Audio-Technica Professional Studio Monitor Headphones

There is a lot that comes to mind with these headphones. I have been playing guitar and recording music for 10 years. With greater opportunities in income, I was able to splurge a little bit to get these headphones. The best I had experienced for some time were a pair of Monster Turbine headphones, in ears. These lasted for two years with some wear and tear on the earbud connections. My experience was very good, being able to hear a good spectrum of things. However, upon getting these, I have been utterly blown away. I have enjoyed listening to various genres of music. From Nutone's remix of Emeli Sande's Heaven onto Beethoven's 3rd piano concerto onto Lil Wayne's She Will, the music sounded spectacular. Sound cancellation is passive (over ear cups remove a lot of ambient noise). Leakage is reasonable, if you are blasting max level on a Zune player or smartphone, everyone else will hear the sounds, except probably you since you might be deaf at that point. On an airplane or train ride, playing at an enjoyable 50%-75% will not be noticeable to others unless they intentionally focus. Build quality is exceptional, flexible but contained. You can bend these in quite a few angles and they won't snap, unlike other plastic headphones. Hear are my thoughts/experience on the sound quality: With DrumNBass and Hip Hop, the highs/mids were not blasted to kingdom come with the bass. Everything was balanced and clear. Netsky and High Contrast was enjoying. Digital Underground's Humpty dance had great response, along with 3 6 Mafia's Stay fly. The real benefit was with Liquid and Atmospheric DnB, like Alaska and Paradox, Seba, and LTJ Bukem. Barber's Adagio for Strings did not strain with sharpness with the highs during the climax. Bach by Gould was very clear (and you can definitely hear the man sing along). Jazz also performed very well, Benny Goodman's clarinet didn't screech with distortion. Also Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever was outstanding as well. I also listened to some Metallica and Dimmu Borgir, I can say their songs did not really have a punchy low response in comparison to other headphones, as in the lows did not add much color to the sound. For Space/Ambient music, I used an old EP by Michael Stearns (Planetary Unfolding). It was unreal. Along with some other pieces, I had also noticed several background and subtle elements for the first time in a lot of songs. Last but not least, I have fallen in love again with trance/techno. Of course, these are not the bassiest but they put out enough without ruining the music. Psytrance like Talamasca and Sesto Sento were extremely clear, even with the organized chaos found in their work. Tiesto and AvB sounded huge and full. Lastly, top 40 sounded good and you can notice how high level of production they are at nowadays. If you like to listen to indie music, the level of production is evident with these headphones, from 4 track basic recorder to some mammoth studio powered Pro tools suite. In the end, for the price of the headphones, you cannot go wrong. Of course $500++ headphones may blow these out of the water but the quality you get as you go higher seems like diminishing returns. If it were possible, I would spend an entire day in an isolation tank with these headphones so that I could truly become one with my music. Life changing these are (until I get better ones should my economic situation continue to improve).