mx880 have about the best bass you'll find in earbuds. the inline volume control really isn't a hindrance, i've found. there are plenty of reviews of these earbuds as well as others on this site that cover all aspects of sound quality. but, having used yuin pk1, pk3, final audio piano forte ii, and sennheiser mx880, i can tell you that i've done a good bit of research on earbuds, and you will be very pressed to find a better sounding earbud than mx880 for that price. in fact, the general consensus is that the only earbuds that beat the mx880 are the mx980, which cost about 3 or 4x as much.