Earphones / Headphones: Where to try, what to buy?

You will feel better if you PayPal me a fiver.
After all, what's another £5 ?

Make it a tenner and you're on

Dibs for £20.

Just as an FYI if anyone planned to get the Aukey headphones mentioned previously for running, I personally wouldn’t recommend. The volume controls part constantly swings against your neck and after 90 mins is just really annoying.

Cheap, Decent sound and well made, so just the job for the gym though

Just picked up some Westone W40’s for a stupid cheap $208. Seriously good fit and case and a ridiculous number of earbuds. I don’t think I can go back to wireless earbuds. These things are awesome. Better than my Shure SE425s for Shure.

You can sell me those wireless buds then 😬

Does anyone use foam ear buds / tips?

If so is there a cheap default option folk usually go for?

Cheers

Got Sennheiser Momentum 2 headphones on that World Cup offer last year. Cable went screwy over the course of a few weeks - first crackling, then silence. :/

Sent the just the cable back on warranty last week and today I got a complete new set of cans back in the post. Nice.

Sennheiser are good like that.

Does anyone want some Shure SE425s for £80? Good condition. Cable is on it's way out, so I've got a brand new in packaging one of these - have the original carry case but none of the additional tips unfortunately. Only some Shure foam Olive tips.

FWIW, I get a lot of use out of my AKG N60NC bluetooth. They fill their own little niche by being the only foldable, on-ear, noice cancelling bluetooth headphone and it was exactly the combination I was after. No doubt the market leading Bose and Sony over-ears are better, but personally I get tons more use out of something I can stuff in my pocket.
These are yesteryear's technology, as far as I can tell there have been no updates or improvements since 2017. But at the same time they cost less than half of the Sony/Bose and I think their sound and NC capability makes them worth exactly that. The NC is effective, but crude. It basically only takes out consistent humming noise, but then again it does so very well. This makes them great on planes and trains or when working with machinery. In my experience the NC makes little difference when it comes to human voices. The benefit is that the plane captain's tannoy announcements comes trough clearly enough, but the downside is that it won't protect you from your inane co-workers of failing marriage. Sound quality is in a sense faultless as I reckon no part of the register is particularly suffering, and there is no noticeable muddle. But at the same time it seems that BT is just too much of a bottle neck for the sound to be considered in any way good. It's OK, nothing more.
Physical execution is pretty good. Feels solid and is easy to fit on your head.

Tl;dr
Costs half as much as the Sony and Bose over-ear models, which makes them decent value. A very worthwhile investment if you travel by plane more than a couple of times a year. If not, keep looking.

Yes! Am i too late?

Yes, sorry! They ended on eBay last night.

I bought some AliExpress AirPod copies a while back for my daughter and, surprise, surprise, they’ve died.

Has anyone got a link to a decent amazon version that’ll ship quicker?

could anyone recommend any minimally branded over ear headphones with a built in SD card slot so I can play music without a separate source?

Now I'm tube bound. QC35ii or Sony?

Sony (WH1000mk3) got my vote. More comfortable, better NC and better sounding than the Bose ones. Probs best to try out a few if you’re dropping that much though.

Any suggestions for noise cancelling in-ears? Preferably dual wired/wireless.

Or any other suggestions for very noise isolating in-ears (but not foam tips, I don't like flying with those). Mainly for use on trains and planes

Interested to know why no flying with foam tips. What about flanged tips? If you're serious about isolation, just grab a pair of IEM's from one of the big guys: Shure, Etymotic, Westone etc. I've never heard a pair of noise cancelling in ears that don't sound horrid, personally.

I've done it a few times and ended up with my ears not popping and it feeling uncomfortable.

I do have some decent Klipsch in-ears so I guess I could just spend some time trying out tips for those instead.

They'd probably get more use for TV/movies than music so amazing sound quality isn't that big a requirement. More to be able to listen with clarity at a relatively low volume. I see these are being heavily trailed but a bit of a gamble given they haven't yet been released. https://www.nuraphone.com/products/nuraloop

I mean they sound amazing - wonder how they sound 😏

Got given a pair of optomo nuforce be sport 3’s for running/cycling duty.
Right headphone now sounds distinctly lower than the left. I’m attributing it to wax ear build up. But there’s no way to remove it, so not sure whether to return or bin.
Anyway have fixated on the RHA true connect, which you can get some comply foam tips with a wax guard for. But I prefer double/triple flange plastic tips. Anyone had any experience with the rha’s in this respect.

There are oils available to loosen ear wax build up

In the headphones or my ears?
I’d prefer to stop it getting into the headphones in the first place rather than clean it out after..

Oh my good god. I made the mistake of listening to some Campfire Audio Andromeda's...

Holy shit. Life altering good. I mean, ridiculous. I'm no stranger to decent IEMs but I have never heard anything like it. I cannot stomach $1099 on a pair of IEMs right now, but I'd do it in a flash if I could. They are absolutely endgame earphones. I don't like wearing headphones, so they're not an option, but these.... I'd be buried with them.

hehe all that magic sparkle
if you patient they do sales sometimes, like Black Friday or Saint Patrick's Day
(B stock units with very minor cosmetic imperfections)

https://aloaudio.deals/shop/andromeda-iem-by-campfire-audio/