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"  While packing for a trip the other day, I realized I had to choose from about $3,300 worth of headphones on my desk. Among them: AKG N90Q ($1,500), Noble Kaiser 10U ($1,650), Blue Lola ($250), and the scrappy runt of the group, AKG Y20U ($25). The N90Qs are noise-canceling, so they&amp;#039;d be good for the plane. But maybe the Lolas are easier to pack because they don&amp;#039;t need a battery? The Nobles are for walking around, but I can&amp;#039;t risk losing them, so maybe the Y20Us for outside the hotel.\u00A0 I know. It&amp;#039;s a dilemma I wholly acknowledge as obscene. In the name of simplicity, I packed just the $25 AKGs. Since then\u2014even with much more expensive headphones at my disposal\u2014I use that pair and recommend them to most of my friends. The fact is, most people moving around the world can get everything they want from music through cheap headphones. A much more expensive pair doesn&amp;#039;t give you more of that magical feeling like you&amp;#039;re in a movie and your songs are the soundtrack. It&amp;#039;s just more expensive.    Expensive portable headphones never appeal to me. For instance: A while back I tried the $1,200 Sony Walkman\u2014one of those high-fidelity portable players that (to theoretically get your money&amp;#039;s worth out of it) requires you to purchase, or re-purchase, high-definitions versions of your music. That&amp;#039;s already unappealing. And once you&amp;#039;ve done that, you&amp;#039;ll be listening to an immaculate recording through a sophisticated digital-to-analog converter on superlative headphones while on a screeching subway or airplane felt like a waste. Whatever nuanced sound this apparatus created was lost, overcome by the noise of the world. If the point of headphones is to move through the world with your own private soundtrack, then this type of quality is excessive.\u00A0 I&amp;#039;ll be damned if the Nobles Kaiser 10Us don&amp;#039;t sound incredible next to my cheap-o earbuds. The Nobles are portable and powerful\u2014the way a pair of headphones that costs as much as a new MacBook should. But as with other high-end in-ear &amp;#039;phones, you concede convenience. The Nobles&amp;#039; braided cable has no in-line pause/play or volume, something you don&amp;#039;t miss until you go without. Go inside to buy groceries, and you unplug the headphones from the phone to pause the music, then re-insert them. And when you go back outside, getting a proper seal in your ear is a procedure. Yes, the expanding foam earpieces are so much better than the rubber plugs, but to use either one properly you need to hold your ear open with one hand while inserting the headphone with the other. It&amp;#039;s a bother if you&amp;#039;re carrying anything in your hands, or if you have to take them in and out multiple times. It&amp;#039;s not a great solution for the grocery line.\u00A0    Same goes for the crazy sophisticated N90Qs. This over-ear pair has internal microphones that read ambient sound and adjust playback of the integrated amps accordingly. The system works at its best when you use the MicroUSB connection, which lets more of your music&amp;#039;s data flow through to the headphones. When playing uncompressed files, it&amp;#039;s the best sound I&amp;#039;ve heard outside of Sennheiser&amp;#039;s booth at CES. Yet without a special dongle, you can only use the MicroUSB cable with a laptop. Use a standard 3.5mm cable and the N90Qs become a gold-plated four-figure version of Bose noise-canceling headphones. The reason most of us settle for the cheap earbuds that came with our phone is that those headphones convey enough of a song to evoke the memories and feelings we want to receive when we listen to music. Hearing the subtle stuff you get from a great pair of headphones like the N90Qs or Nobles is remarkable. Hearing new instruments on a familiar track is an ear-opening experience. But most of the time we just want the song, and crummy Spotify streaming with a pair of $25 earbuds will give you that. Swap between the Nobles and the $25 AKGs and the average listener won&amp;#039;t notice or really articulate a difference. That changes slightly when you use higher-resolution music files, sure. But for me and most friends I&amp;#039;ve asked, the experience of testing headphones is akin to wine tasting: smile, nod, agree with what the salesperson is suggesting, let the price of the bottle affect your valuation, and hope nobody will realize you can&amp;#039;t really tell between the $50 and the $500 model. Where you will absolutely notice a difference is in durability. The milled Nobles feel like they&amp;#039;ll outlive me. The AKGs? I&amp;#039;ve sent them back once when one bud stopped working after I (admitedly) used them under a motorcycle helmet. (Sidenote: they&amp;#039;re great for wearing under helmets because they barely protrude from your ear.) Even so, I keep buying cheap models. Earbuds go in such an inhospitable, intimate place on your body that you should consider them disposable, more like a medical thermometer than a smartphone accessory. More importantly, I honestly can&amp;#039;t tell a $1,000-plus difference when I listen. Plenty of people have written about this complicated topic before so I won&amp;#039;t repeat the thorough science that other writers have done, but my subjective experience points to cheap being good enough.    Over-ear headphones have their place. If you spend a lot of your day on the internet or can listen to music while you work, a non-earbud pair of headphones is worth the money, hands down. Even with custom-molded buds I&amp;#039;ve tried, I can&amp;#039;t stand in-ears for more than an hour or so at a time without feeling\u2026 violated. For a solid pair of over-ears (that aren&amp;#039;t gaudy like Beats), the $250 Blue Lolas make excellent sound, have an in-line control, and have huge cushions that make them comfortable to wear for hours (previous Blues were too heavy to handle that). If you want to go cheaper, Sony&amp;#039;s MDR7506 are also fantastic. We use them here to record podcasts, but they&amp;#039;re a recording standard for a reason. Plus, the curly cable makes you feel like a producer. There&amp;#039;s a part of me that gets it. A nice pair of headphones, like the gilded N90Qs, exemplifies the ceremonial fashion in which I wish I listened to music. The truth is, though, my audio habits are more like listening to the same few albums on my commute, usually while anxiously refreshing some app. Flustered by an overabundance of streaming choices, I don&amp;#039;t appreciate music the way I used to. But like most activities, the gear is a distraction. All you need to have music affect you is motivation and some cheap earbuds.\u00A0 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/audio/a20510/30-dollar-headphones/>