excellent value

These headphones are comfortable to wear all day. I'm no audiophile, just an amateur musician who expects fidelity. To my ear the sound is outstanding. I listen to jazz, classical, and vocals. I like the deep bass that comes through.

As for isolation, let me set the stage. I work in a cube around noisy equipment. I had been using a pair of company-issued ear muffs -- the kind that clamp to your head and don't even enable you to hear your phone ring. But I couldn't hear my PC audio cues.

I also used other headphones that drowned out sound when I played music, but I wanted a pair that would muffle sound but would still enable me to hear my PC.

The R/80s aren't as insular as the ear muffs, but they're much more comfortable, so I like the tradeoff. When I need to concentrate, I turn off my music but leave the headphones on. It's good enough.

When I went shopping for headphones, I found no reviews at epinions.com, but there are some in the newsgroups (rec.audio.*). A search at groups.google.com brings up several recommendations of the R/80 headphones. Audiophiles qualified their praise by the fact that there are better headphones at much higher prices. I don't know about that. I'm simply delighted with my pair. They said I'd have to pay $50, and I nearly did. When I found them for $31.95 I felt like I couldn't go wrong. I was right!