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Last Active 10-14-22 2:50 am Joined 04-10-05
Review Comments 2,049
| In Ear Headphones
Lost my in ear apple headphones, but good riddance they were starting to fail anyway. What are the best in ear headphones for under $100 that won't fail after 2 weeks. GO! | 1 | Help | 2 | I | 3 | need | 4 | Sputnik's | 5 | Super | 6 | Duper | 7 | Holy | 8 | Wisom | 9 | Thanks | 10 | ......Mittens | |
EVedder27
09.18.09 | I get phillips headphones for about $10, they've lasted for a good amount of time so far. It's really not worth spending more than $15 for headphones | Waior
09.18.09 | Get some oooout of ear headphones man | Douglas
09.18.09 | Well I use Ec2 shure headphones, maybe out of the price range though. | tinathefatlard
09.18.09 | What kind, Pam? | PanasonicYouth
09.18.09 | can't go wrong with skull candy
last for a good while and are actually only like $20
noise-canceling and epic sound quality to boot | Waior
09.18.09 | I use Sennheiser HD435s and they are excellent but you can do better if you want with a higher model. Like a concert in my head. | Prophet178
09.18.09 | Senn CX400 for IEM's, Senn HD 555 for over the ear. | tinathefatlard
09.18.09 | Cool I'll be willing to go beyond $100 if it's actually worth it. Maybe I won't just limit myself to in ear headphones, but not the individual ones that clip onto your ears those just...no. | Prophet178
09.18.09 | Don't go higher than $100 if you're not will to spend more than $300. Everything in the low-mid range is very minor upgrades. You'll be more than satisfied with the HD 555's or a similar pair of Grados.
I've listened to many of the headphones in the $100-$300 range, and it really isn't worth it. Read a lot of reviews though, they will help a lot with your decision. | EyesWideShut
09.18.09 | Get the Philips "Surround sound" for about 10-20 $. they sound amazing for the price. just dont blast your music all the time or they may only last u 5 months. great for general use.
i also use Bose in-ear headphones for $80.00, but I would only recomend those for a more "focused" listen. | klap
09.18.09 | in-ear headphones are a good way to destroy your hearing by the age of 30 | RedSky
09.18.09 | Please for godsakes don't get Skullcandy. They do fashion, not sound quality.
I'd recommend the Head-Direct RE0s here:
http://www.head-direct.com/product_detail.php?p=38
If you go on head-fi, which is arguably the biggest headphone obsessed forum on the net, you'll see plenty of ringing endoursements of it being great value:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/re0-rivals-er-4s-beats-e500-er-4p-405947/
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/re-0s-must-buy-99-price-point-443449/ | RedSky
09.18.09 | While I'm at it, I might also point out that Bose are generally regarded to be overpriced at any price range because they spend ridiculous amounts of money on mass market advertising and preferential department store placement.
Also, there is no evidence that in ear phones are bad for your hearing. If anything, open headphones such as stock earbuds are worse for use outside because you have to crank up the volume overly high to drown out the background noise such as on a bus. This isn't necessary with in ear phones because they isolate. They don't put additional pressure on your ear drum either, if you're listening to them at roughly the same volume you would for normal over the ear headphones, then the effect is essentially the same. The only real effect they seem to have is you secrete more ear wax because there's a foreign object in your canal, but this is in no way harmful. | Grimlin
09.18.09 | Bose. Their super comfortable and sound great. | Prophet178
09.18.09 | Seconded to everything RedSky said. Please don't ever buy SkullCandy or Bose. The latter being an overpriced marketting scheme making their product seem more luxurious than it really is. Bose has no credibility in professional audio equipment like Sennheiser and Grado do, they specialize in marketing products to uneducated consumers. SkullCandy is even worse. Cheap products with cheap sound. | klap
09.18.09 | um, you have to turn up the volumes on earbuds to drown out background noise too - more importantly, the decreased distance between the earbud and the eardrum increase sound pressure levels by blocking the canal more so than open ear headphones, which damages the eardrum further....so, yeah, earbuds are generally worse for your hearing. of course, it's all relative to the volume you listen at for whatever pair you get | Lunarfall
09.18.09 | klap4musik you are entirely wrong. sound pressure levels are based entirely on how you have the music, blocking the canal has absolutely nothing to do with it. so it will be the same amount of pressure regardless what type of listening device you use. plus, isolation ear buds are vastly superior to overear isolation. | Lunarfall
09.18.09 | that second sentence should say "entirely on how loud you have the music" | redsparrow
09.18.09 | Bose or Sony MDREX series. Bose is more expensive but it's worthy; Sony is more cheaper and it's just as good. | klap
09.18.09 | sealing the ear canal, which most earbuds do, actually does have an effect by focusing more of the propagation in one direction - namely, your ear drums. obviously volume determines everything so you can argue that earbuds and headphones are just as dangerous but there is plenty of scientific evidence to prove that the way the average american person/teenager uses earbuds makes them the more dangerous (hearing-wise) option | theacademy
09.18.09 | @ whoever dissed skull candy
if your getting in-ear headphones, you clearly don't care about sound quality.
smokin buds are cheap (like 9-12 bucks) and they have a lifetime warranty so skullcandy will replace them
i had red ones for 5 months, then silver ones for 6 months | taylormemer
09.18.09 | In ear = more damage.
Why? Because you are sealing off the outside world; in essence you are allowing only the sound to enter your ear, and your ear only. In a real sound environment this doesn't happen. Because the power is focussed over a small area the intensity is much greater. Sound pressure is measured by force over area. In this instance the area is small and the force great. It's like trying to make a dent in steel with a hammer. It's much easier to focus the force using a centrepunch (or nail) than to use the face of the hammer, .
Nowadays, a lot of music has some degree of distortion associated with it. Particularly heavier music, and even dance music and general popular music. For this reason you are receiving a lot of very aggressive, square waveforms, which in general, are not what out ears evolved to compensate themselves with. For this reason care should be taken - in general don't exceed the limit. I see it every day on public transport, the amount of morons sitting there with me 10m away able to sing along to the lyrics.
A lot of the time, the uneducated person will crank up volume just because the common perception that you heart more when its louder. Well this is not the case. The human ear is more sensitive at lower sound pressure levels. You'll never see a mixing or mastering engineer working at 100dB because it really is a joke, both in a psychoacoustic sense but also in safety. | RedSky
09.18.09 | @klap4musik/taylormemer
I'm not talking about earbuds I'm talking about in ear phones, which do isolate unlike buds. That's the key reason why they are generally better for outside use.
Ear pressure is ENTIRELY relative to the volume you listen at, that's the whole point. The way that you perceive sound is through your eardrum reacting to differences in air pressure. It doesn't matter if you're hearing it from a loudspeaker or from a tiny IEM in your ear, if you're hearing it at the same volume then your ear drum is experiencing the same level of air pressure it cannot tell the difference. The air pressure that an IEM puts out is obviously far far less than a loudspeaker or a full sized headphone because the sound has to travel a far shorter distance. Again, the pressure on your ear is exactly the same if you're listening at the same volume.
If there are reverberation as a result of isolation then that all factors into the air pressure your ear drum experiences and as a result the volume. You just adjust your volume down for it that's all.
As for the average person listening too loud, well that's another issue entirely, but that's not exclusive to IEMs by any means.
@theacademy
http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/in-ear-monitor/
No.
Also, Skullcandy have a lifetime warranty only for technical fault, not for the thing falling apart from incidental use because of poor manufacturing standards. They do apparently give you 50% off a subsequent purchase from them if you mangle them, even of your own faul, but just think about that for a sec. Doesn't that by itself imply that they're ripping you for profits over 50% of the purchase cost just by themselves (not even factoring in distributors or retailers), just imagine how much the actual hardware you're buying is worth. Doesn't that also imply they simply expect much of their gear to fail? I've got a A-T headphone that's lasted me for years, and the only signs of wear and tear is a bit of rusting.
| taylormemer
09.18.09 | No. And no again.
Your thinking about the simple 'louder is more damaging concept', but it goes a lot deeper. Firstly, the ear is complex. The eardrum is really its most robust section. The reason why our hearing degenerates is because of the fact we can't reproduce our frequency-sensitive hair cells, which are rowed according to their corresponding frequency. They are the ones that convert the already attenuated sound energy by the ear drum, into actual electrical messages our brain can process. One they are gone, they're gone.
So to elaborate; a typical sound setup will induce a lot of general frequency attenuation. Higher frequencies are often absorbed over a distance, where as lower frequencies travel much further. The reason for this is because higher frequencies are absorbed by air molecules better, it's also because more energy is needed (in general) to produce a lower frequency, thus more distance. When you reduce that air distance between you and the source, no natural frequency attenuation occurs. So, the hair cells in the inner ear are being exposed to much more than in a natural setting. Higher frequencies are also the ones that generally make our music seem louder, or 'more piercing' so if you're missing more than your fair share of cells, you're more likely to turn it up further out of impulse and thus do more damage.
Furthermore, people generally turn up headphones because they become accustom to the sound pressure level over a period of time. This effect doesn't happen as predominantly with open air speakers because the why in which we interpret the acoustical surroundings. The eardrum also has an inbuilt defence mechanism to prevent over-exposure to loud prolonged sounds, this is why is seems to get quieter over time.
Believe t or not, even those who listen and exercise are likely to be exposing themselves to more damage, because the human heart pumps blood away from the ears and toward the limbs, making the ear much more vulnerable to over-exposure.
Yes you can safely use earphones/buds headphones and general speakers, but because it's so much easier to crank it up on your iPod than what it is at home. Why? Because it's cheap, you're likely to be using it on loud public transport, because their's a modern comfort in shielding yourself from the outside world nowadays, etc. I use Sony ear wrap around headphones on the way to work, and Sennheiser's headphones at home occasionally. I don't generally use earphones because I find them uncomfortable, but also because I know that I'll potentially and unconsciously be doing more damage then what I was bargaining for. |
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