Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First of all, let me clear up one possible area of confusion - these headphones are NOT noise cancelling. They are noise isolating. What's the difference? Well, noise cancelling headphones detect ambient noise and then generate a signal that is 180 degrees out of phase of the noise. The two wave forms cancel each other out, drastically reducing noise. Noise isolating headphones, on the other hand, simply try to block ambient noise from entering your ears by absorbing it with dense materials. Some of the reviews here indicated that these headphones are noise cancelling, and I guess I didn't read the product description closely enough. So I was disappointed when they arrived and I realized that they are noise isolating - NOT cancelling. In fairness to the company, they never claimed the product cancels noise, and I'll admit I didn't do my homework. I just needed a decent pair of headphones for an upcoming flight and pounced on these. Regardless, however, they are pretty good phones. The build quality is waaay better than you'd expect for the cheap price. They look and feel like an expensive high-end audiophile product. They sound quite good too. Sound quality is somewhat subjective, but I'm fairly picky and I have no complaints. To me they sound slightly hollow in the mid frequencies, but that might be because they are new. I haven't used them enough to break them in properly, but the hollow timber seems to be getting better. It's hard to tell, of course, because I can't go back in time to listen again to how they sounded a month ago, so I'm going on memory. But that hollow sound is fairly common in speakers of all types and sizes when they are new. Once they are broken in, it goes away. I think this is happening with my CX-05 headphones, but I wouldn't swear to it. Anyway, even with the slightly hollow sound, they still sound pretty good. Comparable, at least, to those ridiculous Beats that all the kiddos seem so crazy about. As for the noise isolation - actually, it works pretty well. I had no trouble enjoying my music on a trans-Atlantic flight. Whatever the ear cups are made of is quite dense and honestly does a fabulous job blocking noise. So as noted above, they are not noise cancelling, but they are quite good at noise blocking. I only have two nits to pick: 1) Regarding the wire that runs from one side to the other, about an inch of this wire is exposed on both sides. I think it is quite likely that this wire will eventually get snagged on something and become severed. You could protect it by wrapping it with electrical tape, but that would be kinda ugly. The manufacturer should find a way to protect the wire along its entire course. 2) The ear cups do not pivot at all. They are fairly comfortable as-is, but to fit my head perfectly, they would have to be angled in by a couple degrees. A pivot would allow them to rotate just a bit to fit all sizes and shapes of noggins. So Sound Intone, my advice: Make the ear cups pivot just a bit, and run the wires securely through the axis of the pivot. That's all you have to do to make these the best headphones in this price range on the market!