Really good headphones a Shure thing?

[mr. x]

http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1...w=wn_tophead_8



Change Your Input, Get an Earful


By Leander Kahney | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1

02:00 AM Mar. 01, 2004 PT

After a lifetime of eating tomato soup from the can, the taste of real tomato soup is a revelation -- a flavor sensation; an opera in the mouth.

The equivalent aural experience can be had by upgrading from standard earbuds or headphones to the E3c earphones from Shure.

While the iPod's earbuds are generally pretty good, they simply aren't in the same league as the E3c earphones, which pump out such clear and strong sound they make your eyes pop.

Nor are they in the same price range. The E3c lists for $180 -- enough to make you choke on your soup.

The sound pumped out by the E3c is so clear and detailed, it reveals quite clearly how badly a lot of MP3 files are encoded, which isn't apparent with standard iPod earbuds, nor with a pair of good-quality headphones.

Unlike standard earbuds, the Shure earphones don't sit in the ear. Instead, they are inserted inside the ear canal, and are sometimes known as "canal phones."

Other canal phones include Etymotic Research's $130 ER-6 phones and Koss's $15 Plug.

At first, the sensation of pushing something deep inside your head is thoroughly unpleasant. So is the sucking sensation as you pull them from your waxy ear holes. But once in, the earphones are unobtrusive, and the sound is so good it is well worth any unpleasant in-and-out sensations.

To get the right fit, the earphones come with a selection of different-size earpieces, which are made from expanding foam or silicon. As would be expected, the earpieces require occasional cleaning.

It is critical to find the correct position in the ear canal. Unless the tiny speakers are pointed directly down the canal, bass is nonexistent. Again, it took a little while to get positioning down pat, but the fiddling pays off.

Because the earphones seal off the ear canal, they do a good job of blocking outside noise, even with no music playing. Of course, they have the opposite effect for internal sound: The racket of your own breathing or coughing is horrifically magnified. I nearly jumped out of my skin while chewing a mouthful of potato chips.

I was afraid the sound-blocking tendencies of the canal phones would make them unsuitable for riding a bicycle, which is when I like to listen to music.

But I found the E3c phones no less dangerous than standard earbuds, and they suffered none of the wind whistle that affects most earbuds or sports headphones (I've tried dozens over the years).

Shure, an 80-year-old company, is best known for microphones and studio equipment for professional musicians. The E3c phones are derived from Shure's E series range, a line of earphones developed for concert performance, when musicians often have trouble hearing themselves and the rest of the band amid the racket they create onstage.

At the top end of the range is the E5c, which costs $500 and has two micro-speakers per earplug. The E3c and the entry-level $100 E2c are equipped with a single micro-speaker per bud.

The E3c was designed specifically for consumers, especially users of the iPod. The body of the earphones is white to match the iPod, a Shure spokeswoman said.

"We've had an overwhelmingly positive reaction," said the spokeswoman. "People are just loving them."



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More stories written by Leander Kahney

[Sledge]

Shures are nice. Really nice. I have the Etymotic ER-6's daddy myself, the ER-4P model. Listening with them in is like having music inside your head.

I don't know about the Shures, but something I really don't like about my Etys is that the headphone wire is microphonic, which means that you can hear it when it brushes against or bumps into things. Which means that they're virtually unuseable on the move. (Not to mention that, since they're canalphones, they block out all outside noise, which makes you much more likely to get mangled in traffic...) So I have a pair of cheap Sennheisers as backup.

I can't tell what my original point was. Shure = good. I like music. TEH END

[mr. x]

hmm im kinda wondering cuz i have two sony "around the ears" headphones and ones pretty much dead and the other is probly dying. so im wondering if i should go all out and sensorize myself

[ren28]

I wonder how these compare to the Sony ones that also go in the ear canal. I have the Sony ones right now and they only cost $40. I think the sound from the Sony's are pretty decent.

[ellsworth81]

i havent tried out the ear bud design yet ... but i currently use the Grado SR-60s. For $70 you get some pretty decent bass and an all-around good sound. It'll blow away those cheap things that come packaged with your discman or whatever.

[ShortNBitter]

Holy crap thats alot of money... You could buy a busload of earphones for the cost of those suckers >.<

[hooligan]

if we're turning this into an audiophiles thread, i'm thinking about investing some money into decent studio earphones, but i really don't have the hardware to enjoy them. i only have a laptop which is the only way i listen to music. should i ... wait until i pick up some more hardware, buy better speakers, or invest in a pair of earphones.

with that said, which earphones do you think i should buy. i hear nothing but good stuff about the SR-60 grados, some sennheisers and some sony's, but what specific models/drivers should i look into? personal preferences only, don't link me to any sites, i want some good opinions.

[ellsworth81]

Originally Posted by hooligan

if we're turning this into an audiophiles thread, i'm thinking about investing some money into decent studio earphones, but i really don't have the hardware to enjoy them. i only have a laptop which is the only way i listen to music. should i ... wait until i pick up some more hardware, buy better speakers, or invest in a pair of earphones.

with that said, which earphones do you think i should buy. i hear nothing but good stuff about the SR-60 grados, some sennheisers and some sony's, but what specific models/drivers should i look into? personal preferences only, don't link me to any sites, i want some good opinions.

What you want to get depends on how sensitive your ears are. If you can hear the little flaws and imperfections in the frequency ranges, then obviously you wanna go all out. In fact, I was about to get one of the more expensive Sennheisers (I think 580) ... but I realized I was plenty happy with what I have now. The marginal gain in quality was low considering the price differences.

Overall, the SR-60s are pretty good for entry level. I've already bought 2 of them. They are relatively hideous, and the cord is kind of placed poorly (will brush up against your neck sometimes), but you can wear them for a pretty long time without hurting your ears. And it put outs relatively strong bass. I'm not sure if it can handle loud volumes

I'm not an audiophile, but I think the laptop should be able to process the sound fine ... it's how good the actual source file is.

Your best bet is to go to an audio boutique shop and actually try them out. Bring some CDs

[ShortNBitter]

haha audiophile is such a great term. nothing gets me more randy than a set of nice long smooth radio waves !




love,
prof frink's bitch

[mr. x]

do noise canceling headphones do anything to your ears? i mean are they more...harmful then a normal one?

[ellsworth81]

no, but they do shrink your nuts to the size of peas. :D

[hooligan]

how about the sony studio headphones? i think i'm going to pick up those grados actually. thanks for the tip.

[mr. x]

Originally Posted by ellsworth81

no, but they do shrink your nuts to the size of peas. :D

or in my case, enlarge....

[ren28]

Originally Posted by mr. x

do noise canceling headphones do anything to your ears? i mean are they more...harmful then a normal one?

I think they are pretty useless unless they cancel a lot of noise. I tried some $150 Sony ones and those were definitely not worth the money. I had to turn off the noise-cancellation circuit when there is no noise around because it generates noise.