>Given whenever I stand near someone on a train with them I can hear a fair amount of their music (not anywhere near as bad as Apple earbuds though), I assume t

>Given whenever I stand near someone on a train with them I can hear a fair amount of their music (not anywhere near as bad as Apple earbuds though), I assume they can't be that great - that or the listener has very bad hearing. This makes the mistaken assumption that isolation and good sound are related, which -- as open headphones and speakers can attest -- is not true. The goal of a speaker or headphone is to reproduce music faithfully. Unless you are familiar with the music's origin or it has real instruments who's sounds you can easily identify, it's impossible for most people to tell if the music is reproduced "faithfully". So there are a couple of general rules that most "audiophiles" will consider when dealing with volume: 1. Music played at louder volumes generally sounds better than that at lower volumes. You can hear more of what you are intended to hear. 2. Music often goes up and down in volume, so you want to hear the broadest range of volume. 3. The best listening devices both allow high volumes without clipping and low volumes with clarity. The point is, just because you can hear it, doesn't mean they are bad headphones. It also doesn't mean they are good headphones or that the people aren't inconsiderate. It simply means that "sound leakage" isn't really a decent criteria unless it's something that important to you.