Your favorite deejays scratch with Shure cartridges, and your favorite artists record with Shure mikes. For the rest of us, Shure makes sound-isolating earphones. The new SE line uses passive isolation to block out noise, unlike active noise-canceling headphones that counteract outside noise with their own offsetting sounds.
The SE line ranges from $149.99 to $449.99; they all use the same airtight seal to fit in your ear, but each comes with a different set of speakers. The high-end SE530 comes with two woofers and a tweeter, and playing everything from Chemical Brothers to Big Boi's "The Way You Move" to Smashing Pumpkins on the floor iPod made me regret I had just bought a pair of V-Moda headphones, stylish though they may be. The Shure rep just nodded sadly, bemused that other headphones existed in the world and that people such as myself would buy them.