I brought a CD of my own tunes that I had recorded in my studio to test the headphones with, and I spent well over an hour comparing the various headphones they had for sale -- mostly Sennheisers and Sonys. Most of the headphones either lacked bass and had good highs, or had good bass and poor highs. The Sony MDR V700 and MDR V900 headphones were the closest to what I was looking for. The V700's actually were the loudest of all the headphones, and delivered the beefiest bass and the midrange and highs were also nice sounding. I actually preferred the V900's over the V700's, but since they cost $30 more I chose the V700's, which were 100 bucks. That's actually more than I was planning on spending, but the less expensive headphones just did not do it for me.

The MDR V700 headphones are known as "DJ" headphones and are popular with DJays far and wide mainly because they deliver so much bass with their 50 mm drivers, but when I brought my set into Jack Endino's studio to mix down my band's CD (Jack Endino being the famous "grunge" producer/engineer) he told me he sees a lot of these in studios these days and that they're one of the few headphones that won't blow a speaker with high volumes. And I must say, I've owned these for over eight years now with lots of use and they are still kicking out the jams.

These headphones are also very comfortable, probably the most comfortable headphones I've ever tried, and they do fold up nicely with swivel earcups for portability. My own set rarely leaves my studio so I've never had a problem with the swivels falling apart, in fact mine are still solid as the day I bought them. That's pretty impressive too because I've got kids who come to my studio and abuse my equipment, and even they haven't broken these headphones yet.

The only problem I've had with these headphones -- and my only complaint -- is that I had a break in the wire connection to the TT plug and fixing and soldering the connection was a real pain in the rear end because the wires are super-thin and hard to work with. I've had to re-solder the wires three times now and it doesn't get any easier. Otherwise I am very happy with these headphones and they are still cranking out the tunes after more than ten years of use.

2018 update: My Sony V700 DJ headphones finally fell apart on me a couple years ago -- I had duct tape holding them together for a while -- and Sony no longer makes them. Now I am the proud owner of Sony MDR-7560 studio headphones, which are also very nice!