142 replies to this topic

[Risa/Misa]

I have two different skull candy ear puds, black and pink, even though my ipod is blue. I just use one on my computer and one on my ipod. I want to get a blue head set though. Just because Skull candy does amazing with blocking out noise all around me.

[Sludgie-kun]

For my earphones, I just like nice mids. I feel that if you want to go for highs and lows, get a speaker. I'm not one to splurge more than $40 on a pair of earphones, so I use some simple ipod internal ear one. Pretty good sound insulation although I don't like the fact that there's too many holes in it. I think one hole should be enough for the bass, but so many holes?

Since sound insulation is good already I wonder how much better it would be if there was only one hole.

[tensai87]

Thanks for the advices! I've been looking some reviews on the internet and I think Grado headphones are quite good. Probably would have to use them just at my house though, but that's fine with me.
The Sennheiser HD 800 are a little out of my price range

[oleg]

Thanks for the advices! I've been looking some reviews on the internet and I think Grado headphones are quite good. Probably would have to use them just at my house though, but that's fine with me.
The Sennheiser HD 800 are a little out of my price range

I had Grado SR125 and SR225 - my current Sennheiser HD650 are much better.

If you can find them (they are no longer produced), buy these:
Sennheiser HD580
They were rather cheap, around $200.
Many people like them even more than HD600 and HD650.
I haven't heard them though.

Comparison:
http://www.compudio....5-vs-hd600.html
Prices mentioned are rather steep, you can probably buy them much cheaper.

[tensai87]

^Thanks for that. But that still is a little too much for me since I'll probably have to order them from some strange country in the world... like the USA I'm just a poor student after all
The Grado SR60 are cheap and apparently good enough, so any other recomendations around the "same" price? (~70 US$). Like I said, I'm fairly new to this "good sound" thing so you must understand that I'm afraid of expending too much money haha

[dcpoor]

with headphones like hd580/600/650, you would want a good source and good amp for them.
otherwise they'll be vastly underpowered and won't sound that great.

hd580 and hd600's are very similar sounding, the drivers inside are the same. the differences are the material the frame is made of, the paint job, and different grills.


the audio technica ad700's are a decent <$100 option. they don't require a amp to sound good but they aren't very bassy.
the alessandro ms1's at $99 are another good option, they're modified/tweaked grados. less bright and more balanced sounding.

[tensai87]

^Thanks! I'll check those out! =)

[Youroppa]

with headphones like hd580/600/650, you would want a good source and good amp for them.
otherwise they'll be vastly underpowered and won't sound that great.

In my experience good source and good amp does make sense also with cheap headphones.
Sound quality doesn't depend only on power output. There are many components which affect sound quality like software, DACs, op-amps, headphone amp, power source which have characteristics like distortion, frequency response, signal-to-noise ratio.
I tested $10 in-ear phones with 3 sources: sound card with good DAC and headphone amp, MP3 player, mobile phone.
Sound card was only source which provided good bass and mid with acceptable distortion. Treble was weak with all sources, which is expected with such in-ear phones.

[Kipp]

I LOVE my Skull Candy earbuds. Only like $20, and very comfortable. As mentioned earlier, it also does an excellent job of blocking out any surrounding noise.

[Whiteshade]

I splashed out on a Sennheiser IE 8 about six months ago. Good times.

[zeroyon]

I've been using the same set of Koss PortaPros for the past 9 years now.
Maybe I should upgrade to some more expensive headphones eventually, but I still like them as much now as I did when I first got them for my 14th birthday.

[dcpoor]

I've been using the same set of Koss PortaPros for the past 9 years now.
Maybe I should upgrade to some more expensive headphones eventually, but I still like them as much now as I did when I first got them for my 14th birthday.

porta pros are pretty great budget phones. the koss warranty is the best too.

[cehundt]

For my portable audio I use modified JVC Marshmallow HA-FX34. When I'm out and about I'm usually in a noisy environment that's not friendly to analytical listening, so I prefer a warm sound that I can sink into instead of extremely precise IEM's (In Ear Monitor). The JVC's are mod'ed using the "Kramer Mod" (from head-fi[dot]org), plus I switched the ear pieces.

Basically I removed the stock ear piece, cut out the paper filter inside the damper tube, and attached a Shure triple flange ear piece. The stock JVC's have a very muddy bass; in my meaning the bass has a heavy reverberation and overpowers the rest of the frequency. Removing the paper filter decreases the bass reverb, and the triple flange ear piece provides further dampening (i.e. removes the reverb but retains the bass information). The result is solid sound isolation, equal to industrial ear plugs, and to my ears a very enjoyable frequency spectrum. There is still a little bit of slop on the low end, but for $10-$20 they are as good as I've heard. Also of note, I've had the same JVC's for a year and a half, near daily use with no visible wear.

I also have a pair of Shure SCL4 IEM's. They are very precise, but sound a bit lifeless compared to the JVC's. There's a couple hundred dollars price difference between the two, and given hindsight I'd have passed on the Shure's.

For home music listening I use mp3's and .flac files from my PC, to a Yulong DAH1 DAC, to my dampened Denon D5000 closed headphones. For movies I use a Darkvoice 336SE to my Sennheiser HD650 open headphones. The Denon's are more precise for analytical music listening, whereas the Darkvoice/HD650 combo provides a beautifully open field of audio which faithfully recreates a theater experience (for me anyway).

[Marida]

The best headphones are the ones that block out all other noise while strengthening bass and clearing other sounds. Perfect for travelling: I've been saved by my blocker headphones many times from evil shouting brats

[Shakey_Jake33]

I tend to use in-ear sound-proof earphones because thye're easy to put in my pockets. I do love a good decent set of high quality headphones, but portable they ain't!

Picked up some Sennheiser CX500s the other week for £15. I used to have some CX300s but they broke, and have been using cheap £5 pairs in the meantime - what a false economy. The CX500s are a bit too heavy on the bass, but when low-end earphines tend to lack bass entirely, I'm perfectly happy with these.

[krotch]

Well... If you splurged on your MP3 player and are using the stock earbuds, you ain't getting the best out of your mp3 player. I was wondering what you all use for listening?

I use a Senheisser PMX 40 for my outdoor use. It's pretty ok I guess. Nice mids and highs though the lows ain't as good... I was thinking of getting a PX 100 or PX 200. The PX 100 I heard, has better bass but the con is that it is an open headphone and the sound leaks... and also foam earpads ain't very durable. The PX 200 on the other hand has noise insulation, leather-earpads (Which mean that they are very comfortable!) and the OFC copper wires are reinforced with Kevlar (The material used in Bullet proof vests!!)

At the moment I can't really decide... So if you were allowed to choose between these 2 which will you choose? I just want to hear some opinions

So what earphones/earbus/earphones do you use?

What MP3 player you have is just as important as what earphones/buds you're using. If you're using an iPod or Zune with some very good headphones, you wasted your money on good headphones.

I'm sporting a Creative X-fi with Sony MDR-G75LW. I also have a set of SkullCandy something rather too. What a huge waste of money there. They seem to put a hell of a lot more work into making them look different, than on what actually matters. The sound quality.

My X-fi came stock with some Creative EP-830 earbuds. They're actually pretty high quality. The sound is exceptional on them, but I hate earbuds. Hence the use of the Sony headphones. The specs on them match pretty much every single Sennheiser earbuds out there. Makes me wonder WTF the difference is between $80 and $500 earbuds from Sennheiser. Maybe the copper in the $500 earbuds is somehow much better than the $80. For that price, I expect the wires to be made out of gold.

I still have some old Sennheiser earbuds that came with my old iRiver mp3 player. They sound fine, look like crap, and wasn't worth wasting my time with. Course, the things are like 5 years old and came with a $100 1gb mp3 player. Wasn't expecting much with them.

Looking at the X-fi2 now.

[Krusha]

In terms of audio equipment I have the following:

- ASUS Xonar Essence STX soundcard
- Audio Technica ATH M50 closed headphones
- Cowon iAudio D2 16GB mp3 player
- Future Sonics Atrio M5 IEM's

I'm quite happy with it, but it would be interesting to compare with more headphones and IEM's. Only problem is there's no vendor near me where I can try out equipment before I buy it.

[krotch]

How's the Cowon? The Cowon D2 was high on my list, when I was dumping my Zune. iRiver was there for all of 10 mins. Bad rep for that generation. Prone to failures.

The Creative won out, cause it doesn't use touch and simply looked better. I knew both would sound good. I just don't know which sounds best or have the better EQ settings. I contemplated about it for days too.


Creative Audigy 2 ZS in my comp.
JVC FS-V5 bookshelf stereo for front
JVC UX-A70MD bookshelf stereo for rear
Kenwood SW-505D powered subwoofer

Audio quality isn't a huge priority for me on my comp. Especially considering a good soundcard cost hundreds more than the Audigy 2 ZS and there really isn't a good computer speaker setup on the market anymore. Setting up my own audio setup would run me past $1k, if not past $2-3k. I can live with what I got. Headphones, not an option. I need to be able to tell where noises are coming from, for gaming. Love to set it up for 7.1, but don't have the space.

[Krusha]

I am very happy with the D2 for the fact that its equalizer options are nice. However, I am not very experienced with what concerns audio equipment, nor am I spending every day over at Head-Fi so I lack their (sometimes near over the top) knowledge.

But, from reading reviews on Head-Fi, and a bunch of other websites regarding the D2, I finally went for it. I really do like it. The only complaint I have at the moment, is that there are some issues with tags and certain characters, in particular songs named in Japanese or having Japanese tags. The player will just shut itself off if I attempt to play a certain song. So this means I've had to run a completely different naming system than the one I would want to use to avoid this happening.

...Perhaps there's a firmware released which have fixed this problem long time ago, but I just haven't checked.... (yes I'm horrible)

As I said in my post above, I would have liked to be able to compare headphones vs. headphones, IEM's vs. IEM's, and players vs. players, but it's not an option so I have to rely on extensive reviews and word of mouth.

For me audio quality on the computer and the portable is of utmost priority, since I don't have much space or opportunity to have a large soundsystem in my apartment (neighbours). So headphones and IEM's is it for me at the moment.

[krotch]

No Japanese text. Deal breaker for me. That was a huge annoyance for me on the Zune. I couldn't tell what it was I was selecting, since all I got were square boxes as the text and I wasn't willing to change it. The X-Fi works fine with Japanese text and no need to use their software. Unless you want to load album art.

Here in Korea, it's quite easy to listen to different mp3 players, but not different headphones. Not that I bother, as I'd prefer to be able to use my own music on the mp3 players to test. The X-Fi also isn't available here. No headphone testing going on here. Online reviews is all I have to use.