Ear Love
May 30th, 2008 by JrMintSitting here sipping 18yr Old Macallans on the rocks seems to have put me back in the mood to do a tech review. And the timing is just right as yesterday I received a treat in the mail and I felt it worthy of sharing with the other 4 people who actually read my blog.
Now I do have to preface this post with the fact that I am not in any way shape or form a fan of or supporter of any product made by the company Bose. As a matter of a fact, I think from a technical audio perspective they are the single most overrated company that corporate america has ever blessed the public with. Now they’ve done nothing personal to me of course, but I speak from years of experience as a studio engineer (TV, recording and radio), a professional live sound engineer and many many years of being an audiophile, they really do not make any products that justify the money they charge.
While most Bose gear certainly isn’t crap and sounds better then real cheap stuff, for the money crazy people drop on their equipment they could be buying way better quality equipment and spending less…but Bose, just like Kleenex has built a name for themselves that is burned into the American public as a staple of life. Don’t get suckered…do your research, don’t spend money just because it says Bose on the box.
Okay with that said, the hypocritical side of me is about to speak rather highly of the first Bose item I’ve been impressed with in, hmmmm how many year…oh ya, all of them.
The background is that I love my iPOD and it goes in my car hooked to my Alpine deck and goes with me to the Gym, on the airplane (with my closed ear noise canceling headsets) and I use it when practicing my guitar to play over the top of David Gilmour songs (sorry David, I don’t mean to punish you so). What I really really hate is Ear Buds. Especially those crappy ones that come with the iPOD. Wearing my full size noise canceling headphones anywhere but the airplane is rather annoying, especially when working out…yikes.
Needless to say i’ve been searching a long time for primarily a set of in ear headphones that are first and foremost comfortable, then followed by quality. And at this point i was ready to sacrifice quality for something that didn’t give me a migraine headache from the pressure it puts on my outer ear (you know that little knub on the bottom of the ear that holds the ear bud in). The recent influx in newer styles that go in the ear canal intrigued me, but the few i tried still were uncomfortable to wear. I must just be a freak and hate my ears being touched (FRANKS AND BEANS! FRANKS AND BEANS!).
Alas, after reading several good reviews about the comfort level and that they worked good while exercising, I said what the hell, even if they are over priced and only have average sound I’m gonna try out these Bose.
Wow. Okay so for starters they come with the headphones, a lanyard, a clothes clip, a carrying case (nice sized one too, your nano will fit in it also) and 3 different sizes of adapters for big hole ears and little hole ears. For me the mediums which come on the ear phones by default were perfect. For once, I actually read the owners manual that came with something, wanting to make sure I understood HOW they were suppose to fit in the ear. Lots of fliers in the box saying “READ THE BOOK or these won’t fit right”.
Basically the design is that the “bud” and silicone adapter are designed to sit in the ear without putting pressure anywhere, and they aren’t suppose to slide into the ear canal (which I hate, so that was nice). Amazingly the sit right in the ear and don’t even seal the ear canal shut. (I was worried about this allowing outside noise problems). Once i had them on I jumped some rope and ran around crazy like, trying to make them fall out…they didn’t. They didn’t even move. Hmmm…success! So far.
Now I’m thinking, okay these were kinda spendy for what they are (yup, cause they are Bose) so let’s see how they sound. My iPOD, still in the car, was too far away for me to get the instant satisfaction I was now demanding so I swiped the wifes Nano out of the iHome under the kitchen cabinets and jammed the mini-plug into the bottom. Quickly scanning the artist list for something that would rock…Tom Petty…Old stuff…ya good choice. I fired up “You Wreck Me” and jammed the volume up to 50%. An incredibly imaged wonderful sound filled my head. Stunned momentarily I cranked it up to 75%. Yum. I was actually amazed how these sounded easily as good as my expensive open air sennheiser’s.
WIth nano in hand, i jumped around like a crazy man trying to shake them lose…locked in. Comfortable. Wonderful sound for an in-ear headphone.
So just after this, the wife gets home from her work out and I immediately jam them in her ears all excited like and say check these out! The response I got was “Where’s my pair?”…ya okay gotta order those tonight.
So lastly the final test for me. The gym. So I head over for my workout, figure out the mini-lanyard, put ‘em on and head for the Precor Elliptical machine (my favorite hard worker) 100i. What I suddenly realized is that with several different genres of music I consistently had a wonderful audio quality drowning out the Gym noise and even though the phones don’t seal the ear, I couldn’t hear anything else. The most amazing part for me was that multiple times during that hour I couldn’t feel or even tell I was wearing them at all and they never came lose…not once.
So in Summary I suppose i have to say my usual “Your mileage will vary” and as much as I hate to say it…these things are worth the high price that Bose is charging for them. If you are looking for a great sounding in-ear headphone that is (at least in this whiners opinion) extremely comfortable I’d recommend giving these a try.
If you have some or try them, please post your comments. If you’d like to try mine, let me know.
I got them here.
