I love these earphones for the gym... they sound good with house music / dance music, and they stay put whilst running, sit ups, weights etc. I bought these cheap for £12 and they are worth it. However, now that my other headphones are nicely broken in (burnt in?), the limitations of these JVC are obvious in terms of the sound. They are not bad, just not worth buying for the sound - especially if you are after beautiful vocals or impressive detail. My other headphones are Sennheiser PX360.... not perfect, but better for most types of music than the JVC HA-SX500.