Sony MDR-V700DJ

Serious listening demands serious headphones. For DJ and remix applications, Sony touts its MDR-V700DJ. It's designed for critical monitoring, and the model's professional styling expresses a contemporary theme.

You can easily stash the V700DJ in a bag without damaging it. To collapse the headphones into roughly the size of a softball, you fold each earpiece in toward the headband, then wrap the coiled cord around the bundle. While we've read that the plastic hinges tend to crack, our three-year-old pair is still flawless. Another noteworthy design feature is the earpieces' ability to swivel, which helps you monitor on just one side or with an ear partially uncovered. And the ultrapadded headband helps maintain a comfortable fit throughout even long listening sessions.

The cups fully cover your ears, so the V700DJ does a very good job of blocking out external sounds. On a recent train ride, the headphones successfully defended us from a nearby passenger's hysterical laughter without forcing us to crank the volume. The V700DJ's noise-isolation characteristics will also be beneficial in live mixing environments.

If you like wearing big headphones when you're enjoying audio on the go, the V700DJ is a top choice. It features a sky-high sensitivity of 107dB, so plenty of volume was on tap when we listened to music on our MP3 player and our laptop. And the V700DJ works equally well at home; Sony includes an adapter that bridges the headphones' 1/8-inch plug and your stereo's 1/4-inch jack.

The V700DJ's sonic performance was excellent; we couldn't find any significant problems. While the headphones may slightly overemphasize bass, it wasn't at all excessive and sounded pretty tight. When we fired up Outkast's "Love Hater," the sound field's depth was especially impressive. The guitar track sat well above the bass line in the mix, and the vocals floated across the top. The treble was smooth but revealing, and the midrange had more texture than most 'phones deliver. If you're into jazz or classical music, you might be happier with the more transparent sound of a Sennheiser or AKG headset, but otherwise, you can't go wrong with the MDR-V700DJ. Hide Review