I love music and, just like everyone else, I want the best sound quality possible.
But, damn, $500 ($400-$600) for earbud headphones? How good can they sound? Does anyone own these?
Dunno, but I’ve wondered the same, seeing even $200 (wtf?) earbuds. They couldn’t possibly be 10x better than average in-ear buds to justify that price.
I have a pair of Shure E3c that I wear with a set of triple flange sleeves. Without a doubt this is the best sound reproduction I have ever heard. Plus the sleeves block out the ambient noise fairly effectively.
The stock iPod ear buds are too large for my ears, and they both hurt, and tend to fall out, since they won’t fit correctly. So for me, yes they are at least 10 times better.
I absolutely am no expert in these matters, but after many disappointments with earbud headphones, I broke down and got the $100 Bose ones. IIRC I’ve read comments on this board that the Bose aren’t the best in their price range, but screw it, I LOVE them. I see no need to pay more or look elsewhere.
I’d only get something like that if it would cure my tone deafness.
I’ve got a pair of Etymotics ER-6s and a pair of M-Audio IE-10s.
I have no idea what pair of ears the Apple round earbuds are designed to fit, but I suspect it’s the same person who enjoys using their round mouse. I have yet to move to a multi-driver in-ear, but there’s little reason to doubt that separate components for bass and treble will provide the same improvement as the separate woofer and tweeter do in regular speakers.
Are they $500 good? Don’t know, but if you are going to drop that amount of money, have them custom fitted. An audiologist will cast a mold of your ears and make a set of ear tips. The improvement in bass and isolation will be measurable. Given a choice between less expensive in-ears with custom tips and more expensive ones with standard tips, the custom ones will preform better.
The best you’ve ever heard? Even versus speakers? Really? Color me skeptical, but okay.
I’m not sure what you’re comparing them to. My comment above about 10x referenced other in-ear buds, not iPod original buds, but perhaps I wasn’t making that very clear. I own a pair of these which I paid $50 for, and they sound really good. I have a vast, vast skepticism that a $500 set would sound 10x better than them. Against the wretched stock Apple earbuds, just about anything would sound 10x better, but that’s not a high bar.
OK, best I have ever heard in a set of headphones, and with the exception of a buddy with a zillion dollars stereo system, the best when compared to speakers also.
I’ve been disappointed by in-ear types. Those Sonys have recessed mids and some harshness in the treble. I tried some Ultimate Ears ones that were under like $80 and they were harsh, hooty and the bass wasn’t strong. I have a pair of $60 Sennheiser HD-497 headphones that I’m much happier with. In-ears have portability and sound isolation, but open-backed conventional headphones seem much more cost-effective for sound quality. After these disappointments, I’m really reluctant to spend the money to try out a pair of high-end in-ears despite all the good things I’ve heard about them.
Oh, and when it comes to speakers it’s definitely worth it. These days a few hundred dollars will get you a pair of bookshelf speakers that will absolutely amaze you if you’ve never heard audiophile speakers before, or in recent years.
I meant to say they were about $80. I was first saying they were under $100.
I’m not sure I get why they have to sound “10x better” in order to be worth the money. If I happen to have $500 to spend on headphones, and this particular set offers the best sound, then I get something for my money. Let’s say they’re only twice as good. I can’t buy the $50 headphones then spend another $50 to get the same sound quality, the only way to get the additional quality is to spend the $500.
In certain respects, headphones offer the finest possible sound reproduction for the money. Granted, you’re not going to get chest thumping bass, but the level of detail you can get is astounding, and you don’t have any room based artifacts to deal with. For a time I had a headphone amplifier and a set of nice headphones, the sound was awesome, at a fraction of the cost of an audiophile grade system.
Audio stuff has a steep curve of diminishing, so no, you wouldn’t expect 10 times the price to equal 10 times the performance. Everyone has to find their preferred point. Some people feel it’d be worth paying 10 times more for an improvement factor of 2 or 3. Some are happy with the crappy headphones that get included with things.
It does become pretty ridiculous at the high end. There are “audiophiles” who pay thousands of dollars for speaker wire and such. You could probably sell a lot of them a special snake oil elixir that makes those cables sound better if you dip them into it…
Hmm? Headphones are way more cost effective than speakers at delivering high quality sound. You can get pretty good headphones for $100 that’ll beat out speakers that cost 5+ times more.
As a former professional audio engineer my general estimate used to be 10 times. So a $200 set of headphones delivers about the same sound quality as a $2,000 set of speakers.
For people like me who listen alone I usually recommend investing in quality headphones first. Personally since I bought my first pair of Sennheisers many years ago, I have never used anything else.
I can’t imagine the sound ever being good enough to get my mind off spending $500 for earbuds… I’m listening to MP3 files, how good can they get?
Oh, so you’ve used Monster Oil before?
MP3s don’t sound too bad if you encode them at a higher bitrate. If you listen to 128Kb/s MP3s on good set of headphones, you’ll notice the lack of quality. I tend to use 256k VBR or above when I can. 320K MP3s are hard to distinguish from CD quality generally.
As far as I can recall, though, the industry standard for purchasable MP3s is 128k, right? A shame that you’re paying substantially for a poor quality product.
There are also lossless compression algorhythms like FLAC and APE that see some popular distribution that are CD quality but around half the size. I wonder if any portable players can play any of those formats…
No, most purchasable MP3s are at least 192k or so.
I ripped most of my CDs at 128k, most it sounds fine. Which is probably why $500 earbuds would be a colossal waste of money for me.
I rip at 160k now, good compromise of quality and size.
I’d recommend 192 VBR. VBR allows the complex parts to get a little bit more data while the simpler parts can save a bit - overall improves the quality of sound while still coming out to roughly the bitrate you’re aiming at.