Experience with headphones

Loving music is not special at all. Everybody loves music. And we all feel it's something extraordinary. At high school with my best friend we had been listening a lot of music together. He calmly introduced me jazz, blues and piano music - and at the same time I showed him all my metal collection like a epileptic child.


It was fun, but you realize soon music is a personal thing. Since the age of 5 I'm addicted to quality music. I used to listen to music on a stereo system but because it's annoying I smoothly went to using headphones. Now I just want to mention the few I've tried and using. First the small earbuds.

I've tried many, as discussed with Kornel it's almost a disposable product. Used up pretty quickly and fairly cheap to replace. I went through from the fake ones to the middle-range commercial brands. Back in the early days there I used this one from Sony. It one pretty awesome. Later I realized what was the trick - it's the cover sponge. For some reason it isolated the outside noise and gives a more full sound to the little speakers. One day a little minpin ate it, so it was time to move on.

Then I've used the old Apple earbuds - which in fact was made by Sennheiser. I liked that a lot - not too bad sound quality and the fact that the cable was rubber-like it made it much more durable compare to others. Two things however I really don't like in the Apple earbuds. The controller was always stucked into my collar or to a zipper. And secondly the jack plug was straight, which is really unpractical when carrying in you pocket. And of corse because of that the cable broke in a few month.

Then I've got the new Apple earpod. Honestly I was shocked by the sound quality. It's fenomenal. Since then I hate all the other earbuds. However the so called perfect fit to any kind of ears thing didn't get to me - I was the most unstable earpod in my life, a simple wind could get it out from my ears, that was pretty annoying. And eventually because of the straight plug the cable broke again in a few months.

Now I'm trying out the Sennheiser CX300 II. I expected much better. The sound quality is weak, it's fairly complicated to place to the ears and personally I don't like the unequal length of the left-right parts. My only hope is that because it has an L-shape plug it will last longer.

And now the large headphones. My first one was a low-end Phillips headphone, an ugly cheap one. Having it a the first one I couldn't compare to anything else.

Then I bought a Sennheiser 202 II. It's a bass heavy normal range headphone. Nothing fancy about it really, but it indeed does a great job with the bass. The isolation is ok and it provides a very great sound experience. The only issue is the high frequency range - so not optimal for classical music.

Then I've tried the smaller Dr Dre Beats headphones. The level of bass and power from this little product was pretty impressive. Probably it's also not for the wide range of frequencies - but when it's Marduk or Amon Amarth you care less about the violin in those tracks.

And then I've got my current favorite - Audio Technika ATH-M50. It's one of the few things I'd carry with me to the famous 'distant island'. Amazing sound, comfortable wear, fairly good isolation and great quality. It's a middle range product, it doesn't have active noise cancellation or embedded dolby surround. Those products are pretty expensive. Luckily I don't even know how they sound. And I'm super happy with the ATH-M50.

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Peter