Adding great headphones to your iPod makes all the difference
Week of July 18, 2004
Q: Do you have any advice on portable CD players, MP3 players, hard disk players (e.g., iPod), etc?
-Paul LaFontaine,
A: The best advice I can give to anyone using a portable music player is to use great headphones.
A common theme seen by regular readers of this column is the utmost importance of the speakers in a sound system. Speakers are transducers- they turn electrical energy into the sound you hear. Changing electrical energy into sound is a much more difficult process than creating or modifying an electrical signal. Audible differences in electronics such as amplifiers or CD players are extremely small compared to the audible differences between speakers. It is for this reason you should maximize the amount of money spent on speakers whenever you put together a component sound system.
Like speakers, headphones are transducers that change electrical energy into the sound you hear. The headphones supplied with portable music players usually leave a lot of room for improvement. By adding high quality headphones, you can dramatically improve the sound of any portable music player.
For under $50, check out the Sony MDR-EX71SL and inexpensive models from Senneheiser (www.sennheiser.com).
Between $50 and $100, my favorites are the full-size Grado SR60 and SR80, selling for $69 and $89 respectively. If you need smaller, earbud-type headphones, Shure’s E2c is hard to beat. Both Shure and Grado are sold primarily through specialty shops, so you will not find them at the larger electronics retailers. You can learn more about Grado and Shure at www.gradolabs.com and www.shure.com.
Serious listeners should check out the Shure’s $179 E3c, Etymotic’s (www.etymotic.com) $139 ER6 for $330 ER4, and the Grado SR125 at $135. The Etymotic models in particular have been receiving rave reviews from owners and industry insiders.
