Bose on-ear Headphones

I did something last week that I thought I'd never do...

I spent $200 for a set of headphones. Bose on-ear headphones, to be exact.

Now, that's a big wad of cash to drop for something for which I have never, in the past, paid anything more than $50. But I heard them at a listening station in a Target store some months ago and I was sold. I knew then and there that I wanted.these Bose suckers. The sound quality is just so far ahead of any I've ever heard (of those made for home use as opposed to studio headphones). The bottom end, which most inexpensive models simply can't reproduce, is satisfactorily prominent with these. For that matter, the entire spectrum of sound is reproduced exceptionally well on this model.

I know that Bose offers a model that is a little better than these, the noise canceling model they advertise on television. Those were designed almost exclusively for people who ride in airplanes a lot, though it is little wonder that they would also be very well suited for any listening situation. They're about a hundred dollars more than the ones I've just purchased. I'd like to have a pair of those but two things go against it:

1.) 200 bucks is more than enough to spend on headphones, especially when you consider:

2.) The extent of hearing loss that I deal with means I'm lucky to hear what I hear in the 200 dollar model...I somehow doubt that I would even notice the difference between the two. Maybe I'm wrong...if that is the case, please refer back to #1.

It has been said many, many times that when you upgrade your stereo system you will certainly hear things in music that you never heard before. I've found this to be true, but especially so with this set of Bose headphones. I listened to Sigur Ros' "( )" album last night and there was all kind of nuance in those songs that I had missed. I thought I had mined those soundscapes thoroughly well, but surprises were abundant and I doubt I would have ever heard them without these new phones...

...which means that the two hundred smackers was money well-spent. I came to that conclusion before I heard the Sigur Ros disc, but that's the one that brought it home to me. The SR "Heima" performance DVD sounds great, too.

So, to wrap it all up...if you love music enough to part with a couple hundred bucks on an item that can be purchased at Wal-Mart for 1/8th of the cost (albeit remarkably inferior in quality), you will be impressed with these Bose headphones. There are a couple of models they offer in this price range...the tri-port model seems to have a fairly comparable sound quality for about 40-50 dollars cheaper. But for over-all comfort and fidelity I think it's worth the extra money to go with the on-ear model.

Unless, of course, you've got $300 to invest...at which point I'd say "Do what you gotta do."

[Update 5/25/10: The set of Bose headphones I bought at this time lasted a little over a year before breaking down. Most likely this happened because I used them so often. I bought another pair a couple of months later, when I could afford it. That says a lot, IMO, about how pleased I was/am with the sound quality of these phones.]