Pretty Darn Good

Where do I being, I simply love these headphones. While they do need a break in period of about a week, they sound great afterwards. The headband is foam padded and cloth covered and is generally comfortable, even while wearing glasses. The cord is at a good length about 3m of OFC copper, and while the cord is not replaceable like on the HD 497's, it really shouldn't need to be. I listen to a variety of music from Hip hop, Rock, Classical, Soundtracks, and even techno, and they all sound great, with good highs, mids, and lows. The nice thing about the lows on these headphones is that while clearly pronounced, they do not drown out the other frequencies, which is a good thing. Vocals, guitars, pianos, and violins are all very clear and distinct, a plus in my book. The one thing I have noticed however is that playing music like Epica, the bass maybe slightly overwhelming for some. These headphones are targeted towards Jazz, Hip Hop, and Rock listeners, as the focus is clearly on the bass. The cups themselves move to fit your ears, be it up or down, or left to right, BUT they do not swivel or fold, and as such can make traveling hard. The nice thing about the headband however is that although it is plastic, it will flex quite a bit to ensure a good fit, allowing the headphones to remain comfortable. Going back to the sound, some may say these headphones don't have deep booming base, thats true, it doesn't have booming bass, but it has bass, clear and loud, personally I'd rather hear the boom caused by a drum and hear the drum than just a flat thump, but thats may just be me. The Min Frequency Response is 25 Hz (which is fine for most things, but 20Hz would have been better), and the Max Frequency Response is 21 kHz (higher would have been better, but they still sound good. For those of you interested, the headphones include a cord wrap for those who don't need all 10+ ft of cord, and has a 2 year warranty from the manufacture. I compared these to the Panasonic RP-HT455 and the Koss UR40T and found these to be superior because, while the Panasonics had a lower frequency range, the sound was distorted, especially with music requiring a wide range of response. The Koss headphones were originally my first pick, but after trying them, I found the bass line to be distorted for some forms of music. If your a gamer or movie watcher, these headphones work great too, EAX sounds good, and the bass allow explosions to sound realistic. One final qualm however, is that since these are Open - Aire, supraurl headphones, the ear isn't totally enclosed good or bad, which allows you to hear whats going on around you, bad if you need to be aware of things, bad if your taking the train to work.