^ it is, and to be honest as long as you learn whatever it is you pick up by cross referencing on different speakers what ever you choose will be fine.

Of course, my MS1's are still the best.

Sennheisers – for frequency response, comfort and fidelity.

I have *very* sensitive hearing (possibly due to a combination of gender and an ear operation at age 7),  I don't know that I will ever use anything else.

On second thought, it's an awfully subjective issue you've raised here...

Had my Beyerdynamic's on from 6pm - 2am... hardly noticed.... it certainly has comfortable covered :-)  Ears are a little warm though (mine are the closed model) but not enough for me to notice until I took em off.

The 880s dont seem too bad though, comparing the freq responses. It's the open ear I'm sure that gives it the less weird bassyness.
I'm still thinking about which.

Right. Of course I wasn't planning on mastering only with them, just for composition so I don't irritate others around me. I have some decent cheap headphones too, was just looking at more of a keep it flat  and comfortable solution. Food for thought though.

Trash don't get the Beyerdynamic's, they're low and high freq heavy, the dynamics aren't right. The Sennheisers are closer what you want (which would ideally be some high end *NS-10s* :):) barf not, )But really the AKGs will fall apart on you in two years.

I gave up on headphones a long time ago, and use --insert flat active speaker-- for checking compression and eq, then use a cheapo yet indestructible pair of Philips SHP2500s, so cheap in fact you can get a second pair for the vocalist your recording, and they have a built in volume control on the cable, for general phoning.

There's one cool pair of headphones specifically for vocal recording though I started using, the EX-29 extreme isolation phones because they almost eliminate bleed through. The high frequency response is piss poor though. I think theres better headphones out there with similar isolation specs though.

i've been using a pair of shure SRH840's. they sound really good, even without a pre-amp, real comfy, and the headphone cord is extremely easy to replace (which is a plus for someone who just destroys his shit the way i do). they're recent so i can't say how long they last.

also they were half off on amazon when i got them. now they're like $100 off. (http://www.amazon.com/Shure-SRH840-Prof … S2CB0E2L5G)

I have a different (slightly lower end) pair of AKGs, the 240 MK II, they're good quality, but very slightly bassy, possibly to compensate for being semi-open? I dunno, but they are good.

In ear monitors?  I've been looking at getting a pair, if only to protect my precious cochlea...

Grados sound pretty distinct though (i.e. not "flat", per se). You might not like the sound balance which some complain is too harsh in the high-end, although I own a pair of Alessandro MS-Pro's and they really are just perfect imo. Additionally they fit very differently to a lot of other headphones and you might end up wanting to change or modify the pads for extended periods of listening.

I see Sennheiser HD650s get a lot of mentions on other forums so they're probably worth auditioning too.

Allessandro MS1 are quite fantastic- best 99 dollars I ever spent, significantly better than the similarly priced grados they are based on and I much prefer them to the DT770 too.

Hmm interesting. The Beyerdynamic's seem to look super comfy! And really nice response too. Do you know what is suppose to be the major difference between the 880 and 770? The graphs I'm looking at seem to indicate that the 880 is a hair better- for whatever graphs are worth.  I know the 990s are open ear, but for the extra annoyance of other's hearing me, it doesn't seem to get much benefit.

*edit oh wait, the 880 are open ear and the 770 is closed. wtf is up with the 990. hehe.

Thanks for the input so far everyone. Writing these all down for investigation.

As above - Beyer 770/880/990's if you can afford them.  I have a pair of 770s and they're fantastic.

I'm on Beyerdynamic DT770's and love them.  Recently borrowed a pair of T5p's where are also amazing (until I give them back in March!).  Everything is crystal clear on both pairs and they will sit for 7 hours at a time on my head before I get hungry and realize I've spent that long in the K-hole.  The T5s have a little more magic in the way they handle the low end (so clean) but the 770's are stll very solid and hardly leak a thing (which is great for tracking... in the recording sense!).  Both are flat-ish as far as I'm aware; and certainly are fine for mixing and composition.

One of the big factors I found is driving them correctly.  I use a Musical Fidelity X-Can Class A valve pre which I got off ebay for $120.  Needed new caps but it's been incredible.  Just plug the DMG / Atari straight in.  I also use it from the line out of my USB sound card and use it to boost the output from the Mac.  Nothing quite powers cans in the same way as a high end preamp.  It has a transparent pass-though too and some of them have dedicated zero latency DACs in them too.

As a second to what iran sanad said, I have a pair of Audio-Technica cans I've been using for about 4 years--super comfortable, great sound, and they've taken a beating. 

I've also heard really good things about Grado headphones, for good sound/frequency response.  You might want to look into those as well.

I know two people who have this pair:

-  http://audio-technica.com.au/products/pro-audio/m50/

They sound awesome. Though they're -apparently- best for Djing more so than composition, they're really comfy, they last ages, and have a good frequency response.