maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but it rings (mostly) true to me. my dad has a pair of grado rs-1's he's been using for as long as I can remember. he also has a

maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but it rings (mostly) true to me. my dad has a pair of grado rs-1's he's been using for as long as I can remember. he also has a very nice pair of b&o speakers that I'm pretty sure predate my existence altogether. only reason they haven't been handed down is because my dad is still alive and enjoying them. I'm sitting here wearing a pair of sennheiser hd-555's that I bought in 2008. they're plugged into a DAC I bought in 2010. I don't know that there's some grand tradition of handing down audio gear over generations, but the point is good audio equipment lasts a long time if the properly cared for. if it sounded good new, it probably sounds good years later too (except tubes, these are consumables). there's no reason why headphones should follow the obsolescence cycle of computers.