Review: Audio Technica ATH-M50s Professional Studio Monitor Headphones

Recently my Sony MDR-7509 headphone ended its life after serving me 6 faithful years. I have M-Audio IE-40 in-ear monitor for my listening pleasure (currently missing, I can’t seem to find it =( ) so I was delaying my purchase of new set of headphones. I used to use MDR-7509 for slight rough mix in my studio and mostly in live situations and I always wanted to have a good pair of headphone for studio applications so did quick research and test out few headphones. I always wanted to get Sennheiser HD650 but i was not ready to pull the trigger due to price. I was looking more likely to spend $200 or less and considering checking out three options, Audio Technica ATH-M50s, Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro, Sennheiser HD380 pro.

After very short amount of time of research and quick demos (about two minutes each) I picked up Audio Technica ATH-M50s without any hesitations. After about 2 days usage, I’m very surprised and well pleased how well this headphone performs.

Here are few pros
- Great stereo imaging
- Clean, thick, tight, and punch bass response
- Accurate and detail sound
- Long and straight cable.

I have a pair of JBL LSR4328p and a pair of Event 20/20 BAS v2 for monitor speakers. What made me really drawn to this headphones is how close this sound to monitor speakers. I was mixing a song in 2 am, I didn’t want to bother family members so I decided to go ahead and mix the song with this new cans I got. After spending about 4 hours of editing, tweaking, and mixing I took off headphones and monitored back using speakers and it sounded almost close how it sounded in headphones. Now I don’t have to consistently thinking how I should mix according to how my headphone sounds vs. my studio monitors.

Also four straight hours using it without feeling uncomfortable, that is definite plus.
I admit this isn’t Grado nor not as comfortable as DT770-pro, but a lot comfortable than I thought.

Spending far less than headphones that I always wanted, such as Sennheiser HD650, Grado Labs RS series headphones, but getting good enough compare to $300~400 headphones is no brainer times like this.

I’m extremely happy about my purchase and I can recommend this headphone to any body who’s looking for a good enjoyable listening headphones to looking for a pair to mix and spend reasonable amount of money.