Finding a new headphone

I am starting to get sick and tire of my Sennheiser CX300-B Earbuds, and thinking that it's about time to upgrade to something better. So I started my journey of trying out all sort of headphones whenever and wherever I could.

My first love, and still my best love, is the Bose® around-ear headphones. However, people kept slamming it for it's horrible durability. I don't mind the US$125.95 price tag, but hate to have it destroyed within a ear. In fact, I tried the Bose® QuietComfort® 2 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones in Apple Store and it was by far the best headphone experience I ever had. That make sense consider the huffty US$269.95.

Then I tried the Sennheiser Headphones in the Apple Store, and I was NOT impressed. In fact, none of the Sennheiser headphone I tried in Apple store and BestBuy impresses me.

My next stop was the Sony Style store, I tried all the headphones from $29.99 to $199. And I found out that all those sub-$100 headphones are totally shitty. The so called Extra Boss headphone are particaulrly shitty. I knew that because I use my iPod Touch as the benchmarking tool. All the headphone went thru the same devices place the same song, so I instantly find out which one is better. To be fair, those $199 headphone sounds pretty OK, but the bass are not puchy enough.

Finally I spent quite some time in BestBuy to try out various kind of headphones. First I tried Sennheiser HD 280. DAmn waht a piece of shit. The song of totally horrible. Maybe the headphone was being over abused, but then, so should be the other headphones I tried. The sound was like chicken yepping, thin, and muddy. Terrible Terrible!

Then it was the Koss UR40. My first impression was, damn, what a ugly headphone. That was, until I put it on, and then I was, shit, this bad boy sounds pretty damn good. The bass was solid, vocal sounds clean. I could hear clearly all the instruments. It was also very lightweight, and with the fold able design, leaving it in my backpack shouldn't be problem. My ONLY problem with the headphone is the fact that it's an OPEN headphone. In fact I think that's part of the reason why I sound so good for merely US$29.52 from Amazon.com .

Then I tried Sennheiser HD201 Headphones. It was ... errr... OK. Vocal sounds too thin, but sound isolation seems fine. For US$20, it's seems reasonable, but now that I tried Koss UR40, no way I will get HD201.

Koss PRO3AA Collapsible Closedear Headphones is my another stop. It sounded nice, slightly better than UR40. I found that it's boss is not as punchy solid like the Audio TEchnica I tried, but for US$38.17, hell, what do you expect? The biggest problem of this one is the long cord and the heavy weight. Wearing it just 10 minutes and I already find it a bit painful. No way I will wear it daily while I am on the street. On the plus side, this one is CLOSE compare with UR40.

OK, so what is the verdict? I think I will continue shop a bit more, but I am very much lean towards getting UR40.