beyerdynamic Amiron Home
MADE‑IN‑GERMANY
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beyerdynamic Amiron Home (250Ω, 3.5mm plug with ¼″ screw-on adapter, 12.2 oz./345g, about $425). bigger. I'd get mine at Adorama, at Amazon or at eBay (How to Win at eBay). It also comes in a bluetiooth version.
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November 2021 beyerdynamic reviews audio headphones tube amps all reviews
Introduction
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These beyerdynamic Amiron Home are the best-sounding open dynamic headphones I've heard. These Amiron Home sound even better than my previous favorite, the much less expensive professional DT 880. For casual listening the DT 880 sound nearly identical, but if you listen to vocal, choral, symphonic, classical, baroque or other completely acoustic music for hours on end you'll appreciate the better smoothness, openness, depth and detail in these Amiron Home. It's not just me; people who've bought it at Amazon also love it.
These offer immaculate sound quality with smooth, fluid midrange and completely natural sound. Bass isn't boosted; it's natural so you have to play these at full volume to hear it all. For full bass at lower listening levels or for popular music or to reproduce the very deepest bass you'll want the DT-1350 or Aventho Wireless instead. These Amiron Home excel for home listening; you don't walk around with these.
I prefer these to every other open dynamic headphones, especially over the Sennheiser HD800 and AKG K812 because these Amiron Home have smoother response without the boosted upper midrange of those other more expensive models from much less experienced makers. beyerdynamic was founded in 1924 and has been the top maker of the world's best professional headphones since 1937, while AKG and Sennheiser weren't even founded until the 1940s.
These are the genuine HAND MADE IN GERMANY article from the world's oldest and best maker of professional headphones for almost 100 years; these aren't rubbish from China.
These Amiron Home offer magnificent, lush sound for serious home listening of every kind of music, especially symphonic and choral music that's so hard to reproduce naturally with anything other than exotic headphones.
Good
Smooth, detailed, 100% natural and unadulterated sound.
Made in Germany by the world's oldest and best maker of professional headphones.
Bad
Nothing.
Missing
These are pure home Hi-Fi headphones with traditional open earpieces. They aren't supposed to have iPhone remotes or microphones or active noise cancellation or Bluetooth or any of that other rubbish.
Specifications
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Type
Open-aire around-the-ear (circumaural) dynamic stereophonic headphones.
"Tesla" drivers.
Frequency Response
5 ~ 40,000 Hz.
Maximum THD
0.05%.
Impedance
250 Ω.
Sensitivity
Rated 102 dB SPL at 1 mW at 500 Hz.
Maximum Power Input
200 mW.
Maximum Acoustic Output
125 dB SPL at 200 mW at 500 Hz.
Cords
beyerdynamic Amiron Home included cord. bigger.
Detachable straight 10-foot (3m) cord with 3.5mm plug.
¼″ screw-on adapter included.
Quality
MADE IN GERMANY.
Weight
12.2 oz. (345g) without cord, actual measured.
Rated 12.0 oz. (340g).
Included
beyerdynamic Amiron Home included case and goodies. bigger.
Headphones.
Semi-hard case.
3.5mm cord.
¼″ screw-on adapter.
Introduced
2016.
Order Number
717.525.
EAN
4010118717529.
Price, USA
November 2021: about $425.
February 2018 ~ May 2018: about $599.
beyerdynamic Amiron Home box. bigger.
Performance
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Mechanical Quality Cord Plugs Case
Overall
These are the best-sounding open dynamic headphones I've heard, although the DT 880 sound almost exactly the same for casual listening for one third the price.
The Amiron Home are for people who enjoy music for hours and hours of careful home listening.
Sound
The Amiron Home are loaded with nothing but clean, smooth, open, detailed and natural sound. I can listen to these forever; there's nothing out of place. Nothing is emphasized and everything sounds exactly like the hall in which it was recorded. No detail is more or less audible or emphasized than it was when originally performed. These sound great; they don't artificially emphasize the upper midrange as the Sennheiser HD800 and AKG K812 do to show more details than were actually there.
I can enjoy complex choral and symphonic works for hours and hours. These have none of the coloration or resonances of lesser headphones that sound OK for pop music or for live monitoring, but can't cut it like these can for enjoying live, natural music. They're not peaky; they're smooth, clean, clear and detailed. You’re at the concert hall.
Voices are smooth and liquid; they're right in front of you. It's big, smooth, detailed and open.
The sound is neutral; it's neither warm nor bright.
The tonal balance changes if you move these around on your head. Like a concert hall, the sound gets warmer if you move them further back on your head.
Bass is light and natural, not big and boosted as it is with many headphones.
Bass
Bass is natural and not boosted. It's not as deep as you'll hear with sealed headphones like the DT 1350.
Bass is excellent and detailed, but the deepest bass is missing — not that anyone will notice since open headphones rarely reproduce the first octave (16~32 Hz) strongly.
Bass response is solid to 25 Hz. It's clean to 20 Hz and below, just not very strong.
Because the deepest bass isn't boosted to compensate for the fact that our body (not our eardums) hears the deepest bass, you won't hear the very deepest bass that boosted headphones will reproduce. There's no boominess, but no thud either.
As bass gets deeper our body becomes more and more involved, thus I prefer headphones that employ the Rockwell Curve to compensate (add) more bass as it gets deeper. Since only our ears are hearing what headphones reproduce, we won't hear the very deepest bass through any headphone unless it's boosted as it gets deeper.
These headphones reproduce the very natural bass you hear in the concert hall. Because our ears become less sensitive to deeper bass at lower levels you'll hear less bass when played at less than full concert levels, and hear all of the bass when played at full concert level. This is the case with all headphones; you'll hear more bass as played more loudly.
Bass varies with earcup pressure. Press them harder to your head and there's more bass.
For lovers of organ and synthesizer pedals you'll want the DT 1350 or Aventho Wireless, but for normal music lovers these are even more open and natural for everything else.
Ergonomics
These are the same as most other traditional beyerdynamic headphones: big around-the-ear cups with fuzzy padding.
The foam earcup padding seems stiffer than my 6-year-old DT 880, and that may just be because the DT 880 have softened over time. No big deal, the Amiron Home just sit on your head and you don't feel them.
Materials are as you'd expect in a top-level European headphone, with Alcantara (fake suede) on the softly padded headband. These are both very comfortable and very durable; top marks here. You're getting what you pay for with these $600 headphones.
The Alcantara headband is extremely comfortable, but these, like most headphones, need rubber bumpers on the solid metal yokes so we can set them down on glass or fine furniture without scratching anything.
These are for sitting. They'll fall off if you look down and shake your head too hard.
Sensitivity
With iOS
These work with iPhones and iPads, but as 250 Ω headphones they aren't as sensitive as common 32 Ω headphones. You'll have to set your volume much higher than usual. Just do the math and driven from the same amplifier these will be 9dB less sensitive than 32 Ω headphones.
These sound fantastic plugged right into iOS devices, but you'll usually be at or near maximum volume. So long as you can get enough volume these will sound better than ordinary headphones, but for many classical pieces you might not be able to get enough level even at the highest volume setting. Hint: at SETTINGS > MUSIC set SOUND CHECK to ON for soft classical pieces, and OFF for popular music if you want the most level from each.
On iOS I'm usually at about 1/2 to 3/4 for movies, at 3/4 for most ordinary music and all the way up for classical music.
On Mac
My 2007 iMac has the same 1V RMS maximum output as iOS devices, but my late 2014 5K iMac has a 2V RMS headphone output and sounds great, with plenty of level.
With Headphone Amplifiers
Obviously there is plenty of sensitivity for use with dedicated amplifiers and good Hi-Fi equipment.
Isolation
These are open headphones with no isolation other than a little at high frequencies. You'll hear everything around you.
Leakage
There is a lot of leakage, as with all open headphones. People near you will hear your music; these are for use in private.
Mechanical Quality
These are first-class MADE IN GERMANY headphones. They are all metal, with plastic ear cups.
The Alcantara suede-padded headband feels great, and the classic microfiber microvelour earpads are the usual excellence from beyerdynamic.
Cord
The Amiron come with a plain black wiggly cord. It has a dull finish and is very supple and rubbery.
It's two cords in parallel with a figure-8 cross section, one half for each channel.
Plugs
It has a typical 3.5mm threaded plug. Be careful if using with portable devices since it's big enough to get hit and bend; it's not a tiny thing that's impossible to damage like the plug on the T51i.
There are two more tiny 3.5mm plugs on the other end of the cord that plug into each earpiece.
Case
The semi hard case is a nice touch and it's tough and easy to throw around while protecting the Amiron Home. There's a small internal pocket to keep the included ¼″ screw-on adapter.
It's a tad smaller than I'd like so I have to collapse the earpieces into the headband and be careful not to catch the cords coming out of each earpiece as I close the zipper.
Compared
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Versus the beyerdynamic DT880
For casual listening the DT 880 sound the same and are made exactly as well in Germany for one third the price. These Amiron Home are slightly smoother and more HiFi sounding than the DT880; these Amiron have a little less upper midrange response and a little more response at the very top end.
These Amiron Home are for the serious listener who listens carefully enough to appreciate these slight but significant differences in smoothness and clarity. If you're going to listen carefully with your eyes closed for hours then you'll really appreciate these Amiron over the DT880.
The Amiron are about as sensitive as the DT880 at the same impedance; this means the 600Ω DT880 seem less sensitive and the 32Ω DT880 should seem more sensitive at the same drive voltage.
Bass response is about the same.
Usage
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Cord & Cords
The red-ringed connector goes into the right earpiece and the white one in the left.
The black-ringed connector goes into the source, or the ¼″ adapter.
The included cord is very high quality. No other cord will sound any better.
Break-in
I don't believe in break-in, but these seemed much rougher when I first got them. I left them playing for 200 hours of continuous music at a moderately loud level, and they seemed much smoother, and just got better as time went on.
Left and Right
If you put these on in the dark, feel for the Braille dots inside the left side of the headband.
Amplifiers
These are fine for pop music and movies plugged straight in to iOS, but for classical music with its greater dynamic range you'll want to drive these from the headphone jack of legitimate HiFi equipment or a dedicated headphone amplifier. This means real made-in-USA or made-in-Europe equipment, not offshored garbage that usually only puts out no more than 1V RMS. Many offshored headphone amplifiers just cost more than your iPad but don't put out any more voltage to drive these any louder.
Personally I usually use my modern American-made Benchmark DAC1 HDR or Woo amplifiers, but any real modern or classic HiFi gear like the Crown Straight Line 2, Adcom GTP-500 Mark II or Apt Holman preamps are ideal for driving these. You don't ever need to spend more than a few hundred dollars for a top amp to drive these unless you want to.
Hint: The LOUDNESS button on the Crown Straight Line 2 does a great job of boosting only the very deepest bass to improve the sound of these Amiron.
Recommendations
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These are flawless for all kinds of demanding music, with smooth and natural sound. The only thing they don't do well is reproduce the 32-foot ranks of pipe organs and synthesizers, but no open dynamic headphones do that either.
These are great headphones for extended home listening. They're optimum for use with serious home and professional equipment, and work great with just your iPhone, iPod or iPad if you take them on vacation.
They're also good for mastering, making clear what's good and bad and don't emphasize anything. They do tend to err on the side of pleasant sound rather than empahsizing flaws, but their overall balance should lead to a good mix or master.
These are as good as open dynamic headphones get; you'll have to make a big leap in price and complexity to electrostatic headphones to get anything better.
At $600 these are inexpensive. Passive headphones last a lifetime or more; this can be a lifetime investment if you enjoy music more than reading headphone reviews. The Superex headphones my dad bought in the 1960s as a young man still work fine today over a decade after he passed away, and my first beyerdynamic DT990 I bought in the 1980s still work great. These aren't battery-powered disposable consumer electronics you'll throw away in 10 years; these are the world's finest headphones offered at any price.
Their sound is very natural and engaging. Close your eyes and you see everything. They are so comfortable and sound so good that you'll never want to take them off.
I'd get mine at Amazon or at eBay (How to Win at eBay).
Enjoy!
Ken.
More Information
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beyerdynamic's Amiron Home Specifications
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