Stigmata in exchange for musical bliss... a fair exchange.

The sound quality of Koss's PortaPro headphones is indeed sublime. My first experience of these headphones was like having music seamlessly streamed into my tertiary auditory cortex. So it is no wonder that they are now the stuff of legend.

Unfortunately, I can only guess that the job of designing the non-acoustic aspects of these headphones was given to some wayward janitor for beer money in his lunch break. These are without exception the most uncomfortable and incompetently designed headphones I have ever worn. Two metal razors situated above each ear piece (designed to latch the headphones together when the unit is folded away) prevent them being worn for more than a few minutes at a time, for fear of amputation. And if you are made of sterner stuff, and the loss of the tops of your ears is not enough to discourage you in the pursuit of a superior auditory experience (or if, like me, you have access to a micro-circular saw to remove these blighted blades), then having your skull dissected by the sharpened steel headband might.

Koss's SportaPro headphones are marginally less uncomfortable to wear, as the black coating on its steel parts seem to dull their edge enough to enable an entire album to be endured at one sitting (before the need to be rushed to emergency inevitably arises). But this comes at the expense of the introduction of bass distortion on some tracks.

Having said all this, it's a close call to choose between not spurting blood everywhere and the exquisite auditory experience these babies provide. I've therefore given them top marks for their sound quality alone. My only hope is that the guys at Koss might one day employ someone in their design department who actually knows about design.