Advice on Good-Sounding Headphones for a Laptop?

[Fatzoid]

I bought a used laptop a few weeks back and I'm in a quandary about what kind of headphones I should buy for listening to music on it.

I've encountered BCL 'Black' headsets in a lot of cybercafes and always found them to be outstandingly good (for the price), so I went out last week and bought a pair. However, they sounded absolutely awful plugged into a laptop rather than a PC, all muddy-sounding and bass-heavy, with the treble end almost completely lost in the mud. So definitely not the thing for a laptop.

I tried plugging in an old pair of lightweight Omega headphones (no mic) and the top end sounds absolutely wonderful, but there's very little bass response to put it mildly.

Can anyone recommend any decent-quality affordable headphones/headsets which suit laptops perfectly and which aren't of the 'in-the-ear' variety?

There must be some excellent laptop-friendly 'phones out there somewhere, but I don't want to spend years buying headphones with my fingers crossed and then finding out that they're incompatible with a laptop. Maybe there are even some cheap-and-cheerful headphones out there that are nevertheless absolutely brilliant.....

Any suggestions, playmates?

(My laptop is a Compaq Presario, incidentally.)

 

[diduknowthat]

Headphones sound horrible on your laptop because you're using integrated sound. If you still have the BCL Black headphone try buying a DAC and running it through that.