A good pair of headphones can make you feel the music instead of just hearing it. But any hip-hop producer can drop 808 beats so low that you feel them in your gut, and any headphone manufacturer can artificially pump up the bass to make their tiny speakers sound bigger than life. That doesn’t mean your headphones are good—it means you’re not listening to the music as it was produced and leveled. The Shure SRH940 headphones aim to balance the scales and change the game.

After months of impatience and even a few pangs of longing, music fans in the U.S. can finally use Spotify, the European music-streaming phenom that promises access to any song, any time, anywhere. But of course even the latest and greatest in online streaming isn’t terribly impressive when you’re listening through the equivalent of a tin can and some string, so we were pleased when Sennheiser’s CX880i iPhone headset arrived just in time for us to pull some double duty testing them both.

The Mac|Life editors’ favorite new pastime (besides fiddling with our Apple gear, of course) is playing DJ. Most days, we can be found at turntable.fm/maclife spinning tunes and nerding out on music while we work. But office decorum dictates that we wear headphones while rocking out. Yes, technology has made it extremely easy for Robbie to go on a Smiths bender and take the rest of us along for the ride -- but Paul’s ban on Morrissey in the office is still very much in effect, and violators are punished swiftly.