If you are looking to cancel out all external noise, choose a sealed headphone
design, not an open air design like the Sennheiser HD 490. Sennheiser does
make a few sealed headphones. Go here to find out what they have to offer:
http//www.headphone.com/ProductsHeadphones/HeadphoneList.asp
The other problem lies within the output level of a portable unit like a
discman or minidisc player. The HD 490 should sound great if they are hooked
up to your home cd player or stereo since the source is sending more juice to
your headphones.
Therefore, a typical headphone enthusiast will tell you that most Sennheiser
headphones require a headphone amp to drive the headphones to their potential
when you are using them for portable units.
The HD 490 is one of the less expensive headphone offerings from Sennheiser,
and incidentally what can be said about Sennheiser's higher end heaphones
cannot be said about their lower end headphones. Typically Sennheiser's higher
end stuff is considered the best around, while their lower end tends to not
receive the same high praises.
The headphone issue came up on the ambient list a day or two ago. It seems
that the overall opinion was that for under $100 the best open air design
headphone was the Grado SR-60. I have a pair and they do sound great, although
on my minidisc portable they are never super loud; but supposedly these are
the best for a portable (unamplified of course). Koss and Sony make sealed
headphones just under $100 that are decent too.
Anyone wanting to spend over $100 should consider Sennheiser first, but they
should also strongly consider buying an amp for portable use.
--Bill
quoted 1 line ===== Original Message From Trung Chan Vuong <tcvuong@learn.senecac.on.ca>>===== Original Message From Trung Chan Vuong <tcvuong@learn.senecac.on.ca>quoted 9 lines I recently purchased a Sennheiser HD 490>I recently purchased a Sennheiser HD 490
>headphone because I know Sennheiser is praised for its headphone. But the
>ones I got, the volume output level is pretty low. Even when I crank up my
>discman to the max, I can still hear the noise on the moving bus. I was
>just wondering if this is normal with most Sennheiser headphone, and if
>you've got a pair of HD 490, even better, you can tell it to me straight if
>I got a bad pair or all of them have low volume output. Thanks!
>
>AtL-5