Many moons ago I began researching noise cancelling/attenuating headphones. I’ve used foam ear plugs, and I tried the Bose noise cancelling headphones, but neither was very satisfying – especially considering the latter have an MSRP of $300USD!
Stef works for Dan at Metro Music, an excellent local guitar shop. Dan referred me to Neil at Wall Sound & Lighting to talk to them about In-Ear-Monitors (IEMs), but it was Mat A. who ended up talking with me. Still with me? Don’t worry.
I’d been looking at the Shure E3C, wanting to move up from the E2C so I could have the custom ear-mould option. It wasn’t until I discovered that the E4C were only about $315-$350 online, that I started thinking about them instead. I know I say “only $315”, but I’d mentally budgetted about $450 for these, including the moulds. The Etymotics were also consided, but I just didn’t like the way the looked, or more specifically – the complete lack of cable management.
In email dialog with Mat, he suggested I seriously consider the Ultimate Ears products, but he also said he could sell the professional versions of the Shure IEMs. Apparently the only difference between the consumer and professional lines are the colour, and the price – pros are cheaper. That’s good, I wasn’t planning on playing retail prices for these in the first place. And the Ultimate Ears start at $580 USD for the type I’m looking for.
Then things went downhill – he also mentioned he’s got the E3 and E5 (Note: No ‘C’, therefore the ‘Pro’ models) in rentals so I could try ’em out if I wanted:
Bad. Very bad.
On Wednesday morning, I dropped in to Wall and decided I’d like to try ’em out.
By Wednesday afternoon, I knew I was in trouble – I didn’t want to turn off the music. Wall had loaned the E3 and E5 to me, with some foamies (for hygenic reasons.) I made the expensive mistake of trying the E5 first.
First thing I did before putting them in (… you don’t really put them on) was to set my iPod’s volume to zero. Several reviewers said that insertion and positioning were critical to getting acceptable performance. So I squished down the foamies and pulled my earlobes up and back and rotate/wedged ’em in. And then everything got quiet. Real quiet. Actually, it wasn’t as quiet as I’d hoped, expecting complete deafness and only being able to percieve bone-conducted sounds… but I had to stop the Dentyne action because that was too loud.
So the quietness was great, then I turned on the iPod… and was greeted with hiss… right. These are sensitive enough and attenuating enough for hiss to re-become a problem. Started playing some music, and noticed the bass was weak. Many of the reviews had said that, many other reviews said the first reviewers were fools for not getting ’em in right. So I worked on positioning and made things better, still I didn’t get skull-vibrating bass, but it sounded fine. After a few minutes I realized the kick is actually very solid, and the bass isn’t missing, it’s just “just right”.
As I settled into working, I began noticing elements of songs I’d never noticed before… and I tend to study songs pretty intently in the first place, so to hear even more, well, it was impressive; I attribute it to the amazing detail that the E5 can reproduce. (The attenuation helps too, of course.)
Less surprising, and certainly a good thing, was that I couldn’t set my iPod volume over 40% without pain, considing on aircraft and data centers I usually had that up to 90% volume – that was awesome. 20% volume is perfectly servicable, and 30% is more than loud enough for anything. In fact, on one night, I wore them to bed and actually enjoyed my music with my iPod at the lowest, non-zero volume setting of my iPod. This can only be a good thing, especially in the long term.
More than once someone walked into my office, and started talking to me – and I couldn’t hear them at all. (Even with the music stopped!) This problem wasn’t helped by the fact that these things are rather unnoticable when in place – none of the people could even see them.
Arriving home to my parents that evening, I told them how much I was enjoying the E5 and all all that great stuff. When I stated the price on them, mother-dear made a negative comment, not unexpected – this is a lot of money. It was my Dad that floored me: “Well, you can write them off as a business expense.” GAH!!! Here you are! You’re supposed to be my voice of reason, telling me there’s no way I should ever consider spening this much money on something so … expensive! (Can’t say impractical or useless – they are going to protect my hearing) And then you have to go off and rationalize the things on me! Talk about love/hate!
That night, I tried the E3 for about an hour… but the whole time I just wanted to switch back the the E5; the cord management, sound detail, response curve… all inferior compared to the E5. It was about that moment I realized I was going to have to spend a pretty penny. The E3 are a fine pair of earphones, but when compared to the E5…
Two more days of bliss, during which every possible moment I could use them, I used them… Office, datacenter, reading in bed, working on the computer… all wonderful. I did find that choice of (pre)amplifiers did make a difference. The Mac Mini was good, but the MacBook Pro was fairly hissy. Running thru my ancient Noresco amp on my desk was nice, but the dirty volume pot did cause some pain. I should point out that all the Shure IEMs come with attentuator controls (read: volume knob blobs) that let you turn down the sound externally to whatever you’re listening to. This should dodge the hiss and crackling noises from cheap source equipment.
Then I plugged them into my bass guitar amp.
Oh. Migod.
Amazing. Wonderful. Everything just sounds so good thru these earphones – even my own hack-style bass playing!
That was the moment that sealed the deal. I’ve gotta get me a pair of my own.
They’re a Shure thing.
🙂
Sorry – had to say it!
PS: Turned out the pair of E5 I’d been using were originally purchased on 1999-12-20. That’s just damn impressive. Considering they’re rental units, think of the abuse they’ve been through.
PPS: Shure recently announced the E500C, a triple driver (E5 are double) IEM with a ‘Push-to-hear’ blob that basically enables a microphone so you could talk to someone in the same room without having to remove the earphones. Looks neat, but a completely consumer product, and I’m too enamoured with the E5 now to want or even wait for the E500C. The unit is more like the E1-4 in terms of shape too.