Sennheiser HD 485

Pros: very good sound quality all round. outstanding comfort

Cons: not very portable and the open back design lets some ambient noise in

Summary: A couple of months ago i bought myself a new creative zen 20gb mp3 player. at the time i thought the sound quality produced from the standard headphones was extremely good. id always wondered why the sound quality of the large 'big buffers' at the cd stores sounded so good and i always thought it was purely because they had them turned up so loud........ think again. i did some reasearch on cnet and audio review.com and found that the hd485's were the best sound quality for price, more so than the 515's and 555's. when i first tried them on i thought the sound was fantastic but after an hour or so of listening i began to pick holes in their performance. - the bass was to strong and overpowering and the mids were a bit mucky and the vocals sounded quite distant and weak; yet they still sounded better than my old standard creative set. however i stayed optimitic especially after reading the 'take time to break them in review' and that guy is totally right; after about 35 hours of listening the sound spectrum even out a lot. the bass toned down and became full and solid, the mids became rich and the vocals especially the high notes became crisp and clean, this happens very gradually over the break in period. i had ago on my frinds i-pod nano yesterday and almost laughed at the tinny scraping noise it made. what a difference awesome headphones do make after all. the comfort is also superb after 15 minutes you forget you are wearing them. one improvement to be made would definitely be making them closed back to help with ambient noise reduction. and lastly the 3m cord is a bit of a pain i would have liked to see a 1.5m cord with another 3m extension they have tried to account for tv listening as well as portable short range all in 1 which hasnt worked that well, the 3m cord doesnt reach my tv from my couch, but ill just buy another 3 m extension. all in all sound quality and comfort far out way all the tiny faults but still not perfect. SUPERB