OK, I got a stupid question...why did you not listen to the Sonys if he bragged on them so much? Were you just so annoyed with him that you went and did the opposite? :-)

Actually I merely bought the MDR-7506 because so many studios and other audio pros use them, so I concluded they must be pretty reliable cuz I have never heard complaints about them breaking down.

I don't really know much about the Senn closed back cans, I used to sell a lot of the open-air Senns when I was a wee lad in the audio retail business, and I do like their mics.

As a DJ, I have used many different headphones, from the Discwasher HP50 which I loved (but they finally crumbled cuz they were only consumer grade), to Koss and others. My most recent try was a Gemini with a single ear (fed by both channels) so you can hear ambient, and a boom mic. Too bad they were unreliable. I never did have a very high opinion of Gemini brand DJ equipment anyway. The most important factor to me as a DJ is that the cable must be from a single ear, not one cable from each ear merging below your chin, so if you quickly pull them off the back of your head the cables aren't stuck around your neck.

yea! well he never had the headphones with him, and i already had the sennheisers. These are fantastic as a DJ as the cups simply swivel round when you need a ear free. As for sennheiser mics, maplin have a fantastic offer on the e818sII mic. They were apparently 30 or 40 quid but was alerted by a shop selling them at 25. Then maplin had them for £20. I went to buy one and found them reduced to £15, so promptly bought 2! They come in a lovely case, xlr on one wnd and small mono jack on other (with adaptor). So they plug straight into the XM2, though im making up a wire so i can use the 2 of them as boundary mics,one onleft one on right channel (when ive got cam on a tripod or using a minidisk for sound source). Got to be better than the inbuilt.

Wow! That's an awesome price for a name-brand mic, even one that they call an "economy vocalist" model, it should be fine for picking up dialogue. And in my experience, anything you can do to get away from using the onboard camera mic will help, due to the fact that your mic can be closer to the talent to eliminate reverberation and won't be picking up camera mechanical noise.

At around $22 USD each, that's less than 1/4 the price of a Shure SM58 (the commonly accepted vocal mic). I wonder how much they would nick me to send them to the USA.

Anyone know how audio technica's ATH-M40fs would compare to the the sony 7506's?

Sorry anth, no idea,not come across 'technica' unless its 'technics, i had a pair of technics headphones, sounded good, but cable at plug was dodgy, and they became mono.
Re Mike above, yea, sm58s cost more in this country. senneiser mics very good for vocals, but the other day i tried to use one with my xm2 filming a coal fire burning. I wanted to capture the crackling of the fire, and also the howling of the wind from outside. The mic picked up part of the fire crackle noise. But the xm2's own mike actually fared better, and captured everything, which sounded great. Need to recheck on a good soundsystem, but hopefully there was no internal noise as i didnt need to zoom. Unfortunatley a mate decided to break wind and it picked up that is well, so work needed there!

Hahahaha, break like the wind! (remember Spinal Tap?) Could do a remake of the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles! :-)

Michael, Audio-Technica and Technics are two different and separate companies. Technics is by Panasonic, which is part of Matsushita worldwide. As for just picking up the fire, remember that a mic like the external one you were using is cardioid and will just hear what it is pointed at, whereas the camera mic is set further back and the other sounds are more likely to be within its field. Experimentation is useful.

Sony MDR 700DJ
 

Anybody have any experience with the 700DJ model from Sony? I work at a music store and can get these for a reduced price, so I am thinking of doing it. Any reason why I would want to go with the 7506's instead? Or is it only a minor difference? I want something that will be good in the field. Thanks.

Galen,
How much can you get them for? I can see that they do look different, and they are supposed to be easy to position for one-eared listening when you are DJing (not likely to be such a useful feature for videotaping). They look like they would be great for DJing. Other than that, I have no experience with the 700's.

What I can tell you, however, is that I have field tested the 7506 in a variety of situations, and it is the model headphone chosen by the majority of studios and audio engineers--a known standard, so to speak. They sound great, and are very comfortable, and fold down nice and small into their little drawstring bag so I can stuff them in my briefcase when I fly (and plug them into my computer and listen to ITunes or a DVD when in the air). Whenever I hand them to somebody to listen to a playback, they say "wow, these sound great!"

I wonder if your store can order the 7506 and how much those would cost? If it is a major chain like Sam Ash or something like that, I would think that's possible. Of course, the best scenario would be to be able to demo them side-by-side...that's how I used to sell speakers.

I use shure e2c's which work great for isolating sound and have great sound quality for under 70 bucks. It allows you to truly focus on the camera sound