Sound quality can be many differant thing such as the bit depth and sample rate but quality headphones for me gives me a flat uncolored sound that i can rely upon in a mix.

Price doesn’t matter.

And I agree that you have different requirements in headphones but all I said were the requirements you mentioned as sound quality were not related to sound quality.

Loud headphones doesn’t mean good sound quality
Expensive headphones doesn’t mean good sound quality
Bose headphones doesn’t mean good sound quality
This DJ uses these headphones doesn’t mean good sound quality
Sound isolating headphones doesn’t mean good sound quality

Anyway if you listened to the best $400 headphones in the market directly from your iPod I will guarantee you it will probably be the shittiest sounding thing you would probably hear and thats because once you get into the fairly decent headphones they all require to be pre-amped meaning you connect your ipod to a little amp and the little amp will power the headphones. You need to check the impedance, if the headphone has high impedance which the majority of good quality headphones have they won’t run properly. It would be as if you get 200watt speakers and power them up with a 20watt amp. Check the impedance, its usually recommended for ipods not to go higher then 32 but the Sennheiser HD600 for example is 300ohms so if those were the pair you tried they would have sounded crap. Your Pioneers on the other hand are 40ohms which is just slightly over the recommended.

Anyways, as I said, my definition of sound quality differs than yours. Because I use the headphones for different purposes doesn’t make me not know what good sound quality is, it just makes my requirements different. Plus the last time I spent $400+ on apparently “good sound quality” headphones, it turned out to be complete garbage, worst investment I ever made.

Now for me comfort is of course an important factor, plus weight and all that, and I don’t disagree with you that there are better sound quality headphones out there. I’m with you 100%. But when I come to compare a $400 plus headphone with a $150 one and I get the same quality, which I have done, to me it’s ridiculous to spend that much on the former. Go ahead and try the Pioneer headphones, I promise you’ll be surprised.

DJBooth.com you said it got a 9.5/10
The review was 3 sentences long and doesn’t even discuss the sound quality of the headphones.
http://www.djbooth.net/index/dj-equipment/review/pioneer-hdj-1000/

CNET you said it got a 7.7/10
Well it wasn’t a review by CNET it was a review by the readers of the site but even so it got a 7.7 which isn’t high.
http://reviews.cnet.com/headphones/pioneer-hdj-1000-headphones/4505-7877_7-30520481.html

AudioReview.com you said it got 5/5
AudioReview don’t review products, the 5 rating was given by 1 reader of the site.
http://www.audioreview.com/cat/headphones-home-audio/headphones/pioneer/PRD_173595_2750crx.aspx

Anyway the issue here is that you don’t know what good sound quality is. Everything you mentioned as you definition of sound quality isn’t sound quality its what I pointed out before, its loudness. Minimal sound distortion and alteration at high volume isn’t good sound quality its loudness. Blocking outside noise is also not a judge of good sound quality.

If you get a closed type headphone you will block more sound then an open air headphone but thats two different types of headphones. There are some headphones that have electronic sound isolation does that mean they have good sound quality?

Anyway as you pointed out Bob Sinclair, David Guetta and whoever else are using the Pioneer, well yeah they are DJ headphones I never disagreed with you on that. As I mentioned before DJ’s have certain requirements from headphones that helps them out while DJing like the mono/stereo switch which is available on this Pioneer but is a feature that isn’t found on headphones. Doesn’t mean the Pioneer is better because it has these features, it means its targeted to a specific audience. Maybe these Pioneers are the best DJ headphones which I doubt because there are a ton of DJ’s using Sonys for example but say they were the best DJ headphones, that wouldn’t mean they were the best sound quality headphones, for the same price I can find you better quality none DJ headphones. Actually I think the Grado SR60’s have better quality and cost only $70.

DJBooth.com
Rating: 9.5/10

CNET
User Rating: 7.7/10

Audioreview.com
Rating: 5/5

DJmag.com
Rating: 5/5

I’m guessing our problem here is that my definition of sound quality is different then yours. What I look for is minimal sound distortion, good bass response, and no sound alteration at high volume. That plus not having to listen to any outside noise of course.

I’ve seen the HDJ-1000 used by DJs such as Bob Sinlar, David Guetta, Dirty South, and Eric Morillo live, and I don’t think these DJs would just use a headphone for loudness alone, and they wouldn’t use them if it had such bad reviews.

Sorry to disappoint you but Pioneer’s HDJ-1000 isn’t counted as a good sound quality headphone neither does Pioneer make any good sound quality headphone. Even if DJs use it they arent using it because of sound quality, DJs also use Technics headphones but as i said its because these are made for djs they aren’t made for sound quality.

Of course you will disagree with me so thats why for further proof just visit headfi.org and ask in the forum there and see. Or just do a search for the Pioneer HDJ-1000 and see what has been said.

Now if you take Bose out of the picture and actually go with proper brands that are actually good then you will easily notice the difference between a $100 headphone and a $400 one.

Yousef these headphones, the beats aren’t targeted to DJ’s, DJ’s have other requirements in headphones and sound quality is not one of the most important ones. Keep in mind while the DJ’s are djaying they are in an extremely loud environment and so sound quality won’t really be noticeable as much as say comfort, weight, flexibility etc..