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The SR60's will work fine without an amp, mine sound great off of my iPod. As for drowning out ambient sound? Well....not so much. They are open headphones, so if stuff is loud around the office, you are going to hear it. If you really don't want to hear what is going on around the office, you need sealed headphones. Open headphone vary in how much sound they leak out, but Grado's are by far the worst offender in this category. As much sound goes out the back as out the front of these cans.
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A little note. A lot of people who haven't tried high end headphones before don't realize exactly what open means. Open means that they block *NO* sound, literally NONE. Note that in loud environments, like an office, this usually leads you to crank up the volume to drown out ambient sound, which is a great way to get hearing loss. I think that 99% of people around here would probably pick out the Sony MDR-V6 as the best headphones for three main reasons:
1. They sound great. They are probably the most accurate headphone out there, at ANY price. Note that something like 90% of studios use these for a reason. Also not, V-6, NOT V-600. The V-600 is utter crap.
2. They are closed. These will block out a bit of sound, enough that I can use them on the train on my way to school without cranking. Your not going to get 30db of blockage like the Ety's, but they are enough for most people.
3. A lot of the high end headphones are inapporiate for gaming. High end headphones alter the sound stage in various ways. Good for music, VERY BAD for positional audio. Grado's put you 'in the middle' of the band. Senn's put you in the front row. Neither is a spot your 3D Audio card thinks you are at. My CS game went to hell after buying my first set of Grado's. Senns are not so bad since the soundstage is about where stereo speakers would be, but headphones are vastly superior to a 2.0/2.1 setup for gaming as you probably know.
Note that #3 puts the soundstage in your head. This is why most people find headphones so fatiguing (and why high end cans move the soundstage) -- but you can't have it all.
As for headphone amps. You can build a
CMoy Headphone Amp for $20 in parts. It sounds comparible to a $200 Creek OBH-11. If you want more, you build a
META42 headphone amp for about $50-$100 in parts, which sounds comparible to the ~$1000 headroom amps. Amps are a MUST for any headphone over $50 to get the most of them, and they make AMAZING preamps for most 4.1 and 5.1 setups. Amps don't have to be expensive if your willing to sacrifice a little time.
-Chu
P.S., I'm replying to about two headphone threads a week now . . . why doesn't anandtech have faq's like ArsTechnia?
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