Etymotics: the real deal in headphones

[Undertoad]

I've just paid $129 for headphones. How, you ask, can one who thinks he is kinda poor, buy $129 headphones: the Etymotics ER-6.

Well because they're such a great deal compared to the $330 model.

Because they're the holy grail, and I know I won't have to buy any more headphones now: these replace six pairs that just weren't good enough.

Because they're 1000% better than all the phones that come with all the portable players -- listen up iPod userz!

Most headphones sit over your ear or on your ear or nuzzle in your ear, but there is a new class of headphones that go directly in your ear canal and fit snugly, isolating you from the outside world while producing a very accurate sound.

This new class is better, it turns out, than any of the older versions. But they're not easy to sell to the public, because they're kinda weird. You have to push these things into your ear canal and make sure you get a good seal, or the sound isn't right. And people don't expect to buy things they have to insert in their ears this way.

They take a little getting used to. On first listen, I swore up and down I was getting shortchanged on bass. Turns out you're more used to feeling bass than just hearing it. After an hour I realized I was hearing MORE bass than before. You get acclimatized to speakers in general, but in this case it's getting used to accuracy. These things are great!

Also, you can't use these anywhere you actually need to hear things in the real world. You are effectively cut off from everything. For commuters, or workers who want hearing privacy, these things are a revolution.

I got them at headphone.com, where they do a better job of explaining some of this stuff better than I can.