Headphones

About once a year, I go on a hunt for a pair of headphones. Last year, I picked up a Sennheiser HD570 set. I found them to be a great pair for home listening, but they're not exactly what I'd call 'portable'. I also bought some inexpensive cans for the Spine Radio Studios, but they're hardly ideal.

VS.

What I'd really like to find is a set of headphones that can block most of the ambient sound so that I can only hear what I'm monitoring. More than once I've tried to record a rock show, and I only found out afterwards that my recording was crap -- I couldn't distinguish between my recording and the actual show, and the levels were completely overloaded. I only have a little MP3 player to record on, and I suppose the real solution is to buy a proper solid-state recorder with VU meters and other indications that the recording was peaking, but those are generally pretty expensive.

My other problem is that my head is just fucking huge. This presents two issues with the majority of headphones out there today. Headphones that fit other people constantly squeeze my head and give me massive headaches if I wear them for any appreciable amount of time. Headphones that don't cover the entire ear are just uncomfortable.

Those HD-570s I talked about before completely cover my entire ear, and are actually very comfortable for me. Does anyone know if there is a "closed" style of those? Closed, as opposed to open style, is important, because when you have a microphone in your face, and headphones on your ears, sound can bleed back into the mic. While this doesn't cause the feedback squeal that having your speakers & mic on at the same time would, it'll give you a weird sounding reverb.

I don't expect anyone else has these problems, but on the off chance that somebody does, what did you do?

Originally posted on Monday, 2006-11-06 at 14:19:06.