Back in March, I wrote a little bit about the Apple “in-ear” headphones in Rants and Revelations: Tubular Bells
Well, the ear phones died. First one of the ear pieces started coming apart all the time, and I tried taping it back together, which is less than optimal when you’re shoving them into your ears. Then, after I’d decided it was time to replace them, I accidentally drove home with them hanging out the car door and dragging on the ground, and they didn’t survive the ride.
I can’t afford the lovely Etymotic ER-4s that Kim raves about, because they’ve around $350 and I’m hard on portable electronic equipment so I wouldn’t get $350 worth of use out them before I destroyed them somehow. But I was reading a review that said some very favourable things about the Shure E2Cs, which have an MSRP of $100 and which I found on-line for $70. (Oh, but not before I placed an order at once place that had them for $65 with $25 shipping(!!!), but after I’d placed the order I got an email saying “we’re closed this week, we’ll ship the product when we get home” – I think I managed to cancel that order.)
Anyway, I got them, I’ve been using them for a while. The sound is great. When I wrote about the Apple earphones I said that when I shoved them in my ears so hard that it was a little bit painful, the bass was great and you get a bit of bone conduction going on. These ones are the same, but not as painful, and less likely to wiggle out. They come with an extensive “fit kit” consisting of three different sizes of plastic nozzles, and three sets of collapsable foam ones. I tried the plastic nozzles, and even the small ones are too big for me, and got painful after a while. So now I’m trying the foam ones. I didn’t want to try these ones at first because I use foam earplugs when I sleep, and I know how the foam only lasts for a few days before you need to throw them away. I don’t particularly want to have to buy new earphone pieces every week. But they’re much more comfortable than the plastic nozzles. And they fit inside my ear better which improves the bass. On the minus side, they don’t seem to isolate out outside noise as well, so the risk of me having to murder some cow orkers is still high.
But all in all, I like them and I’m glad I bought them.