT880's. After a week I should have a good opinion of what I really think about them.

These cost less than what I paid for the DT880's, and I likely would have been happier with these the first time around. I did far more research when I bought the DT880's than I did this time around. Although my options were very clear this time around, HD 700, HD 598, or the HE 560 are clearly the best options available. Although the AKG K7XX is a very popular option for gaming, it wasn't high on my list. It probably should have been, but the HD 598 really stood out beyond all others even against the HD 700 and were extremely affordable.

At some point, I really want to get a pair of HE 560 or HD 700 and see what I'm missing.

Schit Stack

I am seriously considering an external DAC and AMP, and the most obvious choice is the Schiit Stack. The Schiit Stack is two $99 devices that act as an external DAC (Digitial Analog Converter) and Amplifier.

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Most sound cards cannot properly drive quality headphones and will retard the performance of quality cans (headphones). There are a few options from Schiit that are very high quality for short money, but the base Magni & Modi combo runs only $200. They have some more expensive options with tubes for a different flavor and even better performance.

I'm still on the fence if I want to drop another $199+ on a DAC/AMP. As I run an MSI M5 Gaming Z270 motherboard, I have a very good sound card on board, but it will not give 100% performance out of the HD 598 even though they are only 50 ohms. Good headphones can run as high as 600 ohms and become very difficult to drive without a very powerful amplifier.

I would pick up the Schiit stack in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the fact I would need to run more cables in an already cable nightmare. I really want to try it though and see how much of a difference it is. For $199 it is very tempting. I'll let you know if I end up getting them and try them out.

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