Hi Flo, First I want to thank you for taking the time to write up some advice about headphones. All of the combined experience of headphone users is helpful to get past the marketing hype. ------------------------ In your discussion, you completely left out a very important reason why headphone listening is tiring. This reason is more important than sound quality. This reason is that stereo images as currently produced are fundamentally incompatible with headphone listening. They should be binaural, as discussed in the URL below. You also posted: I completely and emphatically disagree with this notion as well as do other demanding audiophiles. But perhaps you are assuming professional mixing rather that merely listening? Please see: http://www.binaural.com/binfaq.html for reasons why everyone should be *listening* with headphones rather than speakers! Practical reasons are also extremely important. You simply cannot take your monitor speakers everywhere you go. My guess is that very few people here are familiar with binaural recordings or know much about them. This is unfortunate. Once again, the main reason that headphones don't sound very good and are tiring is because the way in which the audio image is produced is fundamentally incompatible with headphone use. The reason that "Use speakers" is considered by many to be good advice is that most audio is *produced for speakers*, not headphones. This does not have to be the case. This is why people are able to sell headphone amplifiers to improve speaker mixes and why some people such as Andrew have asked for software methods to create better audio images for headphone listening. Regards, Dave. P.S. I see that Arnold has posted something regarding attachments. I must say I was quite puzzled when you said that my mails show up as attachments, because I physically have to attach them and I hadn't ever done that to this group. (Thanks, Arnold!)