When it comes to making music in a professional studio, home studio, or in your closet, mixing is 9-times-out-of-10 and mastering 9.9-times-out-of-10, is done with special speakers called Monitors. These monitors come in different sizes, speaker dimensions, looks and tunings. Normally, headphones come into the picture when you’re mixing in public waiting for you next class, on an airplane looking to get some work done, or for those that don’t have expensive monitors on their mixing desk. There is now a pair of headphones that matches the acoustic quality and sound of these special speakers, the Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro.
Blows the Competition Away
I have had the pleasure of testing out numerous brands, and types of said brands, over my lifetime and thought I’d heard it all. Crappy stuff, decent stuff, great stuff, and everything in between. I have finally found a pair that live up to the true definition of Awesome. The Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pros are a pair of headphones that I would personally use every time I was mixing a song while at my day job. I trust these cans to give me equal quality to my monitors at home. Now, I can enjoy my lunch breaks with personal work, instead of having to listen to Pete babble on about his nonsense!
Ear Pads Change Everything
I cannot recall if I’ve ever seen this technology before. Back in the day of early interchangeable ear cups, it was always a leatherette set and a fabric set. This allowed the user to pick a cup that is more comfortable to them, while allowing for the headset to go from Open to Closed. These new ear cups sonically change what you hear, but are both fabric and considered “open.” Beyerdynamic says that the sonic characteristics change from “Balanced” to “Analytical”.
I’m going to be honest with you guys (not that I wasn’t up until now, nor after this, it’s just an expression), I don’t fully understand what they mean by that. I have listened to both of them and I have a guess at what they’re going for, but I can’t give you a sound definition (haha, audio puns) on what they’re trying to do. The main difference between the two is their depth and their rim size. I feel that the pads that are deeper and have the thicker rim were giving a more directed and specific sound. The thinner pads were more rounded and felt more like very high end headphones.
With changing out the ear pads, I found that EQing the mix is better with the deeper/wider pads (analytical?) and mastering to make it sound like I want the people to hear was better with the thinner pads (balanced?). I wish I could be more exact or be able to explain in more detail what I heard. Those sentences make the most sense to me, and I hope that you can get a decent understanding of what I’m talking about.
The drivers are 45-mm dynamic Tesla Neodymium at 250 ohms. With a frequency response of 5-40,000 Hz, you’re never going to hear how good these can actually sound. Throw some stuff way up or way down and put them on your pet to see if they can hear something. There is a 3m (9.8 ft) straight cable and a 5m (16.4 ft) coiled cable that is detachable. Both cables feature a gold plated 3.5mm jack with a 1/4” adapter. Beyerdynamic has put in a mini XLR connector that connects into the physical headphones to give them a stronger physical connection, more balanced signal, and set their stuff apart from the rest of the cables you have lying around.
Off of that, and the 2nd set of ear pads, all fit perfectly in a zip hard case. With a full black look to them, they are stylish and look great around the studio as well as out in public. They don’t have anything that makes them stick out like a sore thumb, but the metal mesh on the outside will cause people to do a double take and try to figure out what they’re looking at.
Final Thoughts
Let’s be honest, if all you're looking for is a set of gaming headphones, this review may be a little over your head. I don’t mean to sound rude, but this type is stuff is not something that a typical gamer would use. I wanted to do a review of this because so many gamers are also doing side project on that same computer they’re playing their games on. There are people who are looking for the highest possible quality when it comes to their setup. There are people who are trying to make songs, covers, parodies, remixes and movies about the games that they love. When it comes to this higher level of production than making memes and GIFs, a higher quality product is needed.
This headset is quite possibly the best headset I have ever used (I’m talking straight from the computer to your ears, not talking about external mixers, DAC’s and headphone amps). For anybody who is looking to have a very high quality pair of headphones for personal and professional use, I can’t suggest these enough. The biggest thing that will hold people back from rocking these is the price tag.
Pros
- Sound quality of studio monitors
- Hard case that holds all parts at all times
- Interchangeable ear cups that actually change the acoustic pattern
- “Tesla” Drivers
- Interchangeable cables based on use-case-scenario
- German Engineering for long extended use
Cons
- Price: $599.99
The product discussed in this article was provided by the manufacturer for the purposes of review.
