Headphones for the NW-A3000

[harfatak]

I'm looking for good headphones for my nw-a 3000. So i have decided to ask you for advice

What headphones can you recommend?

thanks

[ssasha]

I use koss the plug, for me they sound nice + comfort

[Ishiyoshi]

The MDR-D66SL would be a good candidate as well.

topic moved to 'phones section of the forum

[or099]

i've just bought a pair of SHURE e2c headphones. they are incredible!!!

price to quality ratio is amazing (priced at £50 from headphoneworld) but originally a £70 earphone you can imagine how good they sound!

Build quality is very very sturdy, (unlike sony equivalents which are floppy and breakable in comparison).

Bass, mid, treb is well balanced, although you might need to EQ the sound using your player to bring the treble up a tad, which is what i found.

They stay in your ears, (i use mine for hilly running) and they have never fallen out. sound isolation is good, all outside noise is blocked, allowing lower listening volumes.. however if you like to talk to people whilst listening to your music (which is kinda antisocial lol) then they wont be good for that.

Cable thickness is 3 times the thickness of normal headphone cable making it harder to snap cables when snagged. again , the cable is well secured to the phone drivers, the cable runs over the top of your ears, which is SHURE's solution to sound vibrations through the cables.

i cant say a bad thing about these phones, except possibly the styling of them.. they aren't the sexiest looking things, but they aren't ugly either, so its a fair bet there lol.

the SHURE e2c is very popular, (being priced at £50 and being popular suggests they are worth the buy).

all i can say is they are the best canal phones i've ever heard. if you listen to music frequently or like to workout while listening to music, buy these earphones! after all, if you spend £170 on the player itself, its gota be worth shelling out a bit on phones to reproduce the sound accurately...

hope that helps

oli

[DSP]

It depends of your budget.

I owned several headphones. I had the sony mdr-ex71. they are very good, but a bit overdone on the bass.

for the same price I've bought sennheiser CX300. They're just amazing. They sound so well balanced an detailled.

I heard things I've never heard on my MDR-EX71's.. and for the same price! (€45 here in the netherlands).

if you want to go beyond that I could recommend you the shure E3c. They sound very good. the sound is just at another level! The sennheiser CX300's are very close to shure E2© in terms of soundquality as far as I know.

you could see If you could get some sony MDR-E888's..

But they're very hard to find. They are known for their very natural sound. I've had no experience with them.

If you wan't to go cheaper I'd recommend the sony MDR-E51 or MDR-NX1.. they have very good soundquality for their price. I have them myself, and even though I have cx300's now, I still love them!

I hope my story is a little helpfull. And sorry for the bad english.

greetz

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Well, i sure aint no fan of EX71's - but that's well known :oP

Definately, (apart from a long list of other things), i indeed found the EX71's unbalanced.. mostly over bassy (guess that's fine for the D&B lovers out), and overall suffering the more common of the 'bud' syndrome (low and highs out of balance with the mids.. which is kinda wearing to someone used to hearing all three ranges in some kinda neutral balance) - however, they do improve on the usual grade of OEM 'buds' often packaged with many DAP's (if the usual OEM stuff aint as lifeless as a brick, they usually suffer the highs overbalance).

Guess it's a matter of taste - but give me something with lows , mids and highs in balance (in relative proportion, basically monitor type neutal) and then you have something that really carries the music 'as it was supposed to be heard' - after all, you can always EQ to compensate if your tastes go that way.

If you can stretch to, or basically justify Shure's then it's a sound move to go that direction, but as also mentioned, Senheisser also produce some nicely worthy items too that are not 'monitor neutral', but far more in balance than the EXxx series by a good few miles ...

I guess the important thing is, if you have found what works for you, fair play .. enjoy )

All i know for sure, personal pref wise, is it kills the music i listen to when you play the tracks through your average bud type phones - i go with the stuff that feels (audio wise) closer to the three/four driver speaker repro .. but that's really heading well into decent proper phones territory ;o)

Be Cool Always

'Tom Kat'

[Guest Stuge]

Hey ,how much are you ready to spend ?

[Ascariss]

I've been using EX-71s, can't complain.

[imagine_]

If you have a small budget or just don't want to spend $50 on new earphones, I would recommend Panasonic RP-HV288. My included earbuds stopped working in one ear, so I bought these for $15 CAD. Very cheap and sound great, better specs than other earphones at that price range.

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

I guess it's a factor of what you were used to beforehand, Ascariss.

Personally, i had used far better and more neutral (but very responsive) earpieces on radio kit that were easily walkman hifi grade (a case of mixing and matching parts to make good crappy OEM items).

The only thing i consider good, tentatively as calling anything 'good' in EX71 terms is hard for me to do, about the 71's is the audio isolation of the things - if someone matched a decent driver with the 71's sealing and isolation quality, then that would indeed be a good design.

But as i said somewhere else, maybe it's a issue that afflicts canal phones.. that maybe it's damn hard to make em neutal and smooth sounding on a mass production basis.

'Tom Kat'

[hk_loves_u]

The Mdr-ex 71 earphones are really nice and very durable. The product for its price is also very nice=]

[jporcas]

i've got sennheiser CX300 and think they much better than the ex71 and for what (if you look around) if the same price (i got for them for 19 quid). look good aswell.

[The Mule]

EX-71's all the way!