Nov 12 2005
In Search of Decent Headphones
So, on an almost completely irrelevant note, I would like to mention headphones.
Specifically, I would like to mention that the vast majority of commonly-available headphones are crap. I am by no means an audiophile, but I can certainly appreciate the difference between good sound and not-so-good sound. I took an interest in headphones because I figured that I do most of my listening in private, and you can get a heck of a lot more for your money in headphones than in speakers (for obvious reasons).
But finding headphones that are small enough to be portable, and that still sound OK, is very difficult. I think I’ve tried all of the different designs: standard wraparound heaphones suck in small sizes because they don’t fit well and are leaky; over-the-ear heaphones don’t channel the sound into the ear well; behind-the-head phones are difficult to keep on and incompatible with headrests on seats; and in-the-ear phones, while definitely the best solution, are rife with problems. The best I’d been able to find until recently were the “Plug” headphones from Koss, which fit much the same as a foam earplug. They sound horrible, with ridiculously exaggerated bass and a pathetic midrange, but they stay in.
So, today, I started looking at the newer “canalphones” that use these thin silicon inserts instead of compressible foam. Sony has a set, but they’re overpriced (which is par for the course with Sony) and the reviews were not so positive. On a whim I picked up the Panasonic RP-HJE50 phones, because they were considerably cheaper and exceeded the Sony model’s specs in every department.
Well, all I can say is wow. They fit extremely well and they sound fantastic. Probably half as good as my “real” headphones, which is better than anything portable I’ve listened to by a long shot. The bass is not at all exaggerated, but neither is it lacking. Seems like everybody expects booming bass from headphones, whether or not it’s really called for. Sure enough, pretty much the only negative reviews I could find for these phones complained that the bass was all wrong. Oh well, people are fools.
So you should go out and buy these; they’re pretty darn good. If you shop around they won’t set you back much more than $20. They do have their idiosyncrasies, like a completely insane cord where the right side is three times as long as the left side — you’re supposed to loop the right half behind your head, I think. But they’re the best I’ve found so far.