Well, by "production," I mean mostly just voice clips and the odd sound effect. Recording them, checking for any dumb mistakes, placing them in a scene and making sure they aren't too loud, and a lot of the time, I'm going to be crushing them down to 22KHz 8-bit anyway in order to fit within hardware limitations, I just want to hear how they sound as neutrally as possible before then and make sure that the resulting crushed versions sound as good as they possibly can at that quality. I definitely won't skip on using my speakers, but I'd rather use headphones to listen for stuff that would be basically lost under all the traffic and police sirens and airplanes right next to my window. San Diego is a loud place.
I'm not going to be doing a whole ton of music, but it seems like the K240s are better (maybe not perfect, but better) for that purpose, then? I'm hearing about way too much bass on the MDRs.
And regarding using them without an amp, I've honestly been totally fine plugging my K240s into my 7th gen iPod, and that's with the max volume set at -5db and the actual volume set at about -10, and a diagnosed 5db hearing loss in one ear. Same deal with my phone, a Moto G Play 2021. Now, if something loud happens nearby it'll drown out the noise, they aren't magically not openbacks, but volume's never really been a problem for me. Quality on the other hand, I've heard an amp will help with that.
I don't really have the budget to drop $6,000 on a pair of Stax X9000s when I'm literally just starting out, so the budget pairs are about as good as I can get. Better than a pair of Behringer HPS3000s.
Any recommendations in the sub-$300 range to save up for?