Commute in a concert hall

I live and work in London and spend approximately 3 hours a day travelling on buses. This is really the only time I have to listen to my CDs (all 600 of them!) so it is very important to me that I can hear my music well. I listen to a variety of music: classical, indie, rock, jazz and techno (and many in between). However I had found with the background noise of the bus engine, as well as all the noise of people talking and listening to their own headphones, that I could only clearly hear to the loudest of my CDs on the buses - and that is not the kind of music I want first thing in the morning! So I knew I needed to invest in headphones with some degree of noise blocking/noise cancelling or give up on listening to music on the bus.

I bought my Shure e2c headphones after a recommendation from a friend. Her partner has a pair, and is a technogeek so I felt confident in their technologic capabilities even though it's not my area of expertise. I also found some positive recommendations of them on the internet. I bought e2cs rather than other Shure headphones because they are the entry level for this time of headphone and I wasn't convinced that paying the extra £20 for the next level up would really make a dramatic difference for a 40% price increase. I also don't trust myself not to break technology!

Before you can put the buds onto the headphones, you need to attach a waxguard to the headphone nozzles (have no fear, there are diagrams in the manual). Other models of the Shure in-ear headphones do not have wax guards, but come with a wax cleaning tool. If I have to buy another pair in the future I might be tempted to trade up for this reason as I have found that the wax guard is very fiddly. It is a small piece of sticky plastic that needs to be applied to the end of the nozzle, and the bud then pushed down on top. I found that the waxguard kept slipping off and needed replacing after only a couple of weeks. I looked into the price of a replacement set of guards and they would be £20! So I e-mail Shure and said that I was going through them very quickly, was this right, and they said that the glue wasn't strong enough on mine and have sent me a couple of spare fit kits in replacement (next day post!); so full marks to them for customer service, and the problem does now seem to be resolved.

These headphones are magic. My personal stereo has a volume range between 1 and 20 and I never have it above 6 for classical music and 4 for rock/jazz/techno (classical CDs are always much quieter, for some reason). At these volumes I can hear all the intricacies of the music above the background noise, and of course the sound quality is excellent. I have read complaints by some reviewers that the bass isn't as good as the Sony equivalent of these headphones but that isn't a concern for me - I'm more interested in the detail of the music I listen to.

There are two happy side effects to this. Firstly, no one else on the bus can hear my music. I never used to turn it up too loud for fear of annoying others with a tinny chk-chk-chk coming out of my headphones but I needn't worry about that now (and yes I have checked at home that no sound leaks out!). Secondly I am also saving my hearing by being able to keep the sound much quieter because I don't have to try to mask the background noise. It's a win-win situation.