I can understand having to try them on. I bought my Audio Technica's on a whim, and the sound was great. The only issue I had with them was it really wasn't a comfortable design, so it definitely makes sense to try them on first.
I ha a pair of at 550s? With the bungee chord cable and the connectors broke in around 3 months. I have really ba experience with a of audio technicas gear, I think it mostly overpriced crap.
Yeah, I don't know what it is with me and AT stuff, but just all bad...:(
Yeah that is definitely true, some companies more often than others. Like berringher(I don't know if thats spelled correctly), I've never had any problems with any of their gear. Granted, I don't expect anything of theirs to perform like any of my manley or tubetech stuff, but never any of the issues I have heard so many people complain about. AKG and Sennheiser just make really solid headphones, and they aren't all out there expensive. Balance is what's important to me with headphones, because the only time I really ever use them is to check how my mixes/masters are going to sound on headphones. I'm a little spoiled as far as always listening on fairly high resolution monitors.
My dad was big into DJ/mixing business for awhile, but that was a while ago. I never really caught onto all the technical stuff I just liked good sound, and noticed there were inexpensive ways to accomplish that goal. I can respect the technical side of things though. I sometimes wish I had pursued music in that manner sometimes.
I love making music, but I realized that wasn't exactly a good idea to rely on career-wise. So I got into the engineering side of music, and now do recording/mixing/editing/mastering stuff for audio. We'll see where it goes, lol.