I'm still very happy with my MDR-7520 purchase. Most headphones I have bought, I've ended up selling after a few months due to comfort, build quality, or sound quality problems.
After about a year of ownership, I'm not having any problems using the MDR-7520 all day long. With other headphones I'd eventually find them fatiguing due to bloated bass or piercing treble, or uncomfortable to wear due to pressure spots on the headband or earpads, but no such issues here - even when wearing glasses.
If I'm being
really picky about them:
- I wish Sony sold a locking cable which had an iPod remote on it. The standard coiled cord is great in a home/studio environment, and stretches far more than you would expect, but it's not really suited to portable use. The Z1000 came with a short straight cable, but I have not found any for sale individually to use with my 7520. You can swap it out with any 3.5mm cable though, it just won't have the locking mechanism - but I don't know that any other headphones using 3.5mm removable cables use locking connectors at all, so I guess that's fine. Studio demands are different from personal use.
- I would have preferred it to use leather padding rather than artificial leather. I think you can use any of the 7xxx studio pads with them, so I might order a pair of these. The included pads are fine though; I've used them for a year without complaints. That's just personal preference, not an issue with comfort.
- The hardcase for them is only sold in the US, and I haven't seen them show up anywhere else. (ebay, amazon etc.)
Take it for what you will, but I liked them enough to buy a second pair when it was thought they might be going out of production. (seems they just stopped being offered in Europe)
But Sony really knows what they're doing when building a rugged pair of studio 'phones, so there may not have been any need for me to do that. I don't have any of the build quality concerns I had with other headphones I've had in the past.