Looking for good headphones...

Question

OK, I'm looking for a new pair of good headphones. For a few years, I've used Sony's. I like them, but I have one problem: durability. All of them have gone dead in a year or two. To be honest, I may be considered to be abusing them - They've all been earbuds, and I have a tendency to just dump them in my pocket. I bought a pair of $50 ones at the store about six months ago, and they work fine, but I've just noticed that the wire is exposed in one area, which generally means that they're gonna die soon. A case came with them, that was good, but it broke after a month or so.
I guess what I'm looking for is this:
- A pair of earbuds
- Good sound quality (doesn't have to be noise reduction, in fact, I might prefer they weren't, because I generally need to be able to hear what's going on around me)
- durability
- different size 'buds' (My ears are pretty small; the normal ones that came with the iPod were too big, they won't stay in, and all other one-size-fits-all type buds pose the same problem)
- $100 or less
- a durable, easy to use case (that I won't just ditch because there's too much work getting them in and out)
I was looking around and found that I really like the Panasonic RP-HJE70-S, they're around $100 and come with a case. They seem to be good, and the few reviews I've found like them. But they're fairly new, and there isn't much word out there yet. I also wanted to get some opinions first.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi,
I splurged recently on a pair of Audio Technica ATH M50's which were very expensive.
They sound wonderful and are 8 out of 10 comfortable when using them for hours. They're really good for tracking but I have found them to be highly inaccurate/coloured for mixing.
I don't know if this is important to you, but I've been unpleasantly surprised that most headphones seem to have the cable hard wired to the enclosure.
My fantastic Beyer Dynamic DT 150's (which are now 20 years old but not so good for tracking or mixing) have a hard plastic tab at the end of the cable that plugs into the headphones, and this tab has several, 'male' D.I.N. like pins (except in a rectangular formation) which plug into their female counterparts in the enclosure. This means that if the cable ever breaks (which, ironically, it hasn't because it is very durable) you can just buy another one and plug it in.
I wonder if there are other elements of design that are important to you or others.
Let us know what you choose, and you might want to check out the other sites too, homerecording.com, macrumors.com, audiorecording - I'm sure you're familiar with a lot of these.
Good luck
Message was edited by: drutgat