Best £8 I've ever spent on earphones

Creative Labs EP-630/A Earphones ... best budget earphones by a long stretch, punchy bass, and great clarity and crispness, I can hear things in songs I've never heard before.

99p earphones from woolworths...

They look like ipod copies, but they actually sound really good!

Earphones...

Do they need "breaking-in" like other stereo equipement? I have recently bought a number of new MP3 players* and earphones (3 sets of earphones in total), and the moment I've got them out of the box and used them, they've sounded complete crap, lacking bass, was too much treble, and no depth. And compared to my 9 month old pair of ipod earphones, they've all sounded crap... yet a new pair that I've had around a month now, have started sounding much better than they did previously... is this because I've been using them more? or are the other new ones worse? All the brand new earphones have sounded much worse in comparison... do they need breaking in? Are the free earphones / cheap earphones generally always crap?

* just got the new Creative Zen Stone Plus 2gb MP3 Player and have written about it on the joshwaller.co.uk blog.