These headphones are wonderful! I read several reviews of these and other ear canal headphones, and decided to go for these. I have not been disappointed. In fact they are so good that I'm going to have to re-rip all my music at a higher bit rate, and probably invest in a headphone amp so I can get the most of them.
I used to use a pair of Sennheiser HD-25s which I love to bits! Whilst these can't quite get the level of bass that the Senns produced, the astonishing range , and the sound isolation really make up for his, and don't get me wrong, the bass is still excellent, but just can't match the depth of a good pair of cans. They apparently need up to 40 hours of breaking in time before you can really appreciate them, but if the first five minutes is anything to go by, then these really are going to be some special headphones indeed.

Right out of the box, into the ears, plug in the mp3 player and goosebumps! Pure sound - rich bass (no its not a boomer) and impressive range - these are simply the best.

Yes, I can understand how some people may not like the "in the ear" thing. Granted we all have different shaped ears and it may not work for a few, but they are the unfortunate souls who are missing out.

Again, these are not big power draining earphones so if deep loud bass is your only judgment for quality, you may want to save your $$ and get something else.

If you're looking for great quality (seriously impressive sound) I recommend getting these babies. I don't think you'll be disappointed. Shop around online and find a good deal.

Good luck.

I bought these because I found my previous phones, the E2Cs rather annoying to keep in my ear and also because I felt like an upgrade. If you're more of a bass-head, I'd still recommend the E2C. The E4s bass is slightly better defined but just a tad less deep...and I really mean a tad.

Overall sound quality is as good as the very MANY online reviews say it is. Not best of class but very musical. If you are listening to music for pleasure (not work), musicality is a good thing. Slightly exaggerated mids clarity and moderately extended (in duration not depth) bass are some of the embellishments.

Overall a good buy for the price (175 USD) and it's a good 70 USD cheaper than all the stores in Singapore.

Kudos to Shure and Amazon.com!

I'm using these with the Sansa 6 gig Nano equivalent. I was using a pretty cheap set of Koss Porta Pro headphones which are VERY high rated for the price on Amazon for years with my minidisk. I figured let me pick up a nice set of headphones when ordering the MP3 player.

The pro is sealing out noise. NYC subway noise is reduced by 80-90% when they are in and cranking. About 60%+ when just in and off. What I did notice is that these are not powerful on the bass and tinny on the high end. Midrange seems to be where their performance is. Because of their increased impedance which is a gauge for lacking quality in a speaker, you need to boost the volume.

I then cross tested the MP3 player and the headphones with different devices and headsets. It was confirmed that the headphones need more power for the same output and they are perform poorly on the bass. The high end is a little annoying too since it seems to outpace the volume setting. Meaning, if you have to put the volume to 8 (which is NOT loud) to hear a song, the treble seems to be on 14 and sounds distorted.

Like that other high end speaker manufacture where most of their $ goes into advertising and not R&D, I think these are VERY overrated and overpriced for what they deliver. They DID NOT outperform a $50 pair of 3 year old headphones.

I bought these and thought they would be better than the apple earbuds, but I was wrong. They suck!!!! I went back to the apple earbuds right away and acually ended up buying some Durabrand headphones for like $10 and they sound better than everything.