Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pro Studio Headphone Review

Given its 250Ω impedance, it’s clear that DT 1770 Pros won’t be the loudest headphones when paired with mobile devices, but they are more sensitive than DT 770 Pros and will squeeze a few dB’s more from the same output. Still, it won’t be sufficient for mobile work that requires substantial headroom, even more so when used with calibration.

All of the build flaws of the DT 770 Pro’s are addressed with the DT 1770 Pro’s – the headband adjustment mechanism works flawlessly and is a joy to use, and the cable is now detachable. 

Also, the materials are an upgrade and every part now feels great to touch and use. The headband perhaps is straight away the most noticeable departure and now it’s especially thick and covered in gentle leatherette. The ear pads on the other hand feel nearly indistinguishable from DT 770’s, but that’s most certainly not a bad thing as they feel great and are comfortable for extended sessions. The overall level of quality is on par with the rivals in the price segment.

Headphones come with a nice set of accessories and spares – a semi-hard case for storage and transportation, two slightly different sets of ear pads and two mini-XLR cables, a 5 meter long coiled and a 3 meter straight one.

DT 1770 Pro’s are quite far from being the most neutral-sounding closed-backs, but they sure sound fun and complement many genres. The overall shape of the frequency response curve follows the ever-popular “smiley face” pattern with boosted lows and highs, but the low-mid dip at 200Hz further highlights the bass and the dip in high-mids reduces harshness. 

It can be very pleasant to work with these headphones until you hear your track on a different playback system where it all of a sudden lacks high frequencies and sounds harsh in the high-mids. However, with calibration, they’re a fine and reliable monitoring tool.

The high frequency response is typical Beyerdynamic and the whole curve follows the same trends as DT 770 Pros, yet when comparing both headphones head to head, the gap is bigger than graphs might suggest. While the calibration erases all the frequency response differences, the sub bass sounds cleaner and more effortless on DT 1770 Pro’s, most likely due to the Tesla driver’s superior distortion performance.

The channels are evenly matched as expected from Beyerdynamic. The differences are negligible and will go unnoticed to a human ear.

As usual with Beyerdynamic full-size over-ears, wearing comfort is very good due to the well-designed contact points and the roomy volume inside the ear pads. Even larger pinnas will be accommodated without putting pressure on them, thus helping users to wear the headphones for longer. If we were to nitpick, they’re noticeably heavier than the lightest rival in this price segment, Shure SRH1540, but weigh about the same as Neumann NDH 20.

DT 1770 Pro’s are quite expensive and go for about €450 in Europe and $600 in the USA. If that’s the money you wish to spend on studio closed-back headphones, your options are rather limited and DT 1770 Pros come on top. Neumann NDH 20 have issues with adaptiveness hurting their accuracy and Shure SRH1540 has a relatively high 3rd harmonic distortion in the bass range.