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is a good pair of Open Ear headphones. Sennheiser makes some very good ones. (IMHO The Best)

This is a very bold declaration here. Sennheiser are probably the most well known cans makers, and they're extremely renowned, but their cans go head to head with Beyerdynamic's and AKG's and they don't always come out at the lead.

Sennheiser's cans are usually really good (and even then, they also have some crappy stuff), but The Best is quite stretching it.

where do you get this crap.. the riaa website?

No, from musicians, animators, writers, directors, photographers, videographers, producers, label owners, and others that do business pretty much however they see fit - with, or without involvement with larger companies or industry associations.

They control the marketing

No, they control their own marketing. How am I prevented from running a Google ad, putting up fliers, shipping samples in conjunction with other businesses, using online distribution in ways I choose to create exposure, etc? How does a record label prevent me from doing that? I notice that you conveniently ignored, for example, the long list of independent labels I pointed you to. I know they sort of complicate your argument and might damage your rebel street cred, but you might want to look it over anyway. "They" don't control the marketing, they pay a lot for their own marketing. On the other hand, I've been turned onto all sorts of music I'd never have otherwise heard by subscribing to services like RadioIO. The artists that are showcased there have their CDs advertised, are paid for their airplay, and all based on the staff's appreciation of the quality of the music. Most of what they decide is worthy is vetted from recordings provided by the artists themselves. This is exactly contrary to your tinfoil-lined corporate conspiracy picture of the world. Buy a beer or two less this month, and try them out - you'll find that you're way, way wrong about many of your presumptions.

if one records off the radio, it has the same economic effect as downloading an mp3

No, because the musicians (if they want to be) are paid when the radio station uses their work as part of their day's business operations.

As far as human interaction is concerned you're damned right it's not

I'm thinking you have a typo, there. But would you consider talking to your mom on the phone not "real"? I'm not interacting with you face-to-face right now, any more than you are when you talk to family on the phone. What's your standard, lack of face time? What about when I'm talking to my wife in the next room, where I can't see her, but can hear her? In order to bolster your sense that the things you do online aren't "real," you're applying standards that show your own confusion about reality. Citing MMORPGs is ridiculous. That's not a bit different than people doing old fashioned play-by-mail, or four people sitting around a table playing paper-and-dice D&D. You're confusing communication mechanisms with anonymity, and assuming that anonymity washes away all requirements for respecting an artist's wishes.

You know about the costs of the OLD way of being a musician.

None of what I mentioned has ceased to be true. That you have a friend who put together a cheap studio doesn't change the laws of physics or change what it costs to make environments that have no EM hum, perfect acoustics, and clean power. Shopped for high-end condenser mics that will do justice to oversampled digital recordings of instruments with a huge dynamic range? You don't string up an entire percussion rig with Neumanns or studio-grade AKGs for a few hundred dollars. The pro-grade A-to-D converters that make the quality of recordings of which you're so interested in maintaining your fair use don't just cost a few hundred dollars. I have friends that have a copy of 3D Studio Max and various sorts of desktop renderers. All on hardware they built. They can even laboriously produce some pretty good looking output. But I also have a family member that works for Pixar, where they have to use thousands of machines to render the sort of output we all love to look at (and hear) in feature-length packages. Thousands of machines, managed by huge teams

Indeed. Speakers would disturb my family, but I really love my headphones. Just don't try to drive those puppies straight from your soundcard.

I've been using AKG Acoustics K-240 Monitor for many years - superb sound quality, durable, comfortable.

There's also K-240 Studio and K-240 DF, but I haven't had a chance to try those out.

Way back when I was the one of the few people to have an iPod, I was always very self concious when I pulled it out of my pocket. It's distinctive, but I don't want that kind of attention... I just want to listen to my music without feeling like some elitist rich snob. The problem was that even after I put my iPod back in my pocket, those damn white headphones were still trailing down over my customary black jacket... a little like the iPod advertisements these days. I couldn't stand it, and ended up buying new headphones. The new ones are great, incredible technical accomplishments that cost quite a bit more money, but without that distinctive white cord I feel like so much less of an elitist rich snob, and now the only people that give me a second look while wearing them are audiophiles.

Nowadays the whole rich elitist snob thing doesn't apply, because every college kid has an iPod of his very own. I have some friends with iPods that never felt the way I did before, but now that the dangling white cords are everywhere they've bought new headphones because they feel like they're trend followers. I know all of this must sound terribly vain, but in my profession appearances are very important (yes, even while listening to music).

My story doesn't seem to have much of a point, I know. I guess what it comes down to is that if I were to pick my least favorite facet of the iPod, the white headphone cord would definitely be it. I don't like being a walking billboard for anything, no matter hor subtle the advertisement.

Oh yeah, while we're at it, the AKG K 1000 are imho the best headphones in the world. I've tried them out and it's like heaven. But quite expensive heaven :-)

There is a lot of decent dynamic microphones (self-powered microphones) on the marked. But these work best with song/speech. If you want to record enviromental sound you would need a condenser mic, which needs 48v phantom power. AKG has a lot of good dynamic and condenser microphones