This one’s a long one: I sat down with my buddy Lawrence and we ranked basically every headphone we got our hands on in 2025—consumer, audiophile, and studio stuff—all in one massive tier list. We’re not just staring at graphs; we’re judging build quality, comfort, price-to-performance, mix/master translation, and that “soul” factor (because if I’m paying real money, I want to enjoy using the thing). My S tier is simple: no EQ adjustment needed, high-level mix performance, good fit and finish, fair-ish pricing, and it can do both work and play. I also lay out my philosophy on EQ: I’m not into EQ’ing a headphone to “replicate” another model. I’ll EQ to improve or correct a headphone for reliability and translation, but I’m not trying to force it to be something it’s not. In the rankings we hit everything from Audeze (LCD-X as a reference for us, MM-100 as a sleeper planar buy) to Audio-Technica (R50X as a mix-ready budget hero, and ADX7000 landing in S tier for being holographic and still critical). We also talk about the stuff that disappointed us (like certain DCA tunings for my ears, or headphones that are just too speaker-imitation and not detail-forward enough for studio work).