Direct Sound EX-29

Excellent value for the money. Great sounding headphones that does have excellent isolation. Once plugged into the Line 6 POD 500 , the sound was fantastic. Beyond excellent customer service from the company. Part broke on them , but sent out the replacement immediately. Hard to find this type of service now a days.

Nice headphones

I bought these EX-29s for tracking in my home studio. I had recently upgraded from dynamic mics to a substant ially more-sensitive large diaphragm condenser, and was concerned headphone bleed-out while recording vocals and acoustic guitar. For tracking, the EX-29s perform as advertised in isolating signals -- in both directions. I get no headphone leakage onto recorded tracks; in addition, the headphones also effectively isolate the listener from the outside world. The sound on these cans is surprisingly good...you still can't rely on them solely for mixing, as they will mislead you on both treble and bass ends, but they certainly surpassed my expectations.

Direct-Sound EX-29

I recently ordered these as I felt the Vic-Firth headphones still didn't have quite the isolation and comfort I was looking for for the musicians I have been tracking, including myself. Being a drummer I am very picky about what I can hear as far as click track separation from the rest of the music and had no problems getting full, definite sound from the headphones as well as being able to easily mix in the drum mics without interference from the bleed. Very comfortable, have been able to mix the cans without blowing out crazy dB to hear the click, and nice to use as protection while adjusting guitar cab levels. Not good for critical mixing as suggested on the box, yet great for everything else

Great for FIlm Production

I am a production sound mixer and bought these cans to wear on set. The isolation is invaluable to hear what your mics are hearing when you're standing in the same room as the action.

I wouldn't mind seeing a version with attenuation more on par with the muffs you wear to the shooting range. These claim 29dB reduction but my 25NRR shooting muffs seem quieter. These also do not make a complete seal around my ears. Maybe my head's just shaped funny, but as I look left and right, the seal around the pad is broken, letting in more outside sound.

The low-frequency response is great, but the high-freq can sound a bit muffled. I didn't buy these to do detail mixing, so it's not an issue. They're great for the film production work I do but I haven't yet had a chance to take them in-studio.

They're quite comfortable to wear for prolonged periods. I just finished out a 20-day film shoot where I was wearing these pretty much all day and my ears only became slightly sore over that time. The cushions are plenty thick to keep the elements off of your ears, unlike many other headphones.

They're also VERY durable. They're designed to disassemble under stress, rather than breaking. Over the course of this film shoot, they were dropped, sat upon, stepped on, and slammed in a car door. They still work flawlessly although they're a bit scuffed up now.

And, I love the straight cable, rather than the coiled cables you'll find on many similarly-priced cans that production sound mixers/boom ops tend to wear. It's a lot longer than it needs to be for my purposes, but I'm planning to cut it shorter. In the mean time I just tuck the excess in to my mixer bag.

In short; these are pretty much unbeatable in this price range if you are looking to do production sound mixing or boom operation. The attenuation is invaluable, they're comfortable to wear for an all-day shoot, and they're durable enough to withstand the inevitable abuses which every piece of gear seems to suffer on your average film set.

The only ways I can think of to improve them would be a version with greater attenuation and a tighter seal around the ears, such as you find with shooter's muffs, and maybe an out-of-the-box option for a shorter cable length.

A great tool!

I should say up front that I avoid doing any critical mixing in cans...regardless of how I think they sound so I won't really comment on the fidelity.

People comment a lot about how great these cans are for avoiding headphone bleed while tracking singers and they certainly excel at that...but they are really indispensable for an engineer as well. When tracking, these are a great pair of headphones wear in the live room to go move mics and get a feel for the changes you are making without the ambient sound in the room clouding your judgment (e.g. have a guitarist work through a part at a pretty good volume while you sweep the sound field with a mic to find "the spot").

I also do a fair amount of live remote recordings and depending on the space I'm in, I may be very close to the musicians or PA...the EX-29 allow me to tune out the sound in the room and focus on the sounds I'm capturing to tape. Best tool I've found for that application bar none. If you find yourself doing long remote gigs as well, you'll come to appreciate the 29dB of attenuation by itself - I routinely turn down the volume at various points in the night to give my ears a break from the punishment. Sweet!

Awesome for certain applications

Great headphones but don't expect to be able to critically mix or listen with these headphones. Compared to a regular, non isolating, pair of headphones, these sound like a blanket has been thrown over the highs. There is no way around that in a closed ear set with isolation it seems.

These headphones are EXTREMELY valuable for certain applications like:

-not letting backing tracks or a click track bleed when your gain is cranked for, say, recording acoustic guitar or vocals.

-giving your drummer a better chance to hear guitar/bass/whatever else by blocking the direct drum sound a bit

Fantastic headphones!

Great isolation... frequency response is unbelievable. These are really great for drummers.

Isolation for sure

Put these on and you can hear how they isolate. The sound good for the price, there probably are better, but those probably do not stop the leakage into your mics as well as these. use then for recording drums, vocals, high gain mics/preamps for the price and isolation, their better than anything I've used.

Throw out your practice amp/moniter

These things are perfect. Isolate perfectly (great for drums or gigs) and they don't bleed through in recordings AT ALL. I use these for when I practise guitar instead of my amps. I have an RP1000 which is plugged into my mixer which these headphones are the plugged into and the tone is so good, it's much easier to hear what you playing and I can properly mix my guitar in with the backing tracks instead of having them coming from to different speakers. I only use my amps for band practise now.
The Head Phones keep noise out and keep the music in while having great audio quality.

Bang Bang Bang for the Buck!

I am a Drummer/Bass Player. If you need a pair of great cans for tracking, want to protect your hearing, get great sound(sans deep lows), and don't want to spend a fortune-pull the trigger.
There are a couple of downfalls yet far from deal-killers.
As others have mentioned, these are not for detailed listening! The construction at first feels a bit flimsy, but the modular design and replaceable parts makes that issue a non-issue.
In short if you are a musician or studio/live engineer who needs a set of cans to play while tracking/placing mics/etc look no further!

Great Headphones

I used to own a pair of an older model and I loved them. Unfortunately a friend of mine broke them, so I had to buy a new pair. The new pair however was one of the defective headband models that slipped by. One quick phone call to the manufacturer however, and they offered to send me a new headband to replace the defective one for free. So if you have this problem, give them a call and they will be more than willing to help you. They are even sending me a second one to fix the old pair! Great people!

Not quite as effective as expected

I bought the X29s hoping they'd live up to the hype regarding their attenuation of bleed during “normal” tracking operations. I'm not sure how the X29 demo video was edited, but the headphone bleed was effectively muted when the demonstrator pressed his pair of X29s together, during what he referred to as a “blistering amount” of playback level. My X29s didn’t even come close to accomplishing what that example did, and I don’t think I received a defective pair.

I tested the X29s against a pair of AKG K 240 Studio open-backs at matched levels, and the bleed coming off the X29s was only marginally attenuated in comparison. The X29 seemed to work comparitively better at lower, or more "normal" tracking levels (which makes sense), but even at these lower levels, the bleed was still easily loud enough to impart a sufficiently detrimental amount of “noise” onto the source signal.

Despite all this, I plan to keep these headphones because they are a step in the right direction (albeit a much smaller step than I had anticipated). They're also comfortable to wear for long periods of time, and they have a good “energy” to them--punchy low-end and “energetic” mids and highs--in other words, they’re hyped in a healthy sort of way, which makes them ideal for musicians to use during studio tracking (since that environment is much more about being able to hear, feel, and perform with the energy of a track, rather than to critically listen or represent it with pristine signal fidelity; and given that, I wouldn’t recommend using the X29s if you’re on the engineer or mixer side of the glass). As for live performance mixing, I can't say how well they'd function.

Overall, these are good headphones and they accomplish pretty much everything you might expect them to, but if you're looking specifically for something that effectively mutes bleed during normal studio operation (as I was), these headphones are not solution.

Helpful, but not miraculous

I've had these phones for a bit longer than 6 months now and have used them extensively for tracking in my modest home studio. I was pretty excited about the headphones when I first got them, so maybe my expectations were just too high, but at this point I probably wouldn't recommend these to someone. In my experience, the fact is that they just don't provide very good isolation---it's plenty easy for me to drown out the click track when recording drums, and I'm not exactly playing thrash metal here. They are very effective as far as dampening sound and protecting the ears, so I do like to wear them when jamming at high volumes, but when it comes to studio tracking, so much of the lower-midrange and low-range frequencies bleed into the phones that it can be very difficult to listen and play precisely, especially when doing overdubs. I have found them to be nice when listening to music or watching videos on my laptop in a library, because they do do a pretty good job of preventing sound from leaking out of the cans (so no one around you is disturbed). Most of the time, however, I prefer not to use these for listening, because the high end is quite dull and the low end sort of putters out---you get a sort of flat "door knock" sound out of a powerful, bassy kick track, instead of the nice full, throbbing sound I've experienced on higher-quality cans. The impact of certain songs/sounds can vanish when heard through these phones, which makes them a bit problematic for me for recording because I'm never quite sure if the kick is super punchy but lacking in low end or if the low end just isn't translating into the phones. Tracking bass guitar is often uninspiring with these. All this being said, though, they are fairly comfortable, relative to most drumming phones I've worn, and the long cord can be very useful. When it comes down to the realities though, I think there are probably better phones for the same amount of cash or less than you'd be paying for these. So I'd recommend doing plenty of research before settling on these guys.

Designed to Fail

These headphones have a great sound and really can isolate your drums so you can hear everything going on. They really can help a drummer save his/her hearing. My main problem is the design of the headphones. If you don't take extremely good care of these they will break. I have had two of these and they broke in the same way. When you stretch to actually put the phones on they end up breaking off from the cushion part that attaches the phones themselves to the whole product. If you can not even put them on with out so much tension happening then obviously they need to improve on the quality of their plastic.

Pretty Flimsy

These are good at isolating sound. I would say that's about all they do well. My headband broke several times in the first few months I owned this. It's nice that it is so easy to replace, but at $120 I would think that they should hold up better. I wasn't doing anything particularly abusive when they broke - I was taking them off of my head (both times). Also, the sound quality isn't the best. These sound pretty muddy overall, and yet I wouldn't say that they have great sounding bass. Really a disappointment, and I'd say not at all worth what they cost.

Bad quality, Sound nothing special

These headphones are garbage. Mine broke 3 times in the same place (I'm sure current owners know where I'm talking about, and if you buy a pair, you'll find out). The company was nice enough to replace the headband twice (claiming there was a bad batch made), but after they broke a third time (so they twice sent me a replacement that was also in the "bad batch"???) I decided a review was necessary. I don't believe a pair of headphones that costs this much should need replacing every 3 months. The sound is ok, but nothing special at all. I wish I had bought a pair of Sennheiser hd280s instead, I have since discovered that in my opinion they far outperform the EX-29s in sound, and are pretty comparable in isolation.

Again, the company was nice about replacing the parts, but this is just a bad product.