Had to add a great story to this thread - I only recently became a newbie headphone audio enthusiast, having a good friend convince me to spring a whopping $60 for a JDS Labs cmoybb headphone amp to mate with my Koss Portapros and portable FLAC player. "I never knew it could be so good" and proceeded to discover the joys of a decent set of cans, amp, and signal.
Soon the bug to escalate bit me, wondering if, in fact, there could be anything even better than my current audio nirvana... so I began searching for that magic set of $50 cans which might outdo my sweet Portapros. I began hitting this site in earnest, trying and maddeningly returning half a dozen inferior headphones (Wicked Epic, Sennheiser HD 205 ii, AKG k511, etc) seemingly resigned to my Koss as The Best There Is under $50...
Then, one day, walking thru my local Frys, I spied an open box, discontinued headphone, obviously last in stock pair of... Pioneer SE-A1000s. I dimly recalled from an earlier reading of this very thread that there might be something to these, and worth a gamble... there was no price on the box, so I asked the manager how much he'd take for 'em - he looked over the beat up box, and said "$25 bucks".
I took them home, plugged them in, spun my go-to HDTracks FLAC cut of Alison Krause and John Waits "Missing You"... and fell out of my chair! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! I listened again, then furiously scrambled through other pristine cuts, revealing long hidden nuances of singers taking breaths, musicians adjusting their chairs, with voices and notes and sounds revealed that were borderline unbelievable. I've never "heard the engineer" so darn obviously before these Pioneers - for $25. I'm stunned and overjoyed
I thought you all might appreciate what I think is the lowest price ever paid for these Pioneers, and the incredible gift they are giving me, which folks on this thread will understand.