Recommend a pair of headphones for me

Not too quiet for portable, too open; sound leaks. For portable I use Portapros. MS1s & Portapros together = less than SR60s.

portapros are pretty open too!

Not like Grados are!

true! gradosa re the equivalent of having a boombox on your shoulder. still wouldn't wear either in the subway though!

i think my biggest stumbling block is that if i get grados from, say, richer sounds, when they stop working i can walk to the shop and they'll exchange them (even though, rationally, i know that headphones are unlikely to stop working in 12 months).

I wouldn't worry too much about the Grados... I have a pair of SR60s I was given for christmas in 1995 and they still work perfectly. They've been all over the world and the only thing I've ever done was replace the foam earpads a couple times. The pair my brother got that christmas had one driver die a year or two ago.

I've worked with grados before; they're incredibly easy to fix, if you have any experience at all with a soldering iron

Thanks for all this info.
D.

I spent a half hour over the weekend trying to repair the headband on my mdr-d66sl sonys again. I think it's doable, since it's just the structural wire that I need to replace. I miss the hell out of using them regularly, even though they're not the best headphones.

Has sony made any eggo-style one that's still available that's not horrible? Or is there some place on the web where someone has a hidden stock of the originals? I missed someone on head-fi selling some earlier this month :(

Would you say it's worth getting the Grado SR60is or Alessandro MS1s if they're primarily going to be used for listening to high bitrate MP3s on an iPod Touch? This is for bedroom listening while abroad, not wandering around on the streets. I've got earbuds for that.

Oh god yes.

Just replaced my not very old AKG in-ears with Sennheisers, after the rubber surround went. OMG the Sennheisers sound so much better. Fuller, rounder, bassier.

I have some Sennheiser CX300 in-ears which sound OK but distinctly not full or bassy, which I wouldn't mind except everyone else says they are. There's an Amazon review saying if they sound tinny you're wearing the wrong ear fitting, but only the small ones fit at all, so I don't have any choice. sadface.jpg

(I had some Goldring in-ears before this and at first I thought they sounded terrible, tinny and weird stereo image, but after I got the knack of pushing them in just right they sounded great! Unfortunately I then lost one of the ear fittings and couldn't buy a spare. So I would really like a sudden breakthrough with my Sennheisers too. The Goldrings went in pretty deep, formed a seal and blocked out most outside sound, whereas the Sennheisers don't go in far, but I was thinking that was by design rather than poor fitting.)

mine are mx660, standard earbuds not actual in-ear or ear-canal or whatever the hell the terminology is. seems they have a higher impedance than the cx300, whatever that means.

Tried to order some Alessandro M1s, and they sent me a plaintext email a couple days later asking for more credit card details. Not inspiring. If they can't even manage a credit card transaction, how could they possibly make good headphones?

The Alessandro people don't make them; Grado do. Alessandro are very net naive; persevere!

What do the Alessandro people do to them after Grado makes them?

I had to buy some Grados from Amazon... not knowing how long Alessandro would take to ship, I couldn't risk have to leave without some good headphones.

Alessandro do nowt to them; they're tuned for them by Grado.

Headphones are a black art.

All audio is.

grados: hearing things on a johann johannsson album that i didn't know were there. marvellous stuff.

I feel I should point out that my credit card problems with Alessandro turned out to be MY FAULT and they are blameless. Go buy some headphones from them.

Is there actually anything to the idea of "burning in" headphones or is that just more audiophile snakeoil?

I think there is - but the great thing about it is that it's free to try. there's a very lightweight and good program here:

http://www.burninwave.com/

I splurged and bought a pair of Grado SR125s today. Cranked up A Storm In Heaven and OMG.

So yeah, they're dorky looking but there is nothing better.

anyone got any recommendations for the gen3 shuffle?

Obviously I ditched the apple phones asap as they are crap, now have my in-ear Sennheisers plugged in through a belkin adapter which lets you have the in-line controls the only way to control the thing). The sound is ok, but the controller is crap, way too easy to switch off the shuffle and not greatly made it's rattling already.

Koss Portapros.

Argh, 3gen, maybe not.

nope, they'd still have to go through he adapter, plus, don't they have sponges? Not too good at the gym...

I have some Sennheiser CX300 in-ears which sound OK but distinctly not full or bassy, which I wouldn't mind except everyone else says they are.

i've been meaning to get a pair of these for a month or two now but i keep getting spooked by stories about really well-made counterfeits everywhere. (official retailer rrp is like £30-40 and then there's dodgy looking ebay/amazon dudes selling for £11.) anyone have an idea where might be cheapest and most trustworthy?

I actually bought a pair of legit CX300 IIs from Amazon for about £12 last week. For the price they are not bad, although don't offer much isolation. Plenty of bass (if a bit indistinct).

Got them because my Shure SE530s have crapped out again. That's my 4th pair of them, all previous ones having a fault which manifests in the cable stiffening and cracking after a period of time. Am now in heated discussion with Shure about getting a (free) replacement as I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a £250 pair of headphones to last longer than 2.5 years. They sound *superb* but this problem with the cable now prevents me from recommending them at all.

In fact, there I am upthread stanning the Shures back in the good old days of November 2008. It's very frustrating because they are so wonderful in terms of sound and so lousy in terms of build quality.

Same thing happened to two pairs of Shures I've owned. Wonderful in-ears, but can't something be done about those cracking cables? It's inexcusable.

I'd only buy Grado again if they came up with a better design for the junction where the L and R cables join the main cables. Just stupid.

i had that thing with the Shure cables cracking/fraying. it's a real shame if it's the case with all their headphones because they really do sound great. i was even tempted to buy them again, despite the problem, as most of the comments i've seen online suggest that Shure are quite reasonable with repairing them. after Bill's comments though, i'm tempted to look elsewhere.

I should clarify that during the 2-year warranty period they replaced the three pairs that failed without a quibble. But I'm now outside that and Shure UK's only offer is a replacement pair at 40% off the RRP, but as the RRP is £400 that's still more than I paid for them new. My current argument is that from day one they have known there was a problem with the initial cable compound (and this has been well documented on head-fi.org etc), and my first three pairs were all from this affected batch so the were guaranteed to fail. The latest pair have lasted longer (well over a year), but have still failed in the same way, and as the warranty runs from the initial purchase date then I am out of luck.

I'm hoping that sense will eventually prevail. Otherwise I'm perfectly happy to take it to the UK Trading Standards body and see what they think.

It's good to hear about your experience with these. I still have a pair that work, though I've been reluctant to use them heavily lest they fray like the last pair. It's compounded by the fact that I purchased them while I was working in Korea, and I'm not sure what sorts of hoops I'd need to jump through to have them repaired.

If Shure has known about problem this long, that's fairly damning.

huh

I've had a pair of Shure e4c since the day they came out (early 2005?). no issues.

Under uk consumer law the retailer is responsible to you for seven years, I think, for home electrical goods - I've used this law to include a DSLR camera so I'm sure £400rrp headphones would count too. They're clearly not fit for purpose so you're entitled to replacement. Warranty should also, I'm pretty sure, renew with each replacement product. Google uk consumer law; it's actually very favourably balanced towards the consumer.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3663/3347193842_3de692168d.jpg

I love my Klipsch S4's (with Shure buds). Coupled with my 16gb Sony NWZ walkman > > > > aural perfection.

xpost

From everything I've read (at tedious length it must be said), there were issues with the initial batches of E500/SE530 earphones pretty much from the outset. The cable compound was, at some stage, changed to one less susceptible to this cracking problem, but as I said earlier all this has done in my case is last a bit longer. I've owned Shure e2c and e4g earphones before and neither model was affected by this, so the situation is pretty clear cut, in my mind at least and from the numbers of people who have been affected (there's a poll on head-fi covering this, figures up to about 50% iirc) I'm disappointed that Shure did not carry out a product recall or at least publicise this.

SM, that is very helpful advice - I've never really investigated uk consumer law before but your comments give me some hope that I might be able to get a replacement set, which is all I want. I've seen another headphone maker which sells little clear latex doohickies that can be fitted to the cable where it meets the earpiece and suspect this would at least offer some additional protection in future.

yeah sam500, I hear good things about the Klipsch range. If I cannot get satisfaction from Shure then I'm sorely tempted to go for one of theirs, or possibly Westone 3s or Sennheiser IE8s. For my commute the noise isolation is essential and the Shure buds are really excellent for this.

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/TX584ZM/A/Bowers-&-Wilkins-P5-Mobile-Headphones?fnode=MTY1NDA0Ng&mco=MTcwOTA2Njk

At £100, even £150, I might've took a pop on these.

Seems that in the 5 years since I first encountered Apple earbuds, they've stepped up their game considerably. They overcompensated on the bass a bit, but most people like their earphones a bit bassy, so I understand why that happened. These are my work earphones now, though, since my Shures block out a little too much sound for the office. Anyway, yeah... these don't suck.

So what are the best in-ear picks? I have some aging Shure e2c earbuds on which I have somehow screwed up the right channel. Minimal profile and sound quality are the goal here, although the ability to have a shorter cable or iPhone control would be great.

I still am trying to figure out if my right ear is less sensitive now, or I screwed up my right earbud. Likely the latter.

depends on what you want - several big name manufacturers have iphone-compatible inears out, and all are reviewed favorably depending on who you ask. for example, if you like a clean and analytic sound signature, you might consider the etymotic hf2.

Ultimate Ears (UE), Shure, altec lansing all make iphone-compatible in-ears and they all get reviewed highly. depends on what kind of sound you like.

i really want the Dr. Dre headphones but I'm afraid someone will punch me in the back of the head and take them if i wear them outside

...