Comfort, non fautiging, light, imaging, easy to drive

Build quality, bloated, boomy sound, unimpressive mids

Just to take back my original positive review, now that I have some HD600s I have a much better benchmark to compare the HD500s against, rather then Sony MDR-V200s. So - please disregard the second review listed.

These headphones have a very dark, warm sound, with heavily emphasized bass. This gives them a dull, boomy sound. If you own the Koss TD-65s, they have a similar kind of sound (Although the HD500s are less dark, and sound better in general) They are not very detailed, either.

That isn't to say that these headphone are horrible, they are much better then most of the headphones you would find at a store, but there are much better headphones avalible.

On to the good.

I can still listen to these headphones for hours and hours on end, as they are very light, and don't clamp onto my ears at all. Also, the lack of treble makes them very easy on the ears. Combine this with the good imaging (Although you don't get an out of head image, insturment/sound placement is pretty good), and you have a good headphone for computer gaming. Just turn the bass down a bit, raise the treble a bit, and you can go for hours on end.

Also, if you like to crank the bass up on a stereo, these are about as close to that effect as you can get in a pair of open headphones.

These wouldn't be so bad at $50-60, but at the original $130 retail, they are a ripoff.

Not for everyone, listen first.

Similar Products Used:

Koss TD-65, Sennheiser HD600

Powerfull bass, very comfortable, great soundrange.

It's hard not to move to the rythm when u put em on...

I have owned these for quite a while. The reason I buyed these was instead of hearing loud music on my rack why not use good quality headphones. I became very surprised when I heard the astounding quality surpass my stereorack way in soundexperience and quality.
They REALLY rock if you like rap music!! hard not to shake youre body to the music.

Very comfortable, excellent mids, good highs

Bass is boomy, somewhat ovepowering

This is the first nice set of headphones I have sprung for, and I am very impressed. Nothing sounds distorted, and although the bass is somewhat boomy, I generally listen to these on my minidisc player (Sony MZ R-55) and PC (SB Live), and I only have to turn the bass down a tad on my PC to get it to sound just right. Treble can be a bit bright at times, but is ususally balanced very well, and definantly not fatiguing. I can wear these headphones for hours on end, and they get a bit warm (nothing a 1 minute break can't solve), but are otherwise extremely comfortable. Very detailed, much more so than the Sony crap they are replacing, I literally hear things I have never heard before in almost everything I listen to.

comfortable, light, midrange is filled with great definition if you prefer a warm sounding product, this is it.

would prefer more concise bass and more rigid highs, a tad warm for my taste

if you prefer warm sounding products such as loud speakers from paradigm line; this is your purchase. this is my first venture in a what i hope to be a short search in a perfect set of headphones. im still looking, not subtracting any credibilty from the 500 fusion, they are fun and great for watching movies and music alike. being a hip hop junky and mellow jazz fans, its a tough combo to find one product to suffice both flavors. if your looking for a set for blister your ears with intense highs or rattle your eye balls in their sockets from bass this aint your purchase. in closing this is a solid set of headphones for most any listening request you ask of it.

Similar Products Used:

koss,akg,beyrer dynamic

Light, possibly comfortable in the long run

Very boomy bass

When looking for phones a couple of months ago, I auditioned Sennheiser 500, 565 and Beyerdynamics 931 (?) phones.

Senn 500's were a disappointment. I began listening with some fusion jazz (the style that the phones are supposedly designed for!), but the bass was overwhelming. It boomed so much that it drowned the low midrange altogether. On Sting's "Soul Cages", the silent thunder in the background made the overall sound blurry because of low emphasis. Effect was bit like the loudness switch - 6 dB emphasis on 100 Hz.

Midrange and low highs were ok, but clearly the bass problem was so annoying that the phones would not have been their money's worth. If you are a real bass fan, maybe you'll like this sound, but chances are that with heavy rock/techno, the midrange details disappear.

I finally coughed up the money for the 565 since I got the last ones there were for about 150$. After fixing the intermittent connect, have been _very happy_ with them!

Can handle massive amounts of bass (especially when plugged into a powerful source), very warm sound

none I have noticed as of yet

In comfortable headphone you can buy along with hd570. Great for positional audio PC FPS gaming, exceptional value if you can find them for under $75. Just as good as HD570's when plugged into poor output (mini system, PC) but the 500's require much less power to drive, meaning they sound much better plugged into a PC or portable CD player than the 570's do, making this a good purchase.

Similar Products Used:

Sennheiser HD570