Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I scanned through all the reviews and no one has mentioned that these things have a tendency to fail. I'm a drum teacher and I've personally owned 4 pairs of these and have had dozens of students buy these. When they work these headphones are great. They are much lower in price than other isolation headphones and the sound quality is acceptable. What is not acceptable is that the soft plastic that holds the foam earcups in place will eventually fail. What's worse is that the wires eventually become damaged and stop feeding sound to one or both speakers. Before they fail fully there are always a handful of months where the connections work intermittently, which is also quite frustrating. As such I've searched extensively for an alternative that survives for a handful of years. My solution is to buy a pair of inexpensive isolation ear buds and a pair of job sight ear muffs. This setup has benefits: 1) The isolation is much much better! I can drum full blast with my ipod level set at a third of it's capacity and still hear the music clearly over the drumming. 2) Costs a lot less. JBud sells isolation headphones for $10, and I'm sure you could find an even better deal if you searched. The ear muffs can be purchased for $15 or less. Add these together and you're looking at paying less than half what you'd pay for these vic firth headphones. 3) If the headphones fail (and let's face it, eventually any wire will die), you only have to buy a new pair of headphones. Modular systems are the best! 4) This may seem obvious, but either the headphones or the earphones can be used on their own. The downside is that properly inserting isolation headphones is a bit more time consuming and awkward than just slipping on the vic firth headphones. If the vic firths' didn't break down so often I would definitely be a fan. I hope this review is appreciated as I always use amazon reviews to get a sense of anything I'm considering buying.