A habitual Bluetooth earbuds wearer, I often forget about the sheer audio pleasure of a pair of over-the-ear headphones (or as my audiophile friends like to call them, "cans"), which is why my experience with the new Beats 360 wireless Bluetooth headphones was even more revelatory.

You see, the Beats 360 — announced today — reminded me why I usually eschew headphones in favor of, say, AirPods: over-the-ear audio is usually too uncomfortable for me to wear for any length of time. That, though, has not been the case with the new Beats 360, an elegantly engineered pair of headphones that push the technology to each earcup, thereby stripping down and lightening the head strap.

They also feature far more forgiving memory foam and cover material than I've found on other headphones. As a result, the cups form to the contours of my head without unnecessary pressure, and my ears aren't throbbing after hours of listening.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Comfort is important for headphones — and to be honest, earmuffs — but what will matter most is audio quality. Beats has done a lot of work to ensure high-quality sound. The audio company, which is owned by Apple, describes it as a high-fidelity acoustic architecture, built around a high-dynamic-range amplifier and a custom-designed dual magnetic transducer. There's even a custom venting system around the transducer to help reduce distortion.

As I noted above, a lot of this technology — even most of the wiring — sits in each of the headphone cups.

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