Author: Brian Lee Page: 3

It's pretty strange that Sony decided to make the cord on the earbuds so short.  With the earbuds in your ear,  the cord only extends down to about your waist.  However it's not long enough to plug into a Walkman or MP3 player on your belt.  It's also barely long enough to plug into the front headphone jack on a computer sitting on your desk.  The only thing that I can think of that could be close enough to your ears would be a arm-mounted portable device.  For almost all other uses, you'll need to use the supplied extension cord.

When I first got the earbuds, the thing that surprised me the most was that these headphones are 'closed' in the sense that when you have them in your ear, you can't hear anything else.  The fit of the earbuds are designed to completely seal off the external environment.  This leads to what I call the "fingers in the ears" phenomenon.  With your ears completely sealed off from the external environment, you hear this strange rumbling noise that sounds like a subway platform.  You can also hear every breath you take and every time you swallow, the sound is greatly magnified.  These headphones are designed to block all external sound so that the music produced by the earbud is cleaner and unadulterated with outside noise.  In this respect, they have succeeded.  You can hear every detail of the recordings you listen to, every high, every low.  Incidentally, you can also hear the static on your sound card that you might not have noticed before.

How do the earbuds sound?  This is one of those things that is really difficult to quantify.  What I can say is that they sound good with many types of music.  As advertised, these earbuds do have a lot of bass, although not too much that it muddies the sound.  While listening to pop, the mids were nice and punchy.  String instruments in classical music is also very nicely articulated.  However, because of the sealed earbuds, if the recording has any flaws in it, you'll pick them up. 

Overall, these headphones sound great.  They are the best earbuds I've ever used and sound better than any headphones that came with your portable music device.  They don't sound as good a full-sized over-the-ear headphones, but this is to be expected.  For the price, they are totally worth it.  The only thing to consider is whether the sealed aspect of the headphones fits your use.  I do not recommend that you use them in an environment where it is dangerous or inappropriate to be completely oblivious to the outside world such as jogging in the street or working in the office.  However, if being sealed off is a good thing, like when reading at Starbucks or studying in the library, then these headphones are for you.
 

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