started out with a Shure SRH240A, which I just recently hooked up to my other headphone out for a guest. I had him go back and forth between the Shure and the Sennheiser HD280PRO, and he agreed with me completely. The Sennheiser monitors are more comfortable, do a better job of reproducing audio, and they block more room noise. They're just better. They do a good job of making you feel like you're in a room, and they reproduce audio with a clarity and purity that gets lost everywhere else. In the car, on the home theater sound system, or even over the open-air monitors, audio never sounds quite as clear and pure as it does when I wear these things. I'm sure they are mere toys compared to the big daddies that cost sixteen times as much, but unless you are recording music for Elvis, they are probably good enough for the average home gamer or small timer. I usually don these monitors when I sit down at my kit, and sometimes I play drums with my audio recording interface turned off, at which point I am basically just using these as ear protectors. They do a good job of protecting my hearing, because, let's face it, drums are really loud! What I hear at the kit with my audio interface turned on is pretty close to how my raw recordings are going to sound. It's in the ballpark. I find recording my drums to be a rather satisfying and relatively simple process, and these monitors are definitely part of that process. Having bought them years ago, and looking back now, I'm kind of surprised how cheap they were. When I estimated what I must have paid, I guessed three times what I actually spent on these. This makes them seem like a very good value for the money. I only gave them four stars, because I really doubt they're that good in the scheme of things. It can't be an accident that the top dog Sennheiser monitors are sixteen times more expensive. Those are probably the five star ones. So you get four star for 1/16th the cost. Seems like a reasonable bargain to me!