Ten... in-ear headphones

Perhaps, because...

There's always someone out there crazy enough to try to sell them at the MSRP. Mostly the high street stores it seems.

Used to have the older 530s

They broke :(

I got a pair of 420s half-price, and they're so close to as-good it's wonderful - especially when they "only" cost me about £120. Don't have that elitist factor though...

I'd go for

Koss buds (the original not the sparkplug type) at the lower end and Sennheiser cx 300's at the higher end.

There's no way i'd spend £100's on in ears. they're destined to break, and i'm not sure fidelity is that much of an issue when there's background noise of cars/commuters/colleagues/train etc.

Sony MDR-EX300

I've got a pair of Sony MDR-EX300s that have served me well for a few years now.

The sound quality is good enough and they were 30 quid.

I just demoted them to my work headphones as I got some MDR-EX500LPs for my main ones.

I can't really tell the difference between the two, especially not as most of my music is on the iPhone or on the PC (so compressed anyway.)

I thought the 300s were worth the extra over my previous ones (MDR-EX71s) but the 500s probably weren't worth the additional 15 quid over what I would've paid for a new pair of 300s.

Amazon seems to have them for about 25 quid, although they're discontinued now.

cables

I had ER4Ps a while back; the major problem with them is that the cable was absurdly microphonic, so you'd get incredibly annoying cable noise if you walked around (or, really, moved at all) while using them. Made them pretty useless for me. Are the cables better now? This was quite a while ago, the model where each earphone was a different color and the cable was a twisted-pair job.

Frequency response curves tell you very little about sound quality; given that you can adjust the frequency response to be whatever you like, with no real impact on quality, using a decent digital eq on the source (hint: don't *bump* any frequency, leave the ones you want highest at 0dB and reduce the others), I find looking at frequency curves to be of just about no use at all in evaluating headphones. (Several tests have shown that if you use a very high quality eq to adjust the frequency response of a generally-accepted 'good pair of headphones' to be dead flat, essentially no-one likes the result; we all want some kind of happy-face response curve).

ER-4S

Indeed. I would suggest that any reasonable review of in-ear phones needs to include the Etymotic ER-4S simply as this was pretty much the original and remains a favoured benchmark unit. It is used in a large number of professional applications and is the standard unit used for many psycho-acoustic research. It may (or many not) have been bettered over the years, but it remains both very good, is still available, and is the gold standard to beat.

rule of thumb

if someone else can hear your in ear phones, then it's too loud, no matter how cheap and flimsy they are.

and from my experience of trains/buses, If someone sat 10 feet away can hear what music you are listening to, you have a serious issue with your hearing.

All pretty good

All IEMs - that is, ones which really stick into your ear canal - will isolate pretty well. The further they stick in, the more isolating they'll be (but the more uncomfortable you may find them). It's pretty simple. Back when the market was pretty simple, with only 4 or 5 manufacturers, Etymotics were generally considered the most isolating, but I don't know if it's changed these days.

'Open' on-ear / over-ear phones and earbuds (earphones which don't stick into your canal) barely isolate at all. 'Closed' on-ear phones isolate okay, and 'closed' over-ear phones can isolate very well, depending on how much work the manufacturer puts in.

For the best isolation, you'd want custom moulds (which you can use with any IEM, but you can buy some very high-end IEMs which have a custom mould fitting priced in).

Actually you can.

You can tell the difference. The better question is, do you care about the difference enough to justify over 5 times the price? For most people that is certainly going to be a no.

As for the hdmi cable, digital signal is digital signal and as long as the cable isn't so crappy it corrupts the digital signal, then there will be no difference at all. So no there is no difference, hence no one can hear one no matter what they believe.

I do think the Shure 215 or 315 model would have been much more reasonable and interesting to review. The 535s are really not what most people are interested in. The lower models have the same cable design, but only a single driver (well two for the 425), but include a few less accessories. The 215's cost $99 in north america, so probably 89 or 99 pounds in the UK as per typical ripoff pricing done by north american companies.

yes, you can.

yes, you can. headphone quality isn't audiophile idiocy until you get to the really high end; there's pretty obvious differences in the quality between a $70 and a $200 pair of IEMs. Whether that difference is worth that cost for you is a personal question.

Also, the artifacts caused by lossy compression are quite different from the quality compromises in cheap earphones, so you can tell the difference between compressed and non-compressed audio on pretty cheap earphones (listen to the cymbals...) and you can tell the difference between cheap earphones and good earphones even with compressed source material. Obviously, good phones and non-compressed source material is the best combination, but even if you have compressed music a decent pair of phones may be worthwhile, depending on the exact circumstances.

The SE 535s can use foam inserts instead.

I'm guessing so can the Ultimate Ears and probably some others. Basically you squeeze some foam and allow it to expand in your ear canal -- no suction feeling but very good sound isolation.

yes.

yes, you would.

actually, in a sense, good headphones are a budget option: you can get an idea of really, really good sound quality that would cost several thousand quid to achieve with a hi-fi setup, after you've priced out a good amp and good speakers. I have a good budget hi-fi setup (Pioneer 815 amp, Paradigm Mini Monitor 3 speakers) and a very good headphone setup (Grado HF-1 phones, Firestone DAC and amp): the total cost of both setups is pretty similar, but the headphone setup sounds a hell of a lot better. If you want to dip a toe into really high quality audio without shipping off thousands and thousands on high-end hi-fi components, headphones are actually a reasonable way to do it.

Shure's Cables

Shure's had replaceable cables for ages.

In the previous gen it was the lower half of the set, and now its the entire cable.

But agreed comparing the 400 or 300 series would have better. The 535's are really IEMs.

And for those saying whats the point, that's fine, as long as you also just use the speakers in your HD TV...

head-fi

go to head-fi.org, really the only source you need for anything vaguely headphone-ish. they have threads a go-go for recommendations at any conceivable price point and range of needs. I could tell you what the consensus was for super-cheap phones a few years back, but it's probably changed now, so just go check the site.

@Tom

I've gone through a couple pairs of those Sony in-ear headphones in my life and I found the biggest problem is that they tended to die within a year or two for me. So, while they were cheap and the sound was decent, they never lasted long. So, lately I've taken to buying midrange stuff ($50-$100) and I've found that the sound is better. I've also found that they last a lot longer--about 4-5 years for me. So replacing a pair of $100 headphones every 5 years is just as cheap as replacing a pair of $20 headphones once a year.

I too would love to try a pair of £500 headphones--and the author does only includes one pair for us to drool at--but I'm glad most of the headphones were in the £50-£150 range since this seems to be about the point where the manufacturers start producing quality work. And to be fair, there were a pair of £30 and £35 included in the article.

Note: So far my Shure SE115s have lasted about 2 years and they cost about $100. I'll keep them until the cable does fray, which it will eventually--or until I get rich and can afford the £500 headphones.

Re: Pretty poor selection

"doesn't make you sad when the cable frays and you have to replace them (as has happened to many of my Shure owning friends)."

Your friends need to learn to solder!

likewise

Have also had cables go. My first set, and then the warranty replacement. Seems a very common problem. Untill the design changes I am avoiding shure