I'm not having any sort of noise issues with my sony mdr-ex51 headset.

Yeah, I have a pair of Skullcandy Full Metal Jackets that have a mic in them. Worked fine in my Cliq. But in this one, if I old the end call button down on the hadphones the whole time..it'll stop.
And would the extra pin matter? The iPhone has them, yeah, ad other headphones work without the buzz.

The extra ring for the microphone does matter. Apple uses a different arrangement of rings than does Nokia. Apple headphones with mics won't work with Nokia tablets/phones and vice versa.

Nokia standard vs. Apple iPhone standard

thats nice to know... ill just grab a pair of apple headphones without the mics then. woot! thanks for the info

you sir are smart!

Paging doctor E. Lectronics!
Here's the catch (it was discussed in a thread before, but i can't really blame you for not findinding it, neither can i): there's an extra pin compared to non-mic headphones, which has do to with the microphone (obviously). The thing is there's either no standard for which one that is, or nokia threw it out and did it their way (which is understandable considering the dual nature of the jack). There was a schematic somewhere to show it, but again, i can't seem to find it
Now, it you use a pair of 'phones which has them the other way around, part of the signal going through the buzzers (the ones in your ears) gets routed through the microphone as well. The buzzers are essentially coils, and the mic a capacitor, and this produces an RLC circuit, which oscillates on its own frequency (in this case, around 16-20 khz it would seem). I'm not sure, but i think pressing the call button on the headset disconnects the mic, which removes the C in RLC, making it go silent
Normal 3 pin headphones should all work. IPhone ones will not because they all have the last 2 pins inverted. For all the others, it's hit-and-miss

There was thread about it somewhere and 1) there is standard out there 2) Nokia follows it 3) Apple invented their own solution 4) third party earphones often follow iDont version.

So you're saying I should break out my soldering iron then?

Very well!

My "Sennheiser cx300" playing perfectly. I've been let me told the problem is not that people "break" the 3.5mm standard - the problem is that the standard is too lax - for example the expected voltage isn't documented! Joel On Software detailed this while giving an example about problematic standards:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html

So yes, not all headsets are compatible with all players, despite having the same 3.5mm connector...

so given the info.... does anyone know of any good earphones to get? I prefer the regular earbud ones, not the in-ear headphones, those bug me. I found some regular earphones, but I prefer something that is more popular with people and hope for good quality ones..