I need new headphones. Help.

TheMaster666

Potential
Joined
Aug 17, 2021
Messages
320
This is completely off-topic, but I'm in the Bronze, so hopefully I'm not going to get in too much trouble.

I've been trying to get a replacement pair of headphones for the old Apple iPhone ones I've been using for several years. Maybe somebody here could help me out, point me in the right direction. All I want is something simple--3.5 mm wired, in-ear earphones, with NO bass boost or EQ adjustments, and NO noise isolation/cancellation. Something that won't die out in 2 months and sounds decently good enough for both music and movies/tv. I don't need anything terribly expensive either, maybe $20-60 price range.

A few months ago I tried getting the new Apple earbuds, but they must have changed something. Even though they look identical, the quality was far, far poorer than the ones I currently have, so I returned that.

Then today I got a different brand of headphones off of Amazon for about $50. The sound quality is fairly good, at least as good as if not even better than my current ones. The problem? The EQ is just bad. Just like the newer Apple earbuds, the bass is too loud (although not quite as comically extreme as it was in the Apple ones), while drums, vocals, keyboards, etc. sound very quiet and muted by comparison. I can use my software EQ to somewhat ameliorate the issue for playing music, but I'd rather have something that just sounds good on the hardware level. Movies and tv just aren't going to sound good on this because the dialogue is very quiet.

The other issue is the noise-cancellation. I get it has its uses--on an airplane or in a crowded area it might be useful--but for me I generally don't want that. I want to be able to hear outside noises all the same as if I didn't have headphones. With these new ones, I can't sing along to what I'm listening to because my own voice sounds horribly muffled. I can't hear what anyone else says very clearly either, so I have to remove these things to listen. Which isn't really an issue, except these ones are kind of weird in how you put them on. They don't just go directly in the ear, you have to wrap them around first.


Anyway, I just want to find a relatively simple pair of traditional, in-ear headphones, but it seems no matter what I type into Amazon or DuckDuckGo, the search results only give me the direct opposite of what I searched for. It seems that pretty much all the headphones on the market today have this ridiculously annoying bass boost which crowds out the other instruments/frequencies and makes the headphones rather useless for listening to tv or movies. And it also seems that nearly all of them have this noise cancellation. My problem, is if I search up "no noise-cancellation," then guess what the search engine's going to do. It's going to be very clever, and pick up the keyword "noise-cancellation" while ignoring the "no" in front of it, think that's what I want, and then deliver it to me, defeating the entire purpose of the search term.


Could anyone point me in the right direction if you know a good pair of headphones that fits the criteria I'm looking for? It's a shot in the dark here maybe word of mouth may succeed where search engines have failed me.
 
Try these: Sony - WI-C310 Wireless In-Ear Headphones.

All of my audio equipment is made by Sony, and they always perform well.

Good luck.
 
Firstly you are not off-topic as The Bronze is for threads which are non Buffy speak, had you been in Black Thorn we might have tried to protect you from too much trouble, but you are not so er. . . . .

As for a good set of headphones, I feel it is important to will you to eat processed runner beans. Clean the cans and by utilizing a quality drill make a hole in each can (3). By having a good quality string you can have one can at one end then by splitting the string have the split ends go to two cans, one for each ear. This method one tin can hearing does have an effective volume control - ie you can increase the volume by moving the single can closer to the speakers.

Alternatively if you lie on the floor with your head between the speakers you can reduce the volume of external sounds I SAID THAT'LL MAKE THE EXTERNAL SOUNDS QUIETER !
 
@TheMaster666 I lost a pair of cheap brilliant earphones years ago and I'm still irritated about it! Search term you're looking for is classic earbuds.

No personal experience with these but VE Monk Plus might be what you're looking for. Cheap enough to be worth a shot.
 
@TheMaster666 I lost a pair of cheap brilliant earphones years ago and I'm still irritated about it! Search term you're looking for is classic earbuds.

No personal experience with these but VE Monk Plus might be what you're looking for. Cheap enough to be worth a shot.
Thanks a ton! I was pulling my proverbial hair out trying all sorts of combinations of search terms e.g. +wired -bass -isolation +balanced, etc. all in vain. Modern-day SEO ensures that all my search results are always total crap.

As it turns out all I needed was to append "classic." Granted there's still not a lot out there anymore...I did find a pair of Sennheiser MX500 on eBay. These things were apparently big in 2001 or something. Fingers crossed they don't suck!

Thanks again for the advice...would've never guessed this would be considered "classic."

Edit: I checked out your recommendation...it seems this is a new brand imitating the kind of MX500 I found on eBay. I'll have to save that product for later. Thanks again!
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom