Headphones for your iPod are getting a bit out of control in terms of size and price.
The subway and iPods go hand in hand. So if there’s a new case, headphone, or other accessories on the market, it will only take a few seconds before you start seeing it on the subway.
So looking around, there’s a whole variety of headphones in use. There’s the standard white earbud that come with every new device. (Oh by the way, the new stock iPod earbuds are really shitty. They are actually lower quality than the previous generation.). Then there’s the upgrades.
Have you been to the Apple store lately? They are selling earbud style headphones for $150.00!! That’s insane. Oh wait…these are insane. $499.00 for earbud headphones? Get the f**k outta here! Sure, they are sound isolating, but 500 bucks?
Folks, in that size headphone, there’s nothing that makes them worth more than $50 tops. The sound quality is just about the same because the device that actually produces the sound is the same diameter. They might be better quality parts, but you are not going to notice a major improvement in sound quality.
If you want better sound, you need to go for the over ear type that have a larger surface are.
What’s always strange to me is when people wear huge, studio size headphones on the subway. If your cans are bigger than your iPod, aren’t you defeating the purpose of portability?
Live from the subway, back to you in studio…
SUBWAYblogger 
They really are. In the 200 dollars Shures there are multiple drivers for different ranges. I was raised on a luxurious stereo system (god bless the U.M.C. upbrining), and can tell the difference. My friends can tell the difference. When given the opportunity to grab a broken pair of E3C’s, I grabbed them and repaired them. Now, not only can I not hear anything around me, but I can hear details and depth of sound previously absolutely impossible.
The thing is, well engineered earphones are excellent for listening to music with massive dynamic ranges for this reason: they’re so good at isolating your eardrum that the drivers can be much quieter and you’ll still be able to hear perfectly. When drivers aren’t pushed up against their limits (as is true of most sub-$70 earbuds), most are capable of reproducing a pretty wide range pretty damn accurately.
It’s just that hard to isolate the eardrum. Not to mention that putting 3 drivers engineered to different chunks of the aural spectrum at thirty dollars apiece is *expensive* and the R/D markup is going to be outrageous as well.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Ask around; some of your friends probably own a pair of really nice earbuds–Shures or Etymotics–once you’ve switched for a week, the odds you’ll be content to go back are slim, bordering on the vanishing.
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