iPod A good pair of headphones

Mikey- said:

I need a new pair of headphones for my iPod Nano 4G because the sound is too low.
I need a pair that will make the music loud and drown out background noise.

Can anyone recommend any that are under say £40 or under and non like these please:

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Skull Candy makes nice over the ear headphones. Like this



these are 49.95



39.95

i like canal-bud style, that basically work as ear plugs to block outside sound. they work excellent. they can get very loud (though my hearing was damaged as a teenage by loud music, so i don't blast it anymore). the headphones that i have and love are etymotic research ER-6i. I have heard good things about the hf5's too. etymotic is a great company. the ER-6i's have a retail price of $149, but i got them on amazon.com for around $75, if i remember correctly. that's close to £40, right? my currency converter says that £40 equals roughly $60, and $75 is roughly £50... worth a little extra money if you ask me. i love them.

Your image has dissappeared now, so I don't know which ones you don't like, but you will damage your hearing by playing music too loud. Get some "ear bud" type headphones which will allow you to play music at a safe volume whilst cancelling out external noise. I got a pair of Sennheiser (CX 300) for £17 on Amazon and they work great. You can get some CX 500s for £30, what the difference is I'm not sure as I am tone deaf, so it makes little difference to me. As long as I can't hear the chavs' autotune monstrosities on the bus I'm happy =]

his image was an example of a large over-the-ear design.

bozz2006 said:

i like canal-bud style, that basically work as ear plugs to block outside sound. they work excellent. they can get very loud (though my hearing was damaged as a teenage by loud music, so i don't blast it anymore). the headphones that i have and love are etymotic research ER-6i. I have heard good things about the hf5's too. etymotic is a great company. the ER-6i's have a retail price of $149, but i got them on amazon.com for around $75, if i remember correctly. that's close to £40, right? my currency converter says that £40 equals roughly $60, and $75 is roughly £50... worth a little extra money if you ask me. i love them.

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^^ This, basically. I bought a pair of Future Sonics FS1 phones for $25 a few years ago, just because they were cheap and super marked-down. They are easily better than the Vmoda Vibes that I spent $100 on. The FS1s come with the canal style bud. I rarely have my ipod on above half volume even on the bus.

If you really want to successfully drown out noise, those closed-back headphones really are the best. I successfully drowned out lots of sound for years using a pair of these:

http://www.sennheiser.co.uk/uk/icm.nsf/root/05176

(link is to Sennheiser HD-202 product page, but I bought them from a Hi-fi shop)

They used to cost about £35/$60 and they sound beautiful - especially compared to in-ear headphones. They really do drown out noise and they are plenty loud enough to cause permanent ear damage if that's what you want (though I don't recommend it).

These days I work in a very quiet office with no annoying distractions

adrian.oconnor said:

If you really want to successfully drown out noise, those closed-back headphones really are the best. I successfully drowned out lots of sound for years using a pair of these:

http://www.sennheiser.co.uk/uk/icm.nsf/root/05176

(link is to Sennheiser HD-202 product page, but I bought them from a Hi-fi shop)

They used to cost about £35/$60 and they sound beautiful - especially compared to in-ear headphones. They really do drown out noise and they are plenty loud enough to cause permanent ear damage if that's what you want (though I don't recommend it).

These days I work in a very quiet office with no annoying distractions

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I agree. I used to use the earbuds but now I feel like the closed backs are where it is at. I use a pair of these (http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-...or/model.RP-HTX7-G1_11002_7000000000000005702) for the office and they work really nice (Fantastic Frequency Response!)

If you want to block out external noise, you're really looking at getting noise-canceling specific headphones, least you want to go deaf from playing music too loud and never be able to properly hear music again.
With noise canceling headphones, you're either looking an in ear monitors (aka canalphones), or noise canceling headphones. If you travel, or move around with listening to music a lot, I recommend IEM.
I'm the pricing of headphones in pounds, but some brands to look at are, Shure, Etymotics, Ultimate ears, Weston. Sennheiser, Koss, V Moda, amongst others also make IEM, although I haven't used all of them.

I'm not too sure about noise canceling headphones, because I use open back headphones (having IEM as a noise canceling solution), but it wouldn't be hard to research that. Sennheiser, Sony, Audio Technica, I'm willing to bet make some, most likely in your price range.

If you specifically want headphone that will play loudly, look at the Ohm spec for the headphone, the lower the number the easier the headphone is to drive. Headphones with a higher number won't be able to be powered by a ipod's sub-par amp.
If want you headphones louder and more importantly to sound better at all volumes, you can look at getting a portable amp, to bypass the ipods one (which I already said is subpar). But it's above your price range, and I wouldn't recommend getting an headphone amp, unless you have headphones that are good enough to benefit (i.e. are very detailed and accurate, like high end IEM), or won't work without the extra power (high ohms).

Hoped that helped.

Also don't get skullcandy's like one of the people replied. Their are **** sounding (objective), and have poor build quality (objective) and make my eyes bleed their so ugly (subjective)