The Best in Any Price Range

This review was updated on 12/9/06 to reflect my long-term experience with the product as well as my improved grammar and spelling skills.

I compared many headphones while I was making my decision by listening to them side-by-side, and some were priced well into the $400 range; meanwhile, these little wonders that barely break the $100 mark sounded and felt better than any of them. Even the higher-end model Sony headphones didn't sound as good as these, strangely enough. There's something about the construction of these phones, a balance of weight, driver power, and ear cup design, that creates a perfect acoustic environment around each of your ears. I'll try to explain why I think that is.

Each driver is enclosed in a compact circular metal casing that's mounted in the center of the ear cup, but the ear cup itself is made of plastic. What ends up happening is that the lightweight plastic ear cup vibrates slightly with the bass in your sound, creating an additional bass transmission, the way wooden stages at concerts transmit the sounds of the instruments above it. The effect is an active and powerful low-frequency response that drives all the way down to the kinds of sounds that can only be felt, not heard. At times I find myself taking the phones off to make sure my loudspeakers aren't on; That's how much you feel the music when you use these. Since headphone driver power is limited by how much hardware a person can comfortably hang on his head, good low-frequency response is a sought-after quality, and these headphones deliver more than amply.

In case you're thinking this effect isn't apparent unless you're blasting bassy rock music, rest assured; Soft music, classical tracks, and spoken words all receive a substantial boost in warmth, depth, and realism. Midrange- and high-frequency sounds are also exceptionally reproduced.

I don't think this was intentional on Sony's part, because like I said, the higher-end model Sony phones in the same line don't possess this quirky-yet-welcome aspect. That's probably because the higher-end models have larger, heavier drivers, so they require a heavier ear cup that isn't "flimsy" enough to vibrate; So ironically the less-expensive model produces better sound. I was prepared to invest much more money than this, but I still went with them. They're truly the best of everything I tested.

The physical design and ergonomics of these phones deserve just as much praise as their sound reproduction. Much more thought went into design here than with any other phones I tried on. You can really tell Sony's designers had their priorities straight, because rather than designing a straightforward headset based on traditional cues (and that probably would've been easier to manufacture) the focus was instead on what would be the most comfortable for people to wear on their heads for extended periods of time.

Here are three incredibly effective breaks from traditional headphone design that I noticed:

- Elongated, rounded-rectangular shaped ear cups, instead of perfectly-round cups. The human ear is far from perfectly round, so this shape makes much more sense; it's a vast improvement over the traditional perfect circle shape seen in most other headphones, which either presses against the top and lobe of your ear, or if they're big enough to avoid that, end up being cumbersome and heavy.

- A headband that's, well, shorter than usual; so when you put the phones on the headband stretches and flattens across the top of your head. The thick ear cups on pro monitor headphones displace the headband hinge away from your head, so that the headband can't hug your head all the way around the same way ordinary slim-fitting consumer headphones can; so headbands that are designed to be big enough to curve perfectly around a person's head, as is standard for most pro phones, tend to hover over the top of the head. This defeats the purpose of the headband as support for the weight of the chassis. Sony intuitively made this headband shorter, so it needs to flex outwards and "uncurve" somewhat, ending up in more of a flat shape while you wear it. The flattened headband descends enough to make contact with your head, rather than maintaining its curve and hovering uselessly in the air.

- Ear cups that are angled in relation to the headband, rather than being perfectly aligned vertically with it. Our ears are not perfectly aligned vertically with the top-center of our skulls; yet when a person puts on a pair of headphones he instinctively positions the headband so it rests at the absolute top of his head, since that's where you achieve the most support; Therefore if the ear cups are designed to align perfectly with the headband, they won't naturally fall over your ears, and you'll be constantly adjusting them. It's not an easy concept to describe, but hopefully that was clear enough.

These phones solve the problem with ear cups that are angled slightly: about 10 degrees from perfect zero, so that the tops of the ear cups point backwards, rather than straight up. The cups are also mounted with two swivel mechanisms that allows the cups to turn either way on both their horizontal and vertical axis, instead of just the horizontal hinge you see on most pro phones. The addition of the vertical swivel action not only lets the cups hug your face better, but also allows you to rest one cup in front or behind your ear, the way live DJs do, without causing the other cup to lift off your other ear. Another difficult concept to articulate, but I think you get the idea.

Anyway, you'll see how much these tiny details make a world of difference when you put these phones on, and the cups fall naturally and effortlessly into place over your ears, like they were custom-molded for your head.

Construction is of the utmost quality despite the light weight: The moving mechanisms are all reliable, sturdy, and consistent (no sign of wear in almost a year now), and the cord is long, conveniently coiled, and nicely insulated in thick-gauge, quality material. These phones get tossed around my room, buried under clothes, and dropped. After about a year, there's barely a trace of wear. They also look really great -- the jet-black finish on the metal elements blend seamlessly into the black plastic ear cups, the black cushions, and the black vinyl that encases the headband. The color-coded blue "L" and red "R" badges on either side contrast well with the black, and make for a very slick, professional look.

I can only think of two cons:

- The cord is slightly too heavy for the phones, and depending on the application you can feel it yanking down on the side where it connects to the phones. I'll often remedy this by placing the unused length of cord on a desk, or by stuffing a section of the cord in my pants pocket, so that the weight doesn't burden the phones.

- The ear cups are not quite as sound-proof as they could be. While almost no sound leaks out, some does tend to leak in. I'm a drummer, and when I blast music in my ears while playing, I can still hear the drums pretty well. That's a pretty extreme example since drums are very loud instruments, but even when I use the phones to listen to music on a plane, the jet noise is more audible than I would've liked, although it is significantly muffled. Most ambient room noise is silenced completely though, such as people talking.

Overall I consider these the best, and when the best is also among the least-expensive, there's really no question. Highly recommended.