who makes a good set of headphones

Grados are excellent headphones but wearing them and keeping them on the head for a long time is a hell of a pain.
Senheiser HD-600 are not close to the quality of sound to the RS1 but great to wear and great value.

Stax is the world ear standard that designes great headphone with their own drivers and to me I believe that Stax combines the comfort of Senns and quality of Grados.

I have a combo Stax Lambda with Stax SRM1 headphone driver that plugs in to either tape output of the preamp or any line output of the source.

Through the headphones you can even more hear the small-tiny differences and noises. When I listen to the records through the headphones I specifically and thoroughly clean them with VPI before spinning. Anything imperfect can be opened through the headphones and that's why a dedicated headphone amp is important or a dedicated high quality built-in unit can also be helpful.

Very often for the headphone output manufacturers just place the matching transformer from the basic preamp circuit to go cheap and this solution drives listeners off getting onto headphone systems due to the high level of noise and distortions of transfered signal. Many preamps or sources with built-in headphone output can't handle high impedance headphones such as Sennheiser HD600. Grados are low-impedance headphones that can probably perform OK with built-in outs but having their dedicated headphone amp you can gradually hear a bunch of differences. Grado headphone amp at the same time absolutely helpless to drive Senns. That is sought in volume control when you realy don't understand which volume position where you can have a full range without even speaking of music huh...

So headphones with the matched headphone amp can give you and will certainly give you more defined and holographic music than any any speakers.

I have a Musical Fidelity tube headphone amp with Grade sr 125 headphones. sounds very, very good; so good I wonder why I have these big speakers and amps sitting here since I am the only one that usually listens to the stuff.

MF Can ver2 amp and Sendheiser 600 headphones sound very very sweet. I changed the tubes to Amperex and it sounds even better.

if you need isolation buy the ety's, otherwise buy the $69 Grado's and start saving for the Grado RS-1's or the Stax. you will never regret it and the $69 Grado's are fantastic and will easily get you by while you save.
if you listen to much rock n roll the Stax may not do it for you. if I listened to mostly classical and/or acoustic jazz I'd have the Lambda's.

I've owned Grado 125'S, 225's and 325's but I swear the RS's blow the rest away by so great a margin that they are worth waiting for. the $69 grados are 85% as good as the more expensive models until you reach the rs-2's. then it's a leap!

I've used a lotta great headphone amps but believe that the 1st thing to do is to get killer phones. the grado's will blow you away even without an amp - even the $69 ones. then you can improve your source and amplification til the cows come home. have fun!

akg1000 are the best dynamic headphones.I also have grado rs-1 that I have used wth the cary 300sei.However the akg1000 is much better.The akg1000 have a wonderful organic sound with ahuge soundstage.The headroom web site is great resource for headphones...check it out.