I really enjoy high quality music, and when I say enjoy I mean I can actually find myself in a meditative state when listening to music. Obviously, we’re not talking just about any music but when it comes to music, to each his own.
The Promise
There is a reason why there are so many people out there today in love with headphones and earphones.
You see, for loudspeakers to produce good sound, you really need a lot of effort and it really is an equation dependent on so many variables it’s hard to reach your sweet spot, the sound you really like.
Music is just airwaves carried through air, and air is hard to control over distance.
It is much easier to control the outcome when the device is so close to your ears and that’s the real magic.
The evolution
When I was a teenager, there were about five or six big names in the world of headphone manufacturing and good headphones were really expensive but the world of headphone manufacturing really took a turn and when the Chinese joined this market, the competition got every manufacturer working as hard as they could to produce great headphones.
The fit
The tricky part about headphones and earphones now comes from the simple fact that our heads and our ears are not the same and they should fit your head and then your ears to serve you.
I’ll take my characteristics as an example, I have a hard time wearing any kind of headphones for more than an hour because my head becomes extremely hot so I mostly use earphones, iems, in-ears, earbuds, however you choose to call them.
The seal
Now comes the trickiest part, the seal.
Since our ear canals are so distinct, the hardest part to achieve is a good seal.
You may have a very impressive set of iems but if you do not find your seal, they will probably fail to impress you.
Now, the seal business is very interesting because you may find that even with your $3000 iems you will only achieve a good seal by using the tips of your $20 earbuds.
Final words
I won’t get into the schools of silicone vs. foam tips but I will tell you this, if music is important to you as it is to me, invest the time and research to reach your good seal because after you hear the difference, you will achieve new appreciation for your favorite pair of earphones.
