Since 1999, i've had a pair of sony wireless headphones that finally died with a disturbing sizzling noise. Although weighty, they were good headphones with great range to them.
i decided not to go for wireless again, mostly because i realized how geeky it was to have headphones around my neck most of the day. To that end, i decided to get a pair of replacement headphones.
Mind you, the backup pair i have is a set of Aiwa headphones i got with an old $15 CD player three years ago, so i figured getting a pair of new Maxell headphones with a frequency range of 10-28,000 Hz would be a good idea. Particularly since these were ear cups so that external noise would be pretty much eliminated.
Wrong.
Remember being a kid an listening to that 9v transistor radio that kinda-sorta got that one AM station when you held it just right and whacked it a few times? These sound just like that. And as an added bonus, they're about as comfy as sticking your head in a vice.
Worse yet, they come in one of those hermetically sealed "Return these? Yeah right!" packages that's all the rage with the hip shops. Well, might as well have written SUCKER on my forehead.
Speaking of which, i think i now know what those Maxell commercials were about, you know, the ones from the 70's where it features unnamed guy slouched in a chair 
. It's not from being blown by the speakers, it's from the insane amount of suck coming from the newly purchased Maxell headphones now residing in his garbage can.
