It's a FEATURE!

But only if used as NOT intended. They might stop you up for a while, anyway.

He will sell you 2 pieces of felt with holes cut in them to duct tape to your head for $60.00. It keeps the treble from bouncing off your nose thus time aligning the resonance of you sinus cavities with the ligaments in your knees that cause your brain to smear the sound inside your o-blah-di-o-blah-da.

You have to lend him your pair to test though, because he doesn't actually own any. For the privilege of letting him develop a commercial product he can sell developed using the equipment you have paid for, he will give you a discount to purchase his tweak. If you think I'm kidding about this last bit, hold your nose and wallow in his forums.

The design looks a lot like some headphones I picked up off of Woot a year or so ago for $10. They were a real bargain on Woot since they normally sold for something much higher (as I remember), but of course, you slap the Monster name on them, put some angled cuts into the metal to call them "Turbo," and then give it a stupid high price so you can call them "Pro" and you have what they are selling...

Part of the price is justified by the lifetime warranty. They'll replace them if you break them.

I wonder how many you need to break to justify the $$ tag ?

Oops

I would even buy Bose headphones over Monster

My guesse at their strategy is this. After seeing the "Supertip" ear tips (marketing drippage), which look identical to the style om my Zune's premium ear pieces and also the Klipsh models show in the pictures below, I had the thought that many of the people 'uneducated in audio' enough to buy any monster product have probably never tried inner-ear earphones.

If their design is reasonably good, and I'm sure they made them good enough to not fall prey to general scrutiny by reviewers, then those used to ear buds and such will certainly experience better sound isolation and probably better audio quality than the Apple (or most Apple style) buds they were using previously and also probably much better than many 'open' (Walkman style) earphones they were using previously. They will then spout on about how much better it sounds and justify to all their friends why they are worth so much money. Monster may not be very ethical but they are brilliant marketers.

In reality, I'm doubtful they sound much better than my Zune phones but normally that would be unfair to say without hearing them myself or a after few authoritative reviews are published. However, given Monster's proven track record of ripping of the consumer, I'm leaning on guilty until proven innocent on this one.

Edit: Before I'm corrected: Re. my describing them as "inner ear" I realize they are not true inner ear phones, such as are my Shure's that litterally get stuffed right into the canal, but this style are often described as such as they do tend to engulf further into the ear and create a seal to give you the extra isolation.

Speaking about Monster heaphones. They are really getting into celebrity endorsements such as:

Dr Dre Beats
http://beatsbydre.com/products/Products.aspx?pid=B5800

Diddy Beats
http://beatsbydre.com/products/Products.aspx?pid=B5624

and something for the ladies:

Lady GaGa Heartbeats
http://www.ladygaga.com/heartbeats/

Smart move suckering the average consumer.