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Looking for New Headphone Recommendations for FOH

TheEarlOfCroydon

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Jul 10, 2024
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Hi everyone,

I'm a live sound engineer looking to upgrade my headphones for Front of House (FOH) work. Currently, I have Audio Technica M50x headphones, which have been reliable for the past three years but are now starting to wear out. Prior to these, I used Sennheiser HD 25s. They were fantastic for their loudness, though they weren’t particularly flat in terms of frequency response.

Recently, I tried out Neumann NDH 20s, but unfortunately, they turned out to be the worst headphones I’ve ever used—so dull they were unusable.

I’m looking for headphones (Ideally closed back) that are as flat as possible and straight out of the box since I won’t be applying any EQ on the desk to that output.

Any recommendations from fellow live sound engineers on this forum would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!
Mike.
 
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Hi @TheEarlOfCroydon! Welcome to ASR.

Not an audio engineer, but I'd try the Austrian Hi-X60.

You can find Amir's full review here:

And oratory1990's frequency response measurements here:

The NDH-20 is indeed dull with a deep midrange recession:
 
A budget option that I'm exploring for my front of house work is the 7hz Crinacle zero:2 in-ears and the Truthear Zero:Red In ears.

With the right gels, isolation should be good and they both have a neutral sounding frequency response out of the box, with the Reds coming really close to ASR's target Harman curve.

Many closed backs I've seen needed a fair amount of EQ to give a neutral enough sound for judging mix decisions. If you can EQ the headphone jack on the mixer, it opens up many possibilities in all price ranges.
 
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For closed backs out of the box that have a neutral response, you can sort the ASR headphone review index by "recommended". There aren't a ton of recommended closed backs, so it's a quick pause.
 
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