How To Not Waste Your Money: Roland RH-5
The headphone market is an interesting space. With the rise of the infamous Beyerdynamic DT 770 and Sennheiser 660s, you would be under the impression that for a satisfactory audio experience, you’d have to spend a fortune. However, in recent years, that’s become further from the truth.
In my experience, brands advertised by influencers and content creators are most likely to be hit and miss, for example with products from the KZ lineup. The products that seem to hold the test of time are those from well known brands such as Behringer, Marshall and Roland.
Behringer is known for making superb quality devices at a cost of poor materials. This is how it should be in my experience. I’d much rather have a sub-par plastic build device with good internals than a pleasing hard device with questionable internals.
This leads us onto the Roland RH-5. Roland’s headphone lineup is designed especially for electronic drum users and piano enthusiasts. Hence why they typically come with a quarter jack input.
This means it’s advised to have an audio interface, I personally recommend the Behringer UMC22 as it’s a budget alternative to a Scarlett Solo. Granted it’s not the greatest experience for a XLR microphone, for audio listening, the Behringer UMC22 is a great pick.
Although you can use an audio interface for quarter jack input, you can take off the included 3.5mm to quarter jack input and use it with a headphone jack, which is a preferred method by many.
The RH-5 comes in at only £30.00 with a black finish. The headphones share a resemblance to the Sony MDR-7506 model, which costs just over £40 more. The RH-5s specialise in having 40mm drivers that allow for a dynamic sound which results in a balanced sound response for a variety of instruments, for example: Piano & Drums, which was what the RH-5 was advertised for.
However, in my usage, these headphones excel at Logic Pro X audio playback, the quality is beyond satisfactory and for £30.00; you cannot go wrong with them. For their price range, they are closed back which may be a turn off for certain people, however, I’ve ran into no issues with it, despite me switching from DT 770, which had a much more gated sound while also being closed back. Which is impressive for a device which has almost a £100 price difference.
In the end, you cannot go wrong with the Roland RH-5. For £30.00, there’s a low chance of you walking out with something better suited than these.