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I have a few sets of headphones.
Full size are the cans in my avatar: Ultrasone HFI-780s. They are excellent headphones, most well-suited to rock, hip-hop, acoustic music, and alternative, due to the very forward sound they produce. Listening to Incubus or your favorite acoustic artist of choice (Iron & Wine in this case) produces a fantastic, intimate sound that's instantly enjoyable. They isolate very well for cir -aurals, although not as well as IEMs or canalphones, are modestly comfortable, and have a incredibly potent bass with good crisp highs. It really feels like you have a sub on your head, only it's extremely tight bass, so it sounds excellent with most music. Some people might be turned off because of just how forward they are, but I love that I can listen to an artist and feel like they are in the same room with me. They're big headphones but unless I need to travel light I take them just about everywhere with me.
My second set of headphones are my Denon C-700s. These are canalphones and actually have a musical signature that's very similar to the Ultrasones. They don't have quite the soundstage, but they have an impossibly surprising amount of bass for such a small headphone. I have compared them extremely favorable to the "4" series from Shure headphones, which cost around $150 more. The highs are noticeable and seem to "sparkle" as if they are set off by a separate driver, only it is a single dynamic driver in the Denons. They are not very balanced either, as they are extremely forward and thus less viable for classical music or anything that demands a lot of air and spacing to fully appreciate the experience. They isolate well, although you can still vaguely hear what's going on around you.
My third pair of headphones are Altec Lansing iM716 IEMs. They are based on the Etymonic's Er4p headphone drivers. They are absolutely the opposite of the above two headphones. They deliver a stark, analytical sound of whatever music you are listening to. It's strange to say, but I listened to Daft Punk with these in while on the Chicago's El transit system and thought I was in heaven. I could hear absolutely nothing around me except the music -- these IEMs sit waaaaaay into your ears with the standard config. But as a benefit, if you're on a noisy commute, you will hear every detail of what you are listening to. However, the soundstage and presence of the music isn't really conveyed as clearly as in the above headphones, these hit you with something that I can only describe as a wall of sound. It's like a painting -- you can pick every single detail out of the music and hear things you cannot in other headphones -- but it's a flat image.
I have probably listened to 70-80 different pairs of headphones, including some that cost in the thousands of dollars per pair. There is a kind of diminishing returns that applies here -- once you start paying +$400 for headphones, you're getting into very specific domains of sound -- but at the same time, you really do get what you pay for. Once your ears experience and grow accustomed to a more robust, detailed experience that comes with a high quality pair of headphones, you really don't want to go back. The caveat I would like to enter here is that Bose headphones are extremely overrated. I would rate both the Ultrasones and the Denons I mentioned to be MUCH better quality than Bose, and even the Altec Lansings blow Bose out of the water in detail and clarity.
Good headphones can be had for affordable prices, but you have to ask yourself... if you're paying $300 for an Mp3 player and have probably a few thousand dollars worth of music/CDs/records, why are you only spending $10 on headphones from Walmart? Even $300 for headphones might sound preposterous at first, but when you consider they could easily last you 10 years, that translates to only paying $30 a year for an incredible jump in quality. /rant
I haven't tried the headphones you mention, but they sound intriguing.
Good stuff - thanks for sharing some of that knowledge. I have to agree with that you get what you pay for. For me, I try to strike the balance between good quality and affordability. I was willing to spend $200 on earphones - my only issue was not being able to try out most of these earphones before buying them. I also use my iPhone built-in mic and remote a lot, so my choice are probably limited from the get-go.
