earphones recommendations

soth · 1 Mar 2006 at 15:55

Anyone recommend a good set of earphones, reasonably priced, about £15-£20?

cheers,
ciaron

fish99 · 1 Mar 2006 at 16:04

I like my Sennheiser MX500s. £15. Much better than the rubbish you usually get bundled with your MP3 player.

Rob43 · 1 Mar 2006 at 18:16

Koss "The Plug" Earbuds

,use them with my i-river & they are great or as mentioned Sennheiser make great headphones as well

Rob

james.miller · 1 Mar 2006 at 18:31

fish99 said:
I like my Sennheiser MX500s. £15. Much better than the rubbish you usually get bundled with your MP3 player.

The mx500's are similar to the mx400's that come with the irivers

they are pretty crap.

fish99 · 1 Mar 2006 at 18:49

james.miller said:
The mx500's are similar to the mx400's that come with the irivers they are pretty crap.

Most MP3 players come with far worse than MX400 btw, and I'd have to guess MX500 are better than MX400. MX500 are not crap given their price, that's a rather stupid comment to make, especially without suggesting anything better or even saying why you don't like them.

MX500 are miles better than Sony EX71 which cost twice as much.

Caged · 1 Mar 2006 at 18:56

"The Plugs" have recently been replaced with something else, well worth the £15 though.

Le Samourai · 1 Mar 2006 at 20:07

The Creative in-ear headphones that OcUK are selling are pretty good.

Using them with my iriver U10.

Bigsy · 1 Mar 2006 at 20:34

MX400 and MX500 are the same, bar volume control afaik, but for there prices they certainly ain't crap at all.

Heres a decent review which contains both phones mentioned: http://www.denguru.com/2006/02/10/8_audio_player_earphones/

james.miller · 1 Mar 2006 at 20:38

They arent crap for £15 no, but in all honesty there is much better, though that's not my point. The 400's and 500's are not exactly the same. the 500's are more nutral sounding while the 400's are are more forward with less responce at the bottom end. Still, my point is that they are not much better than the earphones you get with most mp3 players (as the ARE the earphones you get with some of them), and for all the bad points of the ex71's, i still prefer them with my H10 to the mx400's.

Probably because the stay in my ears better than the 400's do lol

Bigsy · 1 Mar 2006 at 20:56

I think your plain wrong to be frank, it seems to be a pretty common consensus on Head-fi that they are identical bar an inline volume control.

As for ex71's I think they rightly came out below the two suggested here in the review above, but as you prove sound is subjective, although the numbers arn't.

james.miller · 1 Mar 2006 at 21:00

Bigsy said:
I think your plain wrong to be frank, it seems to be a pretty common consensus on Head-fi that they are identical bar an inline volume control.

there are reviews to would agree with my opinion, but i didnt mean they were massively different. I know how bad the ex71's are, they are certainly far from linear, but like i said, i still prefer them to the mx400's just because they are sound isolating and they stay in my ears lol.

fish99 · 1 Mar 2006 at 21:09

I guess it depends how much you pay for your MP3 player, but my Sony NWE107 came with some terrible headphones. MX500 were a good upgrade from them. They don't have the detail of EX71, but they are well balanced with good mids and nice (if a little underplayed highs), whereas I found the EX71 to have badly recessed (nearly missing completely) mids, and sharp highs. EX71 of course have more bass being canalphones, but it's uncontrolled.

IMO MX500 produce a more accurate, natural and pleasing sound, far closer to top end Sennheiser cans, or my hi-fi. All just opinions though.

bledd · 2 Mar 2006 at 05:18

i love my sony fontopia's

best thing about them is they're very flexible so don't get mashed when you chuck them loosly into your bag etc

edit, why do they ship terrible earphones with the mp3 players in the first place?

Psypher5 · 2 Mar 2006 at 09:54

sharp md33s

Bigsy · 2 Mar 2006 at 18:12

Psypher5 said:
sharp md33s

Where do they sell these for £20?

Psypher5 · 2 Mar 2006 at 18:21

go halves with a friend? got mine for 25

Cant link the competitor though

soth · 2 Mar 2006 at 19:58

I saw the MX550's today for £20 and the MX500's for £15.

are the 550's worth the extra fiver anyone think?

Bigsy · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:43

Dispite what james.miller said

..... MX450=MX550 and MX400=MX500.

The latter two (400+500) are considered better so go for th 500's

james.miller · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:53

yeah sure, im wrong. their all the same really, despite what i, or anybody else says

Stellios · 2 Mar 2006 at 23:50

james.miller said:
The mx500's are similar to the mx400's that come with the irivers they are pretty crap.

Ive found that out the hard way. With my mp3 player the bass isnt that good, but its alright, however, through my PC the bass is very strong and they sound really nice, strange eh.

If they were more than £20 i would have been disappointed.