Mean_Chlorine wrote:

Sennheisers are *everywhere* and at least Sony and Koss should be
possible to find, but the others will likely be difficult to find
here.

Etymotic and Shure are earphones or in-ear-monitors (IEMs), not
strictly speaking headphones. Nevertheless they are viable options.
Other worthwhile IEMs include those from Sony, Futuresonics and Koss.

From searching this group I find a lot of talk about Sony MDR 7506,

I have a pair that I use for critical listening and mixdowns.

and from other sources also Sony MDR-CD580. I'll see if I can get
hold
of one of those and test.

And I'll keep an eye out for Stax.

They cost a lot of money - but people who have free acess to both say
they prefer the higher-end offerings from Sennheiser, the 580, 600 and
etc.

I picked up a pair of 580s that I use for long-term listening and
listening for pleasure.

Since I often listen to .wav files from my portable digital player, I
spend about as much time listening to Futuresonics IEMs as anything.

My Sony MDR71s are currently plugged into my FlashRAM based MP3 player.
I mostly use it on airplane flights, and the like, when the portable
hard-drive player/recorder would be awkward.