The Headphone Hunt

Forget fighting over truth and justice: it's headphones people really want to scuffle about.

Recently, I picked a high-end headphone from AKG -- the 701 -- as the best of its kind for 2006.

For about the price of a decent French Bordeaux -- say, a 2000 La Mondotte at about $450 -- you could land yourself a powerful, crystal-clear sound as smooth as, well, a 2000 La Mondotte.

The folks at Ultrasone, another high-quality headphone maker, took issue.

The company felt its phones had been overlooked, and insisted on sending over a fresh pair of its midmarket Proline 650s ($299).

And I promised to spend a few weeks "testing" them -- that is, lying around the house like a 15-year-old, giving my music library a thorough listen.

My conclusion? The Proline 650s are definitely not in the same league as the AKG 701s.

In many ways it's not even fair to compare the two (more on that later), but the Ultrasones were impressive nonetheless. ...