Headphones are extremely important. They serve as the link in your iPod-to-ear enjoyment chain and have the most control over how your music will sound. The Denon AH-D1000 aren't flawless, but they are great, and if you listen to them once, you'll never go back to those crappy earbuds that came with your player.

Now, I can never understand why people are willing to shell out well over $200 on an audio player but not nearly as much on a decent set of cans. Denon has some advice for you folks: Save your pennies. To many, $150 may seem like an extravagant amount of money to drop on headphones, but the AH-D1000 are really modestly priced considering their sound quality.

I find the look of the AH-D1000 headphones appealing, too, but these 'phones won't be for everyone. In a world that has grown accustomed to earbuds and earphones, big over-the-head, banded, circumaural headphones are fading in popularity, especially if they don't cancel noise. The Denon headphones certainly are not small and do not cancel out noise, but their dark gray and silver frame is lightweight magnesium, so you won't feel as if you're wearing a helmet. The ear pads are also especially comfortable, and though not much outside sound is blocked, they create a good seal—essential for optimum low-end frequency performance. The headphones come with a 3.5mm jack for MP3 players (and an adapter for ¼-inch stereo jacks), a 4-foot 11-inch intact cable, and an 11-foot 6-inch extension cable. Each ear has cables of equal length leading to the jack, important to audiophiles who know that cable length must be uniform for sonic equality between two ears (the same is true for speaker cables, by the way). These headphones are definitely portable, but earbuds and earphones will always have them beat in that regard.