Friday 30 July 2010

My Sennheiser CX 300-II in-ear headphones, I’ve just bought, have just arrived. My first impressions are that they are uncomfortable. I am definitely biased in saying that in-ear headphones are irritating as hell. The problem isn’t the three different sized earcups they give you—it’s the fact that they go right into your ear and you can often hear earwax squishing around, which is horrible. I am a very clean person—against advice, I clean my ears with earbuds everyday. The fact that these headphones remind me of earwax freaks me out. I guess they are more comfortable that over-ear headphones.

Right, now for the audio quality. I’ve been told to let them ‘run in’ i.e. by turning the volume up to full and letting them run overnight—with some heavy ass bass from Lil Wayne’s ‘Tha Carter III’. On first listen the bass in nice—focused but not over-powering (I hate that). Problem is, I have had several ear grommets in my lifetime so my right ear is all but at 50% volume so the bass is wasted on that ear. That being said, the headphones do a remarkable job of creating an immersive atmosphere—bass is omni-directional but I was surprised how these headphones created that effect (whether that’s to do with the headphones or the human brain—I don’t know). The treble and mids are effective enough—one thing I can say is that these blow the iPod headphones out of the water!

I’m letting them run in for a while and I’ll report back with the results.

RESULTS: I realised the reason why i was having comfort-ability issues was because I had odd sized earcups on! Oops! ;p Well, as far as they stand now—I would still say they need some getting used to but, like anything new, I’m sure this will happen with time. The bass is incredible! I think they, even, sound better than my on-ear Pioneer headphones (which were roughly the same price). The trebles are loud enough and never too sharp—almost—but perfectly leveled. The bass is independent from the treble and middle but deep, loud and driving. Another thing I love about these headphones is the noise cancellation. If I open a cupboard, say, and close it again I can hardly hear it! I mean, I can hear it—but it’s muffled and I can see how easily this will transcend to a noisy bus or high-street (my two biggest problems). One minor annoyance is the noise that comes from speaker wire interference. When the wire rubs against my clothes it causes an in-ear ruffle that kinda sucks—but I’m getting used to it. I am thoroughly excited by these headphones and can’t wait to try them out in the real world. Also, the ‘running in’ seemed to help calm the trebles and mellow the bass—which is nice.

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