Audio Technica ATH-FC707 WHITE | Closed Dynamic Headphones (Japan Import)

I got these on an impulse purchase while in the Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Duty Free in December and have been using them a lot while travelling and playing it mostly through an ipod classic 80gb. Have also gone on to test them on the new Fiio X5.

After nearly 6 months of use I've formed a pretty good opinion of them and the main points would be:

- They look really nice and apart from the two garish exposed screws for the swivel joints, its a very well put together set of headphones and the transparent glass-like covers are a very nice touch.
- Sound quality is suprisingly good for what you'd expect from a 70-80 USD pair of headphones. They handle the lower frequencies quite well so very little distortion on the bass end although the overall sound of the ATH-FC707's are slightly blanketed. This is based on a wide variety of genres from metal to classical and even when tweaking highs with the EQ you definitely feel it doesn't quite get there.
- They are 'on ear' and not 'over ear' - The pads are semi soft but not intended for extended use. My actual ear size is perfectly average so after a few hours of use (for example on the several 8 hour bus trips and long distance flights since I've had them) your pinna (outer ear) starts feeling quite painful after about 90 minutes. I'd imagine even on smaller ears you'd start to feel the pinch.
- I was quite excited to see how well these closed back headphones would perform at keeping out noise (flights etc). Given that these are on-ear, they did a fairly decent job and I used them without having to crank the volume up too much on in-flight movies etc but still a far cry from being impressive in this sense.

Summary:

I'm still happy I got these as they take up very little space in something like my camera bag and you can forget they are there until you need them. Nothing horribly wrong with the sound quality for the price and it helps that they look really cool.