A year or maybe two years ago I bought a Sony MZ-R500 - which at the time was the entry level portable MiniDisc recorder. It came with ear bud headphones that I developed a love-hate relationship with. They were uncomfortable and I found the sound quality "ok" but a little on the tinny side. I love the MiniDisc because it is virtually completely shockproof, which is excellent for the gym, and the sound quailty kicks butt and takes names.
Yesterday I went to pick them up and one of the drivers fell out. I put it back together again and tried them but the side that had crumbled was buzzing like a horny mosquito, so I went to the web to research headphones.
What to buy. What to buy. What to buy. Stay with ear buds? Go to a banded headphone? I don't know why, but those "new style" that go around the back of your head have never appealed to me, so those were out. I looked around the Internet and found a lot of eye-opening specifications on the Sennheiser website, but didn't know where to get Sennheiser stuff around here. Future Shop sells some of their line, but only the high-end studio/home stereo stuff.
My first trip was Zellers. Don't faint. Sometimes they surprise me. Today they didn't. They only had the $12.99 Sonys and I wanted to spend more money than that. The rest of their crap was Jensen. No thanks.
Next to 2001 Audio Video. JVC, Panasonic, and another brand that must have impressed me so much that I don't even remember who it was. Plus salespeople who couldn't have cared if I was picking their pocket than shopping in their store. Meh. Onward.
I figured I'd hit the Sony Store just on a whim. I wasn't sure if I wanted a Sony set, but it's for a Sony unit, and I figured I'd at least go and see what they had. (Incidentally, as a side note, the Whitby Sony Store is moving to the Oshawa Center in mid-October). I intended to stop there, take a look, and then go to the Oshawa Center to look at that place downstairs and maybe - God forbid - Radio Shack.
Turns out I didn't have to.
The fella who served me seemed to know his stuff, and showed me what there was to be had. I started looking at earbuds and he showed me the same set that I'd looked at in Zellers and rolled my nose up. He tried to sell me up to a couple of banded sets and I still wasn't impressed. He showed me a couple of "sports" sets - you know, the banded ones with the un-cushioned elements. They didn't turn me on either. I asked him what was "next up" on the earbud line above the $20 ones...
He handed me a set of MDR-EX51LP's and I flipped the package over to read the specs. (Gone are the days when you can actually try them. Healh concerns. Meh.)
First of all the design intrigued me. The old earbuds you had to practically fit the whole driver in your ear which was great if you had the same ears as the engineer who designed them, but if you didn't, you were outta luck. These had kind of a cylindrical driver (very small!) with a rubber sleeve around it that made the driver "stay" in your ear without falling out. Genius!! I'm thinking that Sony might have taken some cues from in-ear monitor design on these, because the downside is that you really have the "boy in a bubble" syndrome when you're wearing these things. I would say they reject about 95% of outside noise. In fact, when I talk or breathe when there's no music playing you notice it the most. The only way I hear my voice when I speak is through the eustachian tubes (or however you spell that)... there doesn't seem to be any leakage around the driver gaskets at all. And when I breathe, I can really hear it. I've heard people who use in-ear monitors in a performance environment complain of the same thing, but never really understood what the sensation is like. Now I do.
For the audiophiles out there, most of the cheaper headphones I saw had a frequency range of anywhere from 16 to 20Hz to 20k. These suckers go all the way down to 6Hz!! In layman's terms: I can crank the bass extender on my Minidisc player all the way up and it only barely distorts on the most intense passages.
These things kick butt, they don't distort, and they're comfortable. Highly recommended to anybody wanting a good set of earbud headphones. I'd rather spend $59 on something that sounds good than a $12 piece of crap that's going to die in a year.
Posted by netnomad at October 9, 2003 02:36 PM