Well I certainly find this thread interesting, for several reasons. The funny thing is that I actually sort of disagree with several of the things that Dsnuts has said.
I bought the ATH-CKM50's a while back, probably a good year or so now (has it really been that long?). I got them when I had a $50 Best Buy gift card and they were on sale online there, yep, bought them from BB and not Amazon.
The sound quality is great -- when you're listening at medium to low levels. If you plan on using them any louder, look elsewhere. Well, maybe not that far, but they certainly loose their "smoothness." The highs start to become harsh and the bass starts to lose control. You know, they start to sound like *gasp* an Audio Technica 'phone! The U shaped FR curve shows its head. And this acutally happens more than you might think. I had a pair of Phillips SHE9550 and compared to them, the isolation on these (CKM50) is... well bad. It block some noise. I guess. If it's already pretty quiet. If you want to use these on the bus, as they say, forgettaboutit! You'll have to turn them up enough to drown out the noise and then you lose their SQ. Also, the build quality seems to me to be a bit slim. Now, I did say "seems" because I have fallen asleep with these on and layed on them all night several times and they still turned out just fine, haven't broken them yet. I guess they've stood up.
So yea, not trying to bash them or anything, just thought I'd qualify some of the things said, they certainly aren't the greatest ever, but for under $30? Sweet deal.
