My current headphones (Philips TAH8506) are pretty worn out from daily use and recently a bit of plastic on the side cracked, so I figured it'd be a good time to get new ones. Since I know very little about literally any audio hardware it seems a good idea to ask here. Things I'm generally looking for:

• must be over-ear
• decent sound quality; I'm not going to pretend I'm an audiophile, the ones I have now are sufficient so anything as good will do
• connectivity: this is where things get tricky. My current usage is being connected through a jack when using pc and bluetooth when using my phone. These 2 connection modes are a must for me. However, I'd also really like if I was able to connect to pc over 2.4gz with a dongle because bluetooth latency is, frankly, awful. It's mostly why I use a wired connection to pc.
• microphone is not needed (in fact I'd prefer if they don't have one)
• ideally not more than $200
• available in Europe without oversea shipping
• nice to have, but not required:
  • a way to control playback (pause/volume etc) from the headphones. The ones I have now have a touch panel on the right and I occasionally use it (but probably wouldn't miss it)
  • ANC
  • cat-resistant cables (probably no such thing exists)

I'd also appreciate general pointers regarding which brands provide good quality at a decent price to make searching easier. Thanks in advance for any answers!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Yesterday the family was driving home from dinner and ...Ready for it? came up in the playlist:

In the middle of the night, in my dreams, you should see the things we do

So in the vein of A Speculative List of Jay-Z's 99 Problems, and other than the boring, obvious answer, what do you suppose they get up to in her dreams?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

The "album problem" is, of course, the fact that our music listening habits have changed over the past decade and the value of a well-thought-out album is not nearly what it once was. This is in large part due to the fact that it's easy for people to create playlists with a billion different songs to choose from, recommendation algorithms, "Discovery Weekly" playlists, and whatever else the streaming services can throw at us.

I may not speak for all of us, but I've personally not been able to fully consume a new album for quite a while now, finding that I gravitate toward a few songs/singles that get dumped into a separate playlist. I don't like this and I miss the days that I would discover deep cuts in the back of an album that I listened to ad nauseum.

I present to you the "Six Disc Changer" playlist. The rules are simple:

1. Create a new playlist in Spotify, Tidal, or your chosen platform. Call it "Six Disc Changer"
2. Add six FULL albums to the playlist
3. Force yourself to listen to the playlist -- maybe not exclusively -- but a fair amount. Imagine you're driving around in your 2002 Honda Civic and the only music available to you is what you've got in your CD changer.
4. Any time you want to add a new album, you must remove an old album. You should only have six CDs loaded up at any time.

If you want to take the concept a few steps further...

5. Any time you remove a CD, add it to a separate playlist called "CD Catalogue".
6. Any time you want to add a new CD to the catalogue, you must "purchase" it with an "allowance" of your choosing. I'm going with 1 new album per week. You can swap out albums from your Catalogue playlist freely, but new albums must be "purchased." This will simulate scarcity, which was a large part of what drove us to listen to albums over and over again.

But... why?

My goal is to get back to listening to full albums and truly taking them in. The best way I can think of to do that is to simulate the way things used to be. By using a streaming service instead of, say, just going back to CDs or records, you get the benefits of convenience, Last.fm, easy Bluetooth, etc.

As for what's in my CD changer right now, I've got:

1. Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
2. The Antlers - Need Nothing
3. Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
4. Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come
5. George Harrison - Living in the Material World
6. Bob Moses - Battle Lines

Is it dumb? Probably. It's been fun so far and my music listening experience has been much more focused.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.