from batsbrew "i've actually been using a pair of 'nicer' sony ear buds for tracking. zero bleed. super comfy. doesn't make you feel like you are wearing a helmet " I am sure that many people can wear buds, but I simply cannot get right with them. Just a heads-up. If yer ears aint right, they are VERY personal. Also, buds are even worse than closed phones for plosives, unless there are some that get round that.

+1 from me for the AKG K240s. Best bang for buck there is. Beautiful sound. I have owned pairs far more expensive and had no better and sometimes worse sound. Sennheiser may have lifted their game again, but I had heaps of trouble with two pairs, mostly around the cable failing. But yes, the 240s will both let in sound and bleed it out. So if you are using them to record yourself, or stuck out in the room with the performers, then they are 2nd rate. If you are in a sound booth capturing performers, or mixing, they are jewels.

Just one comment. Cheap near-fields are indeed not much chop. But phones do give many bad signals when final mixing and you have to be careful. Stereo spread is way more than any speakers will give; you can set up ways to feed L_>R and R->L to help this. Any reasonable phones will be far clearer and smoother then even the best speakers can achieve: room acoustics are just not there: ambient noise is not there. You just _hear_ stuff in phones you will not hear in speakers. So be cautious when using phones to get that final mix. I used to mix on phones, but then burn the mix and just sit in the living room and listen on the (reasonable) stereo...but then I would play in the car, on the boom box etc, to see how it panned out. That's just me.