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

Is there anywhere decent to try headphones in London?

In a word, no.

Is there anywhere to try headphones? Trying to pick between shure srh940 and akg k550 but wanna try them first obv

^^^^ look absolutly minging!

anyone got any opinions on these Parrot Zik, designed by Starck. Saw some on a customer and liked the look of them, have no idea about the sound quality, but i like the idea of no cables, which is what usually fucks up on headphones..

http://www.parrot.com/zik/usa/static/images/assets/parrot_zik_1.jpg

http://www.parrot.com/zik/usa/

As you put it, no cables = no good sounds!

JB, why would that be?

Not strictly true, I'm just being biased towards cables
You'll pay far more for a lesser pair of wireless headphones, than you would for wires.

That and he other limitations. Eg BT battery usage on your device and such like.

I just don't really find wires to be that much of an issue to be honest.

@JB, every pair of headphones i've had, the cables have gone first, admittedly, they haven't been super expensive, under a hundred quid, but it does give pause, when you start looking up the headphone food chain..

I'm still deciding what in ear buds to go for, will probably get another pair of shures, as their two year guarantee means you can just return and get a new pair, up until that date, which with previous pairs I had to do a couple of times..

Yes, get shures or anything that has a removable cable. If we are talking about earphones, have you considered Senn IE8s or whatever the new model is?

Wireless generally means compromises.

To give a longer battery life the sound is usually compressed on the fly and a lossy stream is what the headphones process.

Basically if you can compress away information that you conjecture the layman cannot hear, then you can reduce the work of the headphones (in trying to render those noises) and extend the battery life. Usually this means cutting the top and bottom end, but as every human has a subtly different hearing range (+/- 5% of everyone else) what happens is that each person has a different part of their audio range comprised (usually in the treble end of the range).

It's not really the fault of the headphone drivers, it's the choices made in the wireless implementation, the software and trading off sound quality to battery life. It's also the case that the kind of mini-amps in these headphones are frequently lower quality than the amp in the music source (though if you're using your mobile phone the source will likely be poor too).

So what you end up with are perfectly good cans, in a wireless format, compromised by the things that try and give you a good battery life.

Hence... as a general rule of thumb you can say that wireless headphones are shittier than their wired equivalent.

Though there are some exceptions. It is possible to build great wireless headsets, and they do exist... they just tend to be extremely pricey.

I'm actually quite fascinated by those Bose noise cancelling things. But only because of how incredible the noise silencing actually is. I think they look terrible, and I haven't had a chance to actually test them with music I know. Not that it matters, I can't afford them.

Having a look at the new Shure's, I see they've tweaked the design by moving the cable connector right to the ear piece itself, so then even if their kevlar reinforced cable breaks, you can replace that rather than the more expensive earphone unit..

Nicely done.

Though the new cable will cost you £50..

And I wonder if they will change the connector so that they aren't backwards compatible...

But apart from that the clear ones look lovely

Ooh... something new: http://www.aedle.net/

Though, it doesn't look like audio was their biggest concern.

Wireless?

No, detachable cable.

Looks like a very decently made product but can't tell if the actual sound is good. Detachable cable is defo a win for me personally.

^guarantee I'd lose a detachable cable! Is it a standard 3.5mm-3.5mm? Or is it something proprietary? Would make a big difference to me.

Jay ones are great noise isolating earphones with flat tangle freewires.
http://www.superfi.co.uk/p-12074-jays-a-jays-one-earphones.aspx?utm_campaign=froogle&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=froogle&gclid=CPezxJDW8rUCFUnwzAodVAsAiA
got them for £15 from tescos but they don't do them any more

I have a set of Etymotic Research ER4's, which make the Boses seem like a pair of airplane headphones in comparison. Very fragile though.

I have a pair of Sennheiser bluetooth wireless headphones and there is a noticeable difference between connecting via standard bluetooth and Apt-X.

Unfortunately it doesn't really seem to have taken off fully, I had a bit of a read around it to see whether it could be used in Android but it wasn't ever that clear whether it was a hardware or software issue.

A shame as standard bluetooth audio is pretty poor.

Hi guys - I haven't a clue about headphones but i'm on a quest to buy some for my Dad as a birthday present. Budget is £100. Can anyone recommend some good ones? Preferably available in a shop in London somewhere! I've read the thread but can't seem to find the elusive comprehensive list.

Thanks!

Grado SR-60

For HiFi indoors? Grado isn't a bad suggestion. Open back headphones will have more leakage.

Also worth checking out Sennheiser HD25 and Beyer DT150 and DT770. I own each of those models and they are all great.

Sound quality is more wooden with the SR80 than the SR60*

*or it could be in my head, if you never had a grado, you'll be very happy with the SR60 TBH.

Erm... aren't you like deaf?