Shure SRH145 Portable Headphones

I bought these when the last of my sennheiser px-100's bit the dust, and I found that its successor (and, indeed, most modern phones) boosted the midbass so artificially as render most music practically unlistenable. That is why I got these instead of the SRH 145's, which are reputed to have more bass. My purpose is to use them at my desk, plugged into my desktop computer via an audioquest dragonfly. I eventually settled on the Grado SR60e's as my main listening phones, although compared to their progenitor, the original SR60's, the "e"'s had a shrillness at the top end that never went away, despite reassurances from Grado. Anyhow, those phones developed a mechanical fault, and I went back to the Shures and you know what, they are really good. Compared to the Grado's, they lack a little punch deep, and their top end is a little veiled. But I can, and literally have, listened to them all day, hours on end. They hold up well on all kinds of music. At work I tend to listen mostly to instrumentals, from classical (meaning mozart and chamber music), jazz (the contemporary Pandora channel has some good stuff) to celtic folk. Listening to Lunasa right now and they are doing a fine job propelling the music without any of the things that annoy me about audio in general and headphones in particular: no boomy midbass, ever; no undue accent in any particular area of the spectrum; never a shrill or harsh note at the top end but neither does it lack energy there. And they are easy to wear -- light weight, almost no sound bleeding out despite their open design. They are easy to drive, and they fold up. I've listened to lots of headphones in my time -- including Stax, Senns both low and high end, Grado, Koss, Sony, Audio Technica (the ATH M50 makes an excellent match for the Audioengine D1), and the Shure hold their end up well against some stiff competition. And for the price, they are a true audiophile bargain.