If you can spare the money, you could try a Sennheiser HD 800… it is pretty pricy though, certainly not for those who cannot afford AKG K240’s. ($1.500 stock price)
AKG K242s here, which I think are basically the same as the K240, but marketed towards consumers. And I love them. Before that I had Beyer DT990 pro’s. I know that these are often named as the best headphones, but personally, I like the AKGs better and I think that my mixes have improved since I’ve had them. The Beyers are probably more detailed, but I just like the way the AKGs sound. Also, in the 2.5 years that I had the DT990, two drivers died for no apparent reason. The first one took them months to repair, the second one died just a few months after the warranty had expired. 
Just to give my input too - I have now bought myself a pair of Porta Pros. The soundquality is way over the pricerange considering that I bought ‘em for only about 25 Euros. Of course I’m gonna get some better ones in the future, but still this (I think) is a pretty good deal to the price!
The sound is great, don’t know how great they are for mastering, but still pretty clean and good bass.
A minus is that they aren’t closed, so people can pretty easily hear the music too and get pretty annoyed if staying close too … But that’s not ma’ problem! 
If you are the only one in the surrounding using them and no-one else around, open headphones don’t wear you out. You can do hours in one session whereas with closed headphones you usually get sore ears, sweaty ears and tired hearing.
I really prefer open above closed ones imho.
seem to? test out another set of headphones. you may get lucky and find its only one of your ears that have blown up and your phones are fine.
heh, no I’m pretty sure one side was blown, tested it with other headphones.
Saw this posted on another forum;
+1 for the Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro. Got them from my uncle for christmas a couple of years ago, and i absolutely love them 
THIS. I also use some cheapo 30€ headphones (originally for drummers) that’s far from linear. It lifts bass and mid, i use them to see if it punches well. 
In comparison to those, the bass of the DT770 Pro sounds a bit whimpy (but cleaner!).
I also wanted to add that there are two variants, 80 Ohm & 250 Ohm. If you’re using some standard sound card, the 250 Ohm may be too quiet.
Dude! 300€?! 
Where do you live? The price i get is 149€ for any of the DT 770/880/990…
What’s your budget? If you are looking for production headphones as i assume, i wouldn’t recommend to get anything much lower than 100€. There are some cases which are ok.
Considering the price, these are great option. I have those ones and i can recommend them for low budget.
I assume you’ve all heard of Headroom? (Website http://www.headphone.com ) which has measurements of most headphone you can think of with frequency response, distortion, impedance and square wave responses charted and displayable against each other.
EG: DT770, DT880, DT990 Frequency Response comparision.
(No .png images allowed on this board??)
I’m using AKG K518DJ black edition, the sound is really great for the price. For bedroom hobbyist studio, it’s a good deal in my opinion. Just one thing to know : they are tight, especially on my big head 
I’m using Shure srh440, which is a closed back solution. This is because my ‘studio’ is just a nook in the living room… It’s my first pair of non-cheap headphones, so I’m no expert, but I’ve been really pleased with them so far. Cannot use them for extremely long sessions, though; the tightness/sound isolation (which is VERY good) will give rise to ear fatigue…
I bought the Beyerdynamic DT 770 pro based on Carmazine’s and others posts without doing any research first…
I’m absolutely thrilled with them. They are beautifully engineered, super comfortable and produce fantastic sound.
Hehe, there are two different DT990’s there is the DT990 Edition and the DT990 Pro.
The “Pro” is €149 and the “edition” is €299 at e.g. Thomman.
I have Audio Technica too, ATH-M50. Pretty good for the buck! they enclose around the ears real nice, really good if you record vocals, like I do. plus you can twist them phones around, so they’re really good for dj-ing or if someone talks to you when they’re on or whatever 
they’re great actually.
Just bought a pair of Vmoda’s “Military Grade” Crossfade LP2s.
![http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=0&graphID[]=713&graphID[]=723&graphID[]=2141.png](http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=0&graphID%5B%5D=713&graphID%5B%5D=723&graphID%5B%5D=2141.png){kind=link}
Best damn pair of cans I’ve ever owned. WAY better than the Sennheiser HD280s I recommended here previously, which I now would consider an utter POS. Plus you can run them over with a tank and they still work, which is good because that’s how my year old HD280s were put out of their misery after the right channel started to crackle after 8 or so months of normal use. #@$
imo:
porta pro: reeeally muddy but cool bass and highs, but really nothing to try to master with it imo
superlux 668b: overall cool sound, deep but a bit muddy bass, very weird highs (dip+peak)
hd 558: a bit muddy, not bright and not very detailed, but cool bass and good overall sound/soundstage
hd 598: can’t remember, they’re a bit ugly, but sounded cool, probably like 558 since same driver
hd 600: quite detailed, really balanced, not dark, “funny”, can rather easily distort with loud bass
hd 650: without proper amp you can forget these, detailed, dark, very cool lower mids/bass and so great for movies and orchestral
k701: very detailed (but a bit bright), tight (little, varies with burn in obv) bass that tells much without gaining all your focus, very good mids, fatigues ears a bit with certain tracks
dt 880/250: overall most balanced maybe, detailed, fatigues ears rather soon (the peak at 10khz), mids not enaugh forward
dt 990/250: bombastic no-mids sound, i felt joked with these
hd 280 pro: headband breaks easily, punchy bass that goes low, some peak in the highs, used them a lot for some reason
but imho speakers give allways a better bass, monitors have more flat freqency range, the right loudness of instruments (drums) and the right (full crossfeed) stereo sound, so that nothing is located in my brain, ears, head etc
and… i’ve never had comfy headphones, aaalll are uncomfortable, the headbands hurt after some time and you move them and in-ears hurt the ear… and i’ve never found any click or pop in a track with a headphone, so i won’t really bother using headphones anymore
gonna have cool behringer monitors soon, they just cannot hurt anywhere unless i drop them onto my feet
One pair and one pair ONLY Audio Technicas m-50’s period.
Thats all
Bless.
-Kid.
another very subjective, but humble opinion:
for a moment, forget about grado, sennheiser (especially sennheiser), akg, beyerdynamic, ultrasone, whatever (never heard audio technicas tho).
i’ve been looking for years to find a pair of headphone that matches my list of preferences, which looks somewhat like this:
- rich and detailed overall sound
- high transparancy
- appealing stereo image / broad stage
- satisfying bass response (lotsa “audiophile” cans seem to be solely designed for classical music, since they start to distort easily at higher levels)
- unintrusive yet detailed representation of the high frequency range
- able to cope with high levels without distortion
- least-fatiguing
- doesn’t cost a fortune
the one that has it all (for me) is the “Denon AH-D2000” (or D5000/D7000 if your wallet is prepared)
it’s a brand which is seldom seen on a head-fi’s shopping list, but i guess that’s actually due to ther ignorance towards that brand. ("denon? how can they be good where there are brands like sennheiser, akg or grado?)
those headphones definately need some run-in phase until their membranes get “less stiff”, because elsewhat you’ll have the impression that it simply tortures you with a bass that literally makes your entire ears shake (which is funny at first feeling-wise, but get’s annoying after a while and is besides that anything but honest to the source audio).
i had mine play at pretty high level for one night, i went to bed and when i woke up to take them for another listen, those cans were ready to continuously put smiles on my face.
the regular price here in germany is about 270,- EUR. i bought mine like 2 years ago for about the same price.
amazon.de sometimes has a good deal on them. i’ve seen them for 199,- and they’re currently available at 239,- EUR there.
the D5000 / D7000 sound even better (ofc) - a bit more balanced, more detailed - but as i’m not crazy enough to blow 900 EUR on a headphone, the D2000 have to suffice and i am really overly content with them.
so if you’re looking for to make a purchase in that price-range, give them a chance at least !