brianbrant

I didn't answer the question and don't mean to be evasive: my philosophy is quite elastic. SONY today, Korea- or China-tronics tomorrow. Considering the quality that goes into Samsung, a company I feel only recently 'found religion,' but builds superb TVs, and LG Electronics, formerly Lucky Goldstar, a company from which I would not buy a toothpick but today is the largest manufacturer of lcd displays on the planet and supplies panels for the biggies... ... sometimes it doesn't hurt to be flexible, if not downright fickle the way things change so rapidly in technology.

When I got the first 90s, the sound was so amazing you bet I went after as many as I could find from the same seller. I had done some research and found out the legitimate model is/was made in three locations: Japan, Korea and China. The newsgroup sites tended to sway equally toward the Japanese and Korean versions, giving the Chinese-made models somewhat poorer assessments, but not terrible. Where do these people come up with collective assesments and draw these specific conclusions I have no idea, but they post with conviction. As the cartoon caption from The New Yorker magazine famously reads: "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." The ebay seller had a lot of different SONY branded earphones on his site at ultra-cheap prices. But the earphones were of non-existent models. The EX-90s were the only earphones he sold that SONY produced, whether they were legitimate or not. Until the 90, no other earphone sported a driver larger than 10.5mm. Most were from 8.5 to 10mm. At 13.5mm, these phones were the first I had heard with the theoretical ability to move air at considerably lower frequencies. The vmoda is certainly a wonderful brand and the most highly rated I've encountered. For my ears, they don't have the depth of the 90 and run a 10mm (maybe I'm off by .5mm; I'll check the specs) driver. I have dozens of brands of smallish earphones. In fact, a 'bud' style set came with one of my earlier flash players and sounded astonishing. A fluke. Worth about 10 cents and looked it. But the sound was incredible. Back to the story... The 90s were packaged in a black, classy, shiny sealed box with all the appropriate markings and the N-U-D-E monitor signage, illustrations, disclaimers and so on, plus "made in korea" in teeny-tiny printing on the bottom. The phones themselves had the proper raised lettering of the model on one side and 'korea' on the other at the juncture of the cables. Convinced this was a brilliant piece of forgery to the smallest detail, I wanted confirmation I could enjoy the same level of lie for the same minuscule investment. The most vulnerable part of most little music gizmos, apart from the momentary switches (mouse clickers are momentary and can last hundreds of thousands of cycles), is the 3.5mm input jack. But only if you have more than one player and pass the same phones from one to the other. Just like with people, stress is bad. I own lots of players and wanted a set of phones for each. I was searching for something that sounded at least as good as the vmoda, only cheaper. These fakes fit the bill. I ain't proud. When I posed the question about the profit motive behind manufacturing such perfect counterfeits yet selling them for practically nothing, I hadn't really cared whether mine were real or not. Anything that can equal and in some ways surpass a vmoda, my benchmark, was ok in my book. Every set of 90s I bought went through a fairly aggressive 72 hour break-in period, recommended for any earphone or speaker system. I treated these things as though they were the genuine article. The burn-in didn't really have much impact on the sound as it did with the vmoda. If you don't burn the v's in, they sound like soup cans and twine. Since I posted the other day, I started to care about the genesis of my 90s because I had a pile of 'em. Should I buy a $99 set from J&R Music World, or from Sony? A visual inspection would only tell me so much, and my doubts about my fakes were based on the look of the silver cups of the earpieces. They didn't have that aluminum-y look. Silvery, but not spun aluminum. I like to save a buck, but I'm the type who likes to open things for a look-see. Sacrificing one pair of my ebay bought units would tell me what I needed to know: Is the housing plastic or metal? Only metal, in this case aluminum, could be razor thin and molded into a cup; plastic that thin would collapse. If the cup is plastic, it had to be thick and couldn't house a 13.5mm driver. Plus, the blow-up of the innerds of the unit is on SONY's site and in many other places. I could dismantle the sacrificed unit and see how it was put together. Why waste a hundred bucks to answer a question a $7 fake (or perhaps not...) could tell me. You don't have to be an engineer to open a little piece of equipment and dissect it. Like when I was a kid... I could take apart a watch, but I couldn't put it together again. Fortunately I am an engineer and have ruined a lot of equipment in my time so I don't much care if I wreck stuff. The coolest part: The housing is meal - aluminum! Just like the 'real' thing. The driver measures 13.3mm/13.45mm depending on whether you set the calipers to inner or outer edge. Further dissection confirmed the precision of the construction of the phones. Does this prove absolutely these aren't fakes? No. But from my perspective any company or gaggle of fools who went to this much trouble to build a fake 90 and sell it for almost nothing on ebay could not be part of the culture savvy enough to be on the verge of dominating the world's economy within the next twenty years. The aluminum housing simply doesn't look spun from the outside; from the inside it has the whispery strata to confirm the material. I'm guessing different plants use different processes to make the units, and very subtle diffences become apparent to someone either so twisted or so curious he would go to this much trouble to find out what's what. That twisted, curious entity is ... well, I guess that entity would be me. I got lucky. Once in my life I got really, really lucky. (Or, perhaps not.)

Not to overdo the iloveipod tips, but they sell three sets of one size for about $9. I don't know about shipping constraints. If you can get 'em, I promise you they are vastly superior to anything out there. And a choice of 13 colors!

I didn't think I should be on the site because I don't have anything using the atrac codec, but I'm relaxing a bit because the spectrum of topics is so much broader. I'm also astonished at the high level of critical thinking and well-written posts. This place is a treasure and I'm humbled and grateful not to have been tossed off yet. I hope I'm allowed to remain here; I'll avoid my usual cynical manner and writing style (sometimes it comes with advanced age) because of the obvious competence and knowledge of this site's members. I mean this sincerely. SONY is a culture both within the organization, of course, but also threaded throughout the various realms of end users. I realize this is obvious, but there was an exchange about ipod/apple and the public's embrace of the player and now the iphone and how they quickly became icons - everything 'was like' an i-product. From my vantage point SONY is truly the engineering innovator with the end-user always in mind first, not to mention the genius of its aesthetics (although they have shot themselves in the foot more than once with klunky looking duds). I have a PC, but yes, the MAC OS is the superior platform. SJobs is the single visionionary at Apple and every division of the organization is in lock-step with his master plan for almost every product since his return to the company. SONY is a entire culture fully in tune with, yet able to contribute to and refine, an evolving ideal based on excellence. My read of the how the company 'thinks' is admittedly subjective, but it has been the subject of case studies in business schools for years. The issue however is SONY, and what sets this worldwide organizaion apart within general consumer circles and, I think as important, has been the choice of professionals. The intermingling of general consumer *and* professional end-user acceptance of SONY is beautifully illustrated by my favorite example: SONY invented BETA. Although VHS (a JVC patent) became the consumer-accepted standard with most people dismissing BETA as history, in professional circles - industrial and broadcast - BETA became the only format. BETA has been in use for more than twenty-five years and remains functional and fully supported today. As a television broadcaster, I can attest to the quality of the $175,000 SONY studio cameras (that's without a lens or mount, mind you). You see them everywhere for a reason. Yes, Ikegami and a few others make excellent studio cameras, but SONY is the standard. Personally, I seek out SONY for every possible purchase first. Only after I've found a product (rarely) that has a few features or levels of use that fit my particular need-of-the-moment do I buy another brand. Case in point: I have four Panasonic DVD-RAM recorders primarily because of the ease of use and menu set-up. But I checked out SONY first. My SONY XBR LCD 60-inch monitor is over-engineered in ways that are not just apparent in the picture, but in the philosophy of the internal design. Originally I bought the same size SONY as a Wega model from Circuit City. I enjoyed it, it looked terrific and there was nothing I thought worthy of improvement. I can't remember why I ended up on the phone with a SONY engineer in Florida the first week I had the machine, but we chatted about our love of SONY and my new monitor. He told me about the XBR version, a series SONY has long manufactured as its 'flagship' of any given television product. He advised me to ditch the Wega and snag an XBR if Circuit City would go along with the deal. Circuit City not only agreed (there were only two still available in the country because very few were built), but only charged me for the difference in price, not a small amount: $3,000 more. They didn't charge for the extra moving and restocking. The Wega weighed 97 lbs and was easily handled by the two-man crew; the XBR weighs 150 lbs and I had to remove the back hall stairway bannisters so these big men could heft and maneuver this heavy machine into my media room. SONY is a company whose idiology and end products are, with rare exception, the best of the best. I can't cast an opinion of various audio codecs or their players. I will probably always remain ignorant because I so love my Best Buy Insignia players and my Creative Zen Xtras. But who knows - I love stuff. PS: If I tend to overwrite or pontificate, just ignore my posts when you see my name. But in my defense, I'm good to small animals, believe in karma and never, ever fly through stop signs.

Finally I can be of some value on this site rather than posting unanswerable q's. Almost all the Sony phones of the mdr series use the same type of tip, but I don't know about the new ex700 which I'm salivating to get my creepy mits on. I've spent a ton of money on ebay searching out and buying tips that 1)hold their shape; 2)have enough mass for a decent seal which is essential for bass; 3)don't pull inside-out when you remove them; 4)don't pull off the phones themselves if you have them pushed into your ear properly for that snug fit; 5)most importantly, fit with micron precision to the Sony dimensions. Not one source from ebay could satisfy these criteria. The plot thickens... I was so enthusiastic when I discovered the replacements from 'iloveipod.com' that I wrote a gushing review, which the company posted on their site to advertise these tips. To suggest they are the best I've encountered - far, far better than the original flimsy Sony tips packaged with their phones - would not do them justice. These tips are vastly superior in every possible way. When you get to the site read my review. If you're particular about color, you have a choice of 13. I like the 'clear ice' and they look snazzy and alien with my ex90s. (Oh, I discovered my 'fakes' are real; the plastic is indeed aluminum. I just got lucky... no wonder they sound so damn good!) Back to the tips: they don't cost much more than the garbage you'll find trolling the gutters on many ebay sites. But, startlingly, iloveipod has an ebay site, and I don't remember how I discovered this company. You can save if you buy three sets at a time. Not much savings, but more than zero. I've used the same pair of tips for about six months and they're like new and never pull off the earphones or turn inside-out, both signs of poor quality material and fatigue. I bought many, many sets for backup. I doubt if I'll ever need them. But since I'm a Sony fan, they will eventually be put to use.

I know: ignorance is bliss. I've rejected Bose triports, other Sony models, and even find my Sennheiser over-the-ear cans, which I use for auditioning CDs, to lack the quality of these fakes. A friend who still does sound reinforcement for local bands and continues to enjoy decent hearing despite exposure to high-decibel bombardment during his never-ending drunken stupors over the years, popped his Sony medium tips onto these counterfeits and was in disbelief. But what vexes me most isn't that these things exist; as I said, ignorance is bliss and my friend and I may be in the sympatico of two dancing fools from another era. Perhaps the question is rhetorical: how can money be made when no market can be large enough to warrant the tooling necessary to duplicate these things with such precision? Whatever sound the things actually produce (purely a subjective ralm; not to mention compression issues and so on when doing any real-life listening), it has me stumped. I guess I just wanted to throw it into the mix and wait for a thought or two. I ain't got a clue... not one.

This is my first post to this site. I wasn't sure where I wanted to ponder, but this seems the perfect fit. I'm 61, and formerly a recording studio designer and engineer. My era still boasted SSL. Neve, AKG, Telefunken and Neumann-quality, so I'm not that antique. And I have a degree in broadcast engineering. Here's my question, and it dovetails to this thread (I hope; if not, don't flame me - I'm new...) The ebay phenomenon is absolutely a double-edged sword. I stumbled upon el-cheapo knockoffs of Sony's highly-regarded EX90 earphones. With shipping, a pair cost about $7.00. It was a test; what could I lose, eh? When the package arrived from Hong Kong in a surprising 10 days, I scrambled to hook them to my Insignia 4-gig player (I own 12; I love 'em). I was stunned at the sound of these Sony fakes. The quality of construction, aside from the fact that the material of the units themselves was clearly not aluminum, was sturdy. (The tips I used came from an Ipod aftermarket operation. I always use large for a better seal.) Here's my question, and I hope this coincides with the challenge posed here to consider buying through ebay and seeking a lower price on Sony phones. Where is the profit motive to make counterfeit phones? The precision of the set I bought is outstanding (I'm used to professional recording quality) irrespective of the material of the housing. Cables are sturdy; plugs gold (or gold-like) plated. If these Chinese manufacturers looked to make a dent by selling, say, at 50% of the market rate, that would make financial sense. But to get really outstanding (albeit fake) EX90s for a few bucks? That flies in the face of all logic. To continue re: the 90s. The retail box was even beautifully presented: shiny, black with the Japanese distributed version of the 90s: N-U-D-E... made in Korea. The 3.5 mm plug had the Sony logo and 'Korea' stamped on it. Now I'm wondering if a fake set of EX700s may pop up for... gee... I can fantasize $25 based on my own experience. Would it be worth the risk? My disclaimer: This is a philosophical question that I couldn't wedge anywhere, so I stuck it here. Also, my hearing isn't impaired even at my age and I transcode MP3s at a high bit rate. (I used to have my own engineers take hearing tests regularly and banished the older guys if their threshold cut off at high frequencies...); I still have 'dog hearing.' I'm finished. Wordy, rambling, but - bless me, I'm done. Thanks in advance for not flaming me.