Don't get me wrong, these are excellent headphones, suitable for almost any purpose but do they justify the price tag? The sound quality and noise isolation are so good it is easy to get completely lost in the music when wearing theSE 530 headphones, they put you in your own little world. The sound isolation is as effective as any noise cancellation I have ever heard. The whole package you get with them just oozes class, you really believe you have got something special when you open them up. The included extras provide everything for a perfect custom fit, I like the look of them and the styling of the cable over the ear, that definitely helps to keep them firmly in place when in the gym. The one thing I'm not happy about them is the price. In comparison to the Shure E2C, dynamic rather than balanced armature, are they really worth £200 more than that? I cannot agree with anyone who thinks so. Although the sound quality is exceptional, I have heard balanced armature headphones with a clearer top end. High frequency detail seems a little clearer on certain other dual armature technology headphones, maybe the triple driver architecture is a touch overkill and unnecessary, it would be unfortunate if it was indeed this selling point which had an adverse effect on the clarity of the top end. In short, there are better headphones at a better price point, but Shure have got the reputation and they have got the marketing right with the SE range, so full credit to them for that. They are able to charge a premium just for the brand.

Sleeping with the enemy in music is when a qualified high end lover, and writer of over 3000 articles and posts, puts on a pair of earphones on despite his knowledge and total hate for things that you stick in your ear, and ends up trying to find a pair to buy as soon as he can, when only two hours before he wouldn’t be seen wearing them. This is my story. Classical music which is the hardest music to reproduce in the world, on any instrument of reproduction was simply astonishing. The Shure was so sure of itself that even the 18" drums didn't even rattle. The flutes were perfectly staged and the height and depth of the experience was totally stable, without left-right drifting or height alterations due to external factors when using other models of earphones I have heard recently. Every instrument was accountable for, and when I closed my eyes, I was somewhere between the conductor and the first row of every title I played. With Rock, pop, ethnic, the Shure SE530 was cleansed again with not interfering with the musical playback, giving you exactly what the song was meant to be heard like. It's bass was clear, tight, and fixed towards quality, while retaining sound pressure levels very high if you wanted to. Listening to Beethoven took me back in time. Listening to Elvis made me swing my body, and listening to jazz just made me want a drink and tell everyone to leave the room. That is what a Shure SE 530 can do for you! If it doesn't then the next thing you should do is go listen to a concert and listen again to the Shure SE530 to see what I mean. That is what my experience tells me, and for someone in this hobby for 30 years and for a person who plays 7 instruments that should tell you something too.

When you open the unecessary steel box, it is hard to see where your money went, particularly if you bought the SE530s before the recent price reduction. But 30 seconds into the first track the price is all but forgotten.The first thing I noticed was how revealing they are, and I soon realised that I would have to re-burn all of my CDs into Itunes at a higher sampling rate than the standard 128kbps. I used 256kbps as the optimum compromise between sound quality and memory usage (a limitation of my 4GB Nano). Re-burning completed, these amazing earphones really started to sing. It is hard to describe the sound quality because the earphones seem almost totally transparent. You just get the music as it was recorded with amazing amounts of detail and spatial separation. No bass or treble emphasis, just natural sounds as they were recorded. Even very old recordings sound great. I know it is a cliche, but the music really does seem to be piped directly into the brain, with no obvious source. I tried various EQ settings on the Ipod, but these just add colouration and in my view the best balance is just as it comes off the CD.The SE530s are also extremely comfortable so you can wear them for hours, without noticing. Be warned, however, it is easy to listen to them at dangerously high volumes, such is their refinement. If you can afford these, then they are cheap at the price.