I'm using these for recording and mixing as well as for listening to music. They perform very well, I haven't owned a lot of different high end earphones so I can't really do any comparisons for you. I can however compare with the sound from my KRK VXT6 pair and I have to say thay complement each other perfectly in a mixing environment.
+ great build quality, feels very robust and german :-)
+ airy, well defined sound that reveals a lot of details I never heard with my previous pair.
- no removable cable