Home cinema and hi-fi doesn't have to be about ear-splitting sound levels guaranteed to give the neighbours a hard time. It can also be about high-quality audio in your own personal space: yes, I'm talking about headphones.

The sound from these Denon earphones is admirably neutral, with no obvious sign of bias towards any part of the audio range

Background noise is arguably the biggest single problem affecting music on the move. One can simply try to block it, of course, but active electronic noise cancelling looks the most attractive option.

So, with X-Fi and noise cancelling built into these Creative headphones, are they really as good as they promise to be? The answer, in a word, is yes - flat, lifeless MP3 files tend to sound much better than they actually are

With iPods selling by the skipload and the rest of the world trying their level best to make its successor (Zune, Zen, anyone?), a new market for high-end earphones over £100 has sprung up

Of all the headphone specialists, Sennheiser probably offers the broadest and most closely spaced range, with something for practically every conceivable application.

We sat these 100 percent waterproof earphones in a cup of water and wore them in the bath with no bother at all - they truly sound as good underwater as they do on dry land. In fact they even sound a bit better underwater

Grado is a relatively small manufacturer that specialises in phono cartridges and headphones and makes a virtue of its no-nonsense approach. This extends to the aesthetics, which divides opinion amongst audiophiles.

Beyerdynamic appears to have taken a leaf out of the car industry's book by keeping a product name from years ago, but then completely changing the design. No doubt this will ensure havoc on eBay in years to come...

I can't quite believe that I'm sitting here using a set of earphones that have an RRP of £330. Fortunately, most retailers are selling them lower than that - £269 seems to be the best price we found. And how good can earphones get, anyway? Actually, very very good

Surely £202 is far too much for a rational human being to spend on a pair of earphones? Together with one of the bigger iPods the pair would cost you over £400. That's an expensive way to block out the chattering and sniffing on the Tube

Sennheiser's range of headphones covers every base imaginable, but it seems to have been a while since we looked at any of its cheaper hi-fi models. Do these HD 485 phones offer a bargain approximation of the performance of the rather wonderful HD 650s?

Costing more than most upmarket portable music players, these earphones are clearly targeted at quality-conscious listeners - and they're not even Shure's top model. The cost, of course, is in the detailed micro-engineering

Let's get one thing out of the way: we love noise-cancelling earphones. In fact, our perfect world would have a pair given away with every copy of the Metro at train and tube stations. So Jivo is already in our good books here

The quality from Sennheiser's PMX 70 headphones is great. Considering they cost just £23, it's perfectly acceptable. Sennheiser rarely drops the ball when it comes to sound quality, and here it's managed to strike another good balance...

Sennheiser's vast range of headphones doesn't just include models for portable audio; the company has so many designs that they get divided into several categories.

We have to admit to having a real soft spot for Sennheiser headphones. We particularly like its trademark 'twist to fit' system, which hooks asmaller rubber pad into your outer ear.

There's no doubt about it, this is one of the most enormous sets of cans we've ever seen. Packing three speakers and a sub into each earphone it certainly has the oomph to deliver when needed.

The idea is simply that a microphone built into the outside of the earpiece picks up ambient sound which is then added, in inverse phase, into the signal applied to the driver of each channel, reducing the level of outside noise

There are so many alternatives to Apple's iPod earphones that it's almost impossible knowing where to start when looking to buy a new pair. Coming in at just £25 are the Sennheiser MX 500s

Isn't it annoying when you're listening to your iPod as you walk to work and the passing traffic is louder than the tunes you're trying to listen to? And it's equally annoying when you have to constantly re-adjust your earbuds

A grand for a pair of headphones? You can buy a pair for a tenner, and a good pair for just £100. Grado may have to do some justifying here.Appearances are promising, though,

Reveal your iPod's bass