Review: beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro 80 Ohm Limited Black Edition Headphones

Beyerdynamic is most widely known for their studio headphone solutions. In fact, if you look up any “top 10” ranked chart on best performing headphones for the studio/mixing, you will typically see them pop up within the top 5. They seem to have an answer no matter what kind of preference you are looking for, and this includes price range as well, ranging anywhere from well under $100 to over $1,000 (their most expensive being their T1).

One of their most successful models however, typically runs less than $200. This is their DT 770 Pro, closed over-ear headphones. It comes in multiple impedances, including 32, 80 and 250 Ohms (you can find a video below detailing what this means), and it is most popular when it comes to mixing/monitoring.

We just happen to have the DT 770 Pro 80 Ohm Limited Black Edition pair here that we have been putting to the test–and now we get to deliver on the results.

Design

Their design is an all black (like the limited edition title makes reference to) plastic/aluminum approach, with muffs that are large enough to accomodate any average size of ear. Most of the materials are plastic outside of the band that wraps around your head and grabs onto each muff. The wire going between the muffs is external and travels neatly through the cushioning around the band, and offers enough length so that each side can be slide in and out (adjusting for the size of your head) without any tugging.

The foam cushions around the ears are wrapped in felt, and the cushion around the band is wrapped in a soft leather. All three cushions are removable for easy replacement or maintenance (cleaning), making this an ideal candidate for live entertainment purposes (FOH during concerts and events, in the studio, cameras crews and so forth). The cushion around the band is quite soft and feels great around the head. The foam under the felt on the muffs appears to be closer to a medium-soft, but still feels pretty good around the ears (you might find yourself adjusting them slightly after long periods of use, but they are still quite fine in these situations).

They are a closed-back design, which keeps the sound in your ears isolated from those around you. This leads to a slightly smaller soundstage than the open-back alternative, but this is made up for in other areas. It also means you are more isolated from the external sounds of your environment, keeping your focus on what you are trying to listen to.

The cable is permanently attached to the headphones, so there is no swapping it out. This means DO NOT damage the cable! So if your chair has wheels, don’t shotgun yourself across the room to reach equipment more than a few meters away. Thankfully, they are bulky enough that won’t forget them around your neck or anything.

Performance

We have been carefully listening to headphones all week, to see how they live up to the expectations of our ears, diving into both mixing and reference listening. The results have been pretty positive among everyone who gave them a try, and although they aren’t perfect, they do prove to be a great product for their price compared to some of the alternatives within the $100-$300 range (challenging many models from companies like Sennheiser–comparable if not better to some of their models within this range). This explains why they are selling so well.

First before anything, we have to point out that they perform best when driven by a source that is well compatible with being paired with an 80 Ohm pair of headphones. An external amp of any sort is perfect for this. You can see in the video below that we them up against a number of external solutions (ie, Dragonfly USB DAC black or red, and the FiiO E10K USB DAC, to name a few), most of which did a great job. That being said, these will still function plugged directly into any source (including small media/portable devices). You just might not get the full range out of them and/or the volume you might have been hoping for. So this kind of makes them a great all-around version among the three impedance options available, since they offer a wide range of performance and compatibility. In our tests, we obviously focused heavily on the use of an amp for reference listening, and directly plugged into the board when testing them against a console for mixing.

Ad – Buy the DT 770 Pro Black Edition headphones on Amazon today from Projection Supercenter!

We noticed that the Dragonfly Black edition DAC helped to really get these headphones off the ground. Leading to rich detail and range, although not fully living up to their full potential. This can easily be seen by switching between this pair and a pair of beyerdynamic Aventho headphones. The Aventhos require less to drive, and with a PC’s volume of 1-100, we were able to get a similar dB level at around 6, compared to about 14 with the DT 770 Pro’s.

Switching over to the Dragonfly Red edition or the FiiO did a bit better, and moving up to a Little Dot MK2 (this little guy can feed impedances of up to 600 Ohms for less than $200) really did the job nicely–nothing like the warmth of a tube.

Of course if you are going to use a DAC, I always recommend a good source. MP3s don’t exactly qualify as this. You can get your hands on some nice 320kbps MP3s, but they aren’t going to live up to lossless formats like FLAC or better. If you are going to spend the money on nice headphones, you might as well make sure you don’t have any weak links in your setup. This includes source, amp and of course the headphones (and sometimes your cables depending on how deep you want to travel down the rabbit hole in quality).

We pit these up against some of our favorite artists to test to; including Beck, Eagles, Dire Straits, Sting, and more. All of which were high quality FLAC files or better, and all of which sounded great. Again, they aren’t perfect, but they sound great for their price.

Bass response is fantastic. This means they will respond quite well to movies just as much as they do music. There is a deep focus on lows, while maintaining a quality range, bringing out the details in such. Because of this, they perform really well with bassy tracks like hip hop, hard rock, and club. They would be perfect for DJs both big and small thanks to this.

They don’t quite feel audiophile in quality, but they come decently close and they are great for mixing/recording. Since they offer a heavy emphasis on bass, they aren’t the perfect flat response solution (if that’s what you are looking for). That being said, the mids and highs are mostly flat. The highs could be just a “tad” crisper by my taste, but they still come through quite nicely. If you make use of an external amp that has some basic EQ adjustment, you can use that slightly to flatten out the lows with, bring up the highs ever so slightly and you will have an amazing solution for most mixing situations (given, most people just plug directly into the board and don’t go through all the trouble).

I brought in a friend of mine (local female artist) who has an amazing voice range. She got to play with the headphones a little and test them against her voice. We didn’t get her permission to record anything this round, but we still had enough to form an opinion with. We took her into our demo theater room (where we test a lot of the home A/V products that come in) since it is acoustically corrected. Although it is balanced out for a theater experience and not a true recording studio, it still generally works great for this kind of situation. We put her in front of a large diaphram mic, and she gave us her spin on both “Spanish Harlem” and “Ain’t No Sunshine”–both live to track and some isolated vocals. If it was for the purpose of mixing a live show, I might have still pointed out the highs needing to be “slightly” crisper again, however if we were putting together an album, I would have been in love with using these.

What’s in the box?

This part is easy. Since the cable is not detachable, this is already included as being part of the headphones themselves. This leaves you with a 1/4-inch adapter (which comes already screwed to the 3.5mm end), a thin drawstring bag to carry them around in, and some typical documents that covers things like your warranty. That’s it–real simple!

Our Conclusion

In the end, these wound up being a good pair of reference listening headphones. Not quite audiophile, but they do deliver. They offer an emphasis on bass, which leads them away from being perfectly flat response, but this also makes them enjoyable for music that favors those lower frequencies. This also makes them great for watching movies on the go or at your PC. Best when paired with a quality headphone amp solution yet will still work with anything you plug them into (with a little loss of range and volume without using an amp). They are also fantastic when it comes to mixing/recording.

*Average price is based on the time this article was published

Video:

Additional Images:

Specifications:

• Transducer type: Dynamic
• Operating principle: Closed
• Nominal frequency response: 5 – 35,000 Hz
• Nominal impedance: 80 ? (also available in 32 ? and 250 ?)
• Nominal SPL: 96 dB SPL
• Nominal T.H.D: < 0.2%
• Power handling capacity: 100 mW
• Sound coupling to ear: Circumaural
• Ambient noise isolation: approx. 18 dBA
• Nominal headband pressure: approx. 3.5 N
• Weight (without cable): 270 g
• Length and type of cable: 3 m / straight cable
• Connection: Gold plated stereo, 3.5mm and ¼” adapter

Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.