Budget Earphones vs. Expensive Earphones

I'm looking to replace my $5 earphones, and I have no clue whatsoever on how to judge the quality of earphones.

So, I was just wondering if any of you guys use $100+ earphones (not looking for a headset) and if it is worth spending the money for the high-quality earphones.

I will be using it for casual purposes, such as gaming and listening to music

So, are the high-end earphones purpose made specialists, or will a ordinary person like me notice the difference between a $30-50 pair of earphones compared to the expensive versions?

 

There is a huge difference between the cheap stuff and the nice stuff.

Around $100ish can get you some pretty great quality stuff if you shop the right brand/place.

You get diminishing returns on your investment once you go so high, between $100-$200 seems to be the sweet spot IMO.

Remember audio quality is a chain of events so its only as good as the weakest part of your chain.

The basic chain is

Source File --> Sound Card --> Headphones

So even if you got a pair of $1000 headphones its not going to be done justice unless you were playing some high quality files and had a good sound card (DAC).

Likewise you could have a FLAC lossless music collection, a $500 soundcard and use your $5 headphones and it would sound like crud.

I think the best place to start is about $100 (each) for the two main parts the DAC & the Headphones.

Recommendations:

DAC
#1 - NuForce uDAC2
#2 - Fiio E7

Headphones (Best choice depends on your preference & type of listening)
#1 - Audio Technica A700
#2 - Audio Technica AD700
#3 - Sennheiser hd555
#4 - + Lots More

You should be happy with the upgrade, if not though stuff like this re-sells pretty easy and does not lose much value.

My personal setup.

Laptop
uDAC-2 + Ultimate Ears Triple.Fi 10's
(want Yuin PK1's)



Desktop
Icon HDP + A700/AD700/Hfi 2400

 

^ he only wants earphones/IEM

Yeah you get what you pay for. A pair of $5 earphones compared to a $200+ will make a big difference. It also depends on the equipment you are going to use it on. A DAC/Amp can improve it further.

Spending the extra $$$ for better sound quality is worthwhile investment in my opinion. Instead of buying $5 crap quality earphones that keep breaking all the time.

Try out some Ultimate Ears TripleFi's, they are the easiest to acquire without getting lost in a plethora of choices.

Have a look at this article, its a good read:

Giz Explains: Why You Can't Get Decent Earphones for Less Than $100

 

I think a DAC/AMP is required if your going to spend $100+ on headphones because compared to onboard its a huge change IMO.

Id feel you wasted a lot of the $100 on the headphones without the further investment of the DAC/AMP.

Just my opinion after I got the uDAC2 for my G73. I didnt know how good it could sound till I got it so my opinion would have been different before I made that purchase.

 

Ive been rocking a set of sony studio monitor headphones for like 10 years now. Its been replaced on sony's site with a similar model for the same price. I like them better than any cheap earbud or any other cheap headset ive ever had. But their crap in comparison to some of the other stuff laying around here.

Multiple drivers for the win. What I fail to like about those shure's in giz's picture is the failure to align the drivers properly. At that close a range it probably barley matters.

Its impossible for a single driver to properly reproduce the entire audible range, though we never ask this from headsets we do ask alot from them. I never even looked into what frequency a headset can actually reproduce in ear. Remember a 40hz tone is like 25 feet long as sea level it would be pure sound pressure up against the ear.

If your looking for something that will last you dont have to spend 100 bucks. If youd shoot yourself for spending 100 bucks then dont do it. When being frugal id actually split the cost with some sony junk and and a head phone amplifier. But if the signal coming out of the computer is crap, which it will be, its pointless to amplify noise.

 

I recon it also depen ds on wh at style you want(over ear, ear bud, ect.) and what type of music you lis ten to. Would you need base heavy ones if you only lis ten to girly pop, ect.

I don 't kno w if in America you have stores like over here w her e you can lis ten to music with all the different headphones.

 

I swear I've worked on that for hours. That's not supposed to be an anagram is it?

 

Hippo VB (more bass oriented)
HiFiMAn RE-ZERO

Meh just two I thought of that are very good headphones for their price and should do decent with gaming.

 

Agreed on all but this. I consider the "diminishing return" a bit harsh especially with such a subjective subject.

For example, if there's a harmonic that's missing or barely audible from one pair of phones (or speaker) but is clearly audible with another, then I consider the extra money well spent. Though others are free to disagree.

In addition, a pair of noise-canceling headphones (Bose or Sony) typically hover around $300. If you're looking for audiophile quality, B&W will provide some conventional (P5) headphones with even better sound for roughly the same price. And yes, they do get expensive...a lot more expensive!

Nevertheless you are spot on about the weakest link. Too many people forget about this when designing/setting up/purchasing their sound system. You start with speakers; then make sure everything behind that can measure up to those standards.

 

Lets try not to flood the OP here with too much information. We should really start a thread for audiophiles.

Yes surely it will help but even if you have a not so good source, a pair of triplefi's will still sound better than ipod earbuds. If you the money to spare for even better quality, then sure.

My HP pavilion has quite decent onboard audio which is comparable to my Nuforce or iBasso uDAC when driving TripleFi's. Its easy to drive IEM's so i dont think im missing out on the 'amp' part much. I usually just plug it straight to the notebook because its more convenient when im on the go. If i had high impedance headphones, i would definitely opt for an amp.

I do agree onboard audio on motherboards are the usually cheapest and weakest part. Its a frequency noise storm inside a laptop/desktop and some are not shielded well enough, giving you a hiss or buzz.

Yes, DJ warehouses will usually have a large range you can try out.

 

I think diminishing returns is a pretty accurate way to put it.

I cant see how a pair of $1000 headphones can be 10x better than a pair of $100 headphones.

They may be better, they may even be worth the money.

But in a pure ratio of quality to money spent I think once you get past the $100-$200 range you start to get diminishing returns.

So its not that I am saying more expensive stuff is not worth it, just that you have to start to spend more to get more.

 

A month ago I would have never considered spending $150 on a nice pair of headphones. I can't truly say that I have ever experienced really high quality sound before.

Now, I am starting to feel that I should buy a pair. Do you guys ever feel like you have wasted a few hundred on a top-shelf pair of headphones?

For me, a guy who had the look up what an "audiophile" was , would you recommend a $100+ pair of earphones?

 

Well, the old adage, you get what you pay for, is relavant to headphones as well.

I spent $95 on a pair of headphones and wouldn't regret it. I needed them and they sound much much better than anything I have heard (Beats, Bose, my Sennheiser IEMs) etc.
Check out these topics for some advice on buying: Shootout: 61 Portable Headphones Reviewed - MEElec HT-21 & Soundmagic P20 added 12/15 - Head-Fi.org Community
Multi-IEM Review - 125 IEMs compared (Sony XB40EX & EX85 added 12/08) - Head-Fi.org Community

 

Yes. I didn't particularly care about audio quality until I got these Bose QuietComfort 2s (and now I very much do, since I can hear the ranges I've been missing), and these aren't even that great sounding compared to some other models in the price range.

What I think is most overlooked is ergonomics. I like the sound of my friend's Audio Techinica ATH-M50s, but I'd choose my Bose headphones over those just because of how much more comfortable they are. I regularly sleep with my headphones on.

 

Definitely a huge difference.

I've got some Sennheiser IE8 - went to them from Sony EX85 - well, first you are underwhelmed, then go back to the Sonys and within less than a second you notice the difference.

I would highly recommend not going as cheap as possible on headphones - you just loose all the detail and clarity in your music.

You can get decent/acceptable headphones from maybe 20-30$ up, not great, but decent. (Sennheiser CX300 are mentioned a lot I think)
Basically, the key part is to do your research and then get the best you can afford.

 

That would depend on several things: 1) your musical taste/preference, 2) the manner in which the data stream is constructed, and 3) how much/long you intend to wear/use them.

If you musical taste doesn't extend much past hip-hop, rap, rock, metal and the like, a $100 pair of headphone (or less) should be more than sufficient. Similarly, if the majority of your musical collection is MP3 based, paying more for headphones would net an unremarkable result since you're unlike to notice any increase in sound quality. The majority of the finer details in that medium have already been deleted by the crudeness of that technology.

To put it bluntly, and audiophile headphone/speakers are for purest that know what to look for, and can appreciate the finer nuances in a well recorded piece of "music." Think of it like the difference between a $20 bottle of supermarket wine, and a vintage bottle of Dom Perignon. If that isn't your interest, your money would be best spent some place else.

There's a lot more, but to keep in line to what the mod said, don't go beyond the limits of the thread.

 

oh, MP3s are fine - just make sure they are a high bitrate, ideally 320KBit/s

On that note though - the tiny flat sounds that cheaper headphones give you will occur at any bitrate anyway.

 

Some of my old stuff is MP3

AAC is the new king of lossy though, I love the nero codec with a good VBR encoding around 192kb/s or higher your good to go.

 

Have you found a good way of ripping CDs into AAC with correct tagging?

With MP3s Exact Audio Copy does that for you - and I went through a few hundred CDs (over 200 Classical, 4 sets of 50) - and re-ripped them all in 320KBit/s MP3.

-> My mother's music and mine is thrown together on the Home Server

Including some Amazon stuff (which sadly isn't 320KBit/s - which you can even hear at times...) it's a grand total of more than 74,92GB...
-> I'm not reripping that - but there is more to come in the future.

 

Yeah I have a pretty fluid way to do it, just use EAC as the ripper and setup nero AAC as an external encoder. It can easily look up tag info via your CD. I use MP3TAG to add the cover art.

I usually rip FLAC with EAC, then use a really simple GUI for NeroAAC called SNG to encode them all to AAC and use MP3TAG to copy the tags over and add cover art.

I do this to keep a flac on my computer and the AAC on my phone.

 

I use the cheap stuff and I don't mind......I play MMOs mainly and I have the sound turned off anyways. I hate repetitive slashing sounds.

 

Regardless of the marginal increase in bit rate, you need to keep in mind that ANY form of MP3 (lossy) is by design a space saving codec, and therefore, will always leave something out.

 

I can't say I agree with that statement. When I decided I had had enough of cheap headphones and bought my ATH-M50's, the difference was night and day even on my budget laptop's integrated sound. Then after getting a real nice desktop sound card, I really think that the best single upgrade anyone can make is to better heaphones. A good soundcard is completely wasted on a crappy headphones, but good headphones are not wasted on a crappy sound card, at least in my humble experience.

 

I agree with this. With my Bose QuietComfort 2s there is a huge different on anything I've listened from. It makes me wonder just how old or bad a soundcard would have to be to make this untrue.

 

Question is, can you hear the difference?

To be honest, I couldn't or rather didn't test it long enough.
At the same time I could differentiate low and high compression flac - talking with Dave at the time, it most likely was a decoder issue...
And I couldn't tell which was better.
(Double blind listening test in foobar)

On the other hand, I can imagine that if you a real amplifier etc. you'll get better results - but most people don't have the high and stuff - neither have I. (I do have a high end MP3 player though (that also play AAC) - Sony X1060).

And if you really wanted unbiased quality then use 32Bit Wave - oh, you can't buy that? I'm sorry.
There is a point where you have to balance quality against space - and that's nicely done with 320KBit/s MP3.

On that note though - it would be interesting to compare 320KBit/s MP3 with 320KBit/s AAC...

 

I did try to setup the Nero encoder with EAC once... didn't work, even though I found idiotproof instructions.

I suppose if I really wanted higher quality I have the CDs for it (sadly not for the Amazon stuff - maybe someday - when I can go to the appropriate countries to buy them (Belgium/Poland))

MP3 streams nicely over g wifi even to more than 1 computer - and I can stream it from wherever I am when I log in into my home server.

 

This - especially as there's degrees of crappy.

If we're talking crappy in terms of an inteference-addled card then clearly nothing can save it. But many are fairly decent overall in terms of what comes out of the audio jack (although ironically, typically and predictably never with Apples, which have always been interference-addled on their 'pro' (ha) gear) and there will be a far bigger difference in terms of what you'll hear from a decent headphone vs a crappy one as opposed to spending money improving the soundcard.

 

So my UE TripleFi10's are shipping from the Amazon deal. They kept saying not till after Christmas, but I'll have them on Monday.

Anyone else have theirs ship yet?

 

Nope, this is my 2nd pair of them.

I got a pair last year as well and it took forever to get them to ship.

 

I'm afraid his argument is incontrovertible. Regardless of the increase you experienced from your headphone update (it is indeed incremental), the fact remains that the TOTAL improvement is still limited to the least advanced components. With sound reproduction, that can be something as basic as the wiring.

 

So you are saying that it is incontrovertible that sound quality is an effect of the least common denominator? False. Switching between crappy headphone to good headphone has a large difference, regardless of sound card. Switching between onboard sound to sound card has a much smaller difference, regardless of headphones. Even you yourself hint at accepting this contradiction of your statement.

 

Just going back to the original topic: Yes, it does make a noticeable difference in sound quality. I have some £80 Shure SE210s which replaced my old £20 Creative headphones and the difference is incredble. The Creatives (apparently) weren't bad but you can hear so much extra detail from the Shures. In my opinion, it is definitely worth the money.

It should be noted that I'm listening to music off an ipod Touch, which isn't brilliant for sound quality, (though I have encoded in 320kbit/s MP3 ) and there's still a noticeable difference. So you don't need to spend £100s or £1000s on high-end sound cards and amps because, to be honest, when was the last time you sat alone in a room, tethered to a high-end high-fi system, and did nothing but listen to high-quality music for any period of time? I know I haven't: I'm always doing something else at the same time and that means that masses of expensive kit would be a waste.

On the argument of sound cards: I reckon most laptops come with a decent enough sound card for most purposes. Sure, sound quality is limited to the lowest common denominator but that is almost invariably the set of crappy £10 headphones someone is using rather than their sound card.

 

There is a noticeable sound difference between output devices(speakers and headphones/earphones) on an FM radio...

While not all tuners are made equal, I think that FM signals are pretty low on the "quality source" scale and so I think this example kind of says that yes, a higher grade output device will indeed yield better sound, even on lower quality sources, it's just taht the imperfections of the source might become more noticeable at higher volumes.

 

True, my headphones often provide me with a brilliant demonstration of how the dynamic range on so much modern music is "squashed" down to nothing. Not quite what I bought them for, but interesting from a technical standpoint at least....

 

Wouldn't how good your ears are make a big difference?Relative but neverthless significant?

 

Id say both your ears and your mind play a big role in determining the quality. Especially among the higher ranks of headphones where the differences may be so small and almost more placebo driven than physically heard.

 

Once you start comparing say Weston UMX3 and Sennheiser IE8 and Triple.Fi 10 - possibly.

But go from some Sony EX85 to Sennheiser IE8 and if you can't hear the difference either stop stealing music or have your ears checked

 

or both

I think once you get Grade A+ stuff the quality is more or less even between them, however different headphones retain there own distinct sound signature, and each person may have a different preference to that distinct sound signature based on what they like and the kind of music they listen too.

So "quality" really is a hard word to define once you get past a certain point and it becomes more of an opinion than factual.


If you tell me your $4.00 ibuds sound better than triple.fi 10's Id say your lying or a lune. But if you told me you like your $400 headphones more than a pair of $10,000.00 Orphus I could believe you and your wallet would be glad you decided that.

 

For the second time - this.

e.g. Listening to 160kb Oggs from built-in laptop audio on this



yields higher default quality than this



What is more, no matter what you do with the audio - whatever you put behind it, you will not get the latter phone to the level of the former phone being driven from the cheap (but interference-free) laptop audio.

Of course the source is important - but the front end matters most.

 

My UE TF 10's didn't come with comply foam tips

 

Plenty of answers already, but I'll throw my hat in the ring.

Yes, I own many many pairs. I've got every base covered, open and close design, over-ear, on-ear, in-ear, and ear-buds. Even some ear buds approaching $200 you'd look at and be unable to tell from a $20 pair... visually. But put them on, and wow; that sound from those tiny black things? ...yes, indeed. And I can say the same for perhaps a half-dozen other headphones out of all the ones I have.

In short, $$$ buys you depth, clarity, and articulation, and more/cleaner extents of the treble and bass. Of course you need to give them a good clean signal too, so don't overlook that. But that's really all of it in a nutshell. Now, I'm painting with a pretty wide brush. Some manufacturers will price their cans pretty high and only hit on 3 or 4 of my 5 points, and many buyers will be happy with that not caring about the places they're lacking. Other people demand every point get hit on. It's all up to an individuals tastes, what they care about, and the experience they want when listening to the music.

Best thing to do is go to a specialty shop that has hi-end headphones, portable and home. Make sure they are using an amp with high-impedance headphones. Try them out. If you don't hear the dramatic difference in depth, clarity, and articulation, between budget and expensive cans -- and some people won't -- save your money and don't buy anything over $20. But if you do hear the difference, you'll end-up answer your own question... join head-fi, and start spending your money.

 

so can anyone suggest a budget headphone which is on par with the expensive headphone?

 

Doesn't exist

What you are looking for is a budget headphone with the least compromises

 

An amp? For in ear monitors, or in ear headphones? Are you crazy?

Source File (FLAC ftw)--> DAC --> Headphones ---> ???? ---> Profit.

On top of the list given already:
Used Beyerdynamics 770
JVC HA-RX900's+Dynamat and acoustic stuffing mod
HD 555+Driver mod

For in earphones:
Klipsch Image S4
Yuin PK1, and a few other models check @head-fi.org
Ultimate Ears MetroFi 220
Monster Turbines (bass junky)

Actually why don't you check the massive 128 IEM review:
Multi-IEM Review - 128 IEMs compared (EarSonics SM3 added 12/20) - Head-Fi.org Community

 

I have those same IEMs and they came with Comply foam inserts. Try e-mailing UE and see if they'll send you a replacement set. It never hurts to try.

 

I called them and since they're not available as replacement parts, they said to just buy them, lol. So I'm just sticking with the large tips for now.

 

Ouch! That was a sloppy way for them to treat a customer as well as a wonderful opportunity wasted for UE (Logitech) to demonstrate that its customer service is top notch.

Where did you buy your UE TripleFi 10's at, and how long ago did you make the purchase?

 

No not crazy you just didnt understand what I meant.

I said AMP/DAC meaning a combo unit. For a laptop you MUST have a amp to use a DAC because you can not use a external dac with the soundcards built in amplifier.

I am not saying buy a dedicated amp for IEM's but to get the quality upgrade from a DAC vs Onboard you must have an AMP to use the DAC.

Make sense now?

See not so crazy am I?

 

Amazon for the black friday deal. Ordered Nov 27th, received uhhhhh..... on Monday

 

Nope not crazy at all now, I get you.