What you are reviewing here are called IEM for In Ear Monitors. There are many models in different price ranges with differing audio qualities. It is a very fun and “Sorry for your Wallet” hobby or vocation.

The IEM was sort of invented for musicians to protect their hearing. Systems are used to playback the live music to the performer at a sane audio level and the IEM seal is used to protect the user from hearing loss.

There are a lot of folks who use these in noisy environments to protect their hearing. You can keep the volume down and the noise out.

There is no right or wrong here, but what sounds good to you.

Sometime try taking one of your favorite CD’s and RIP it with something like FLAC or Apple Lossless. Then play it back on a good DAP into various headphones, you will be amazed. Be careful of your audio chain during playback. Computers are sometimes pretty bad. Check out foobar2000 and a quality sound card. Then use line out through a good headphone amplifier (headamp for short).

There is a whole new world of music to your ears awaiting. Soon you will have as many headphones as PDA’s

Bob

PS there are some very good headphones at much lower prices as well as some fantastic “cans” for $$$$$$.

ALAC -> itunes (on a mac) -> total bithead 06 -> e5c

I use my headphones while commuting each day on the train and while the UE’s are better for music and easier to remove from my ears, the Ety’s (particularly the ER6i) are far better at noise isolation.

I believe the noise isolation is very important for two reasons: you can relax more in a crowded, rushed train environment; and, you can lower the volume on the headphones while hearing everything – thereby protecting your hearing. Since I mainly listen to podcasts, this means that the ER6i’s are superior in this respect and just under $100 or so.
But just to restate – music sounds great with the UE’s.

In short, I bought a pair of Shure E-4c’s; these are similar to the UE 5’s in that they are in-ear canal phones and are pricey; the retail of the 4’s is somewhere around $300 but the real-world price — if you look — is somewhere about $175. For people that are satisfied with the tinny, half-baked sound that comes forth from the packed-in phones Apple includes with the iPod, there’s no reason to really consider anything better. However, I was never satisfied with their phones because they didn’t fit comfortably (if at all), they would come loose when I was skating or doing other physical activity, and they sounded awful.

So I did some investigating and found the Shure’s. $150 and up for a pair of earphones — ones that, in theory, duplicate the function of something that comes with the iPod — might seem silly. But for me, the difference between the included phones and the Shures is like listening to AM radio on a one-speaker clock radio your Aunt Edna left you when she died and listening to a DVD concert on a surround-sound system. The difference is really that noticeable.

The truth is that many people don’t bother — or care — about bitrate, mp3 quality (variable/fixed, joint/true stereo, etc.), and for them music is just their background soundtrack. For me, even when I’m running around doing work errands in NYC, my iPod takes me to another world. The Shures not only filter out 98% of background sound/noise (a pro and a con), they manage to reproduce my music clearly, cleanly and without any coloration.

As you guessed, this is more a testament to spending $100 — or even $50 — on a good pair of isolating in-canal earphones than it is to the Super-Fi’s or the Shures or to any other brand of earphone in general. The Shure E-4c’s are supposed to be very similar to the UE 5’s in performance and price; what dissuaded me from getting the Super-Fi’s was the removable cable. I figured that one day I’d be skating or working out and one of those cables would pop loose, or, worse, one day I’d grab them from my pocket and find one of the earphones disconnected (and disappeared). I’m happy with the Shures but spending $50 or $100 or $150 or even $200 isn’t that silly when you consider you (or someone on your behalf) spent $400 for you to enjoy the music player. Why not spend a bit more and enhance the experience? That is what originally led me to buy a pair of in-ear phones to begin with, and I’m extremely satisfied.

Now if someone could do something to make all my 256/320 mp3’s a little more manageable so I could squeeze more into a 60GB iPod video, that would be nice

Good review, Ryan. Even if people, as a result of your review, don’t go rushing out to nab a pair of UE 5’s, hopefully you’ve at the very least opened their ears to the possibilites

I find the reviews of earphones I cannot possibly buy to be rather hilarious- there seems to be even more nitpicking on the upper end than there is in the ‘under $50′ range I can afford!

http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/ultimate_ears_super_fi_5_pro_earphones

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