Out With the Earbuds, Earphones Channel the Magic

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I was 36 years old and had been walking around with standard issue white Apple earbuds falling out of my ears for a few months when I first encountered a Shure product rep urging me to quit righteously studying product specs and just TRY these new earphones (once you get past the $100 range, nobody says “bud” anymore) he had on hand at a CES preview event. I set down my bag full of flash-drive press releases and took him up on his offer, rolling two milkdud-sized squishy foam cushions between my thumb and forefinger and gingerly inserting, all the while hoping this rep wasn’t a classic rock kind of guy because if I’m going to lose my hearing, I want to go out with funk.

His eyebrows rose into question marks and from my sudden isolation chamber I saw his lips form the word “Ready?” Then, E-GEAR readers, THEN…hot caramel and sunlight on the river and skin-on-skin and Oh Dear God, my spine is melting, someone pass me a Dunhill because I must start smoking this infinite instant. Music, my friends. Music of the sort the long-haired audiophiles respected back in the days when listening was not something you did while engaged in four other activities. I don’t even remember the song now, and I’m usually intense about details, it was more like sampling the essence of a song, feeling sound waves render my solar plexus malleable.

Suffice to say I’m now favorably inclined toward high fidelity experiences. Great tunes are far too subtle and savory to be cranking up to 105 dB just so you can make out lyrics on the subway. With a decent pair of sound-isolating earphones, and I’m learning you don’t necessarily need to drop more than the cost of your MP3 player to score good ones, there’s no “these go to eleven” imperative. The high-end versions like those Shure’s I tried or the super-lightweight 6i Isolators by Etymotic employ a tiny diaphragm which pushes air just like your best old stereo speakers, delivering a more accurate representation of your woefully compressed digital files than the vibrating coil embedded in the twenty-buck buds.

Still, despite all their claims of studio-perfect replay, even the high-end earphones sound remarkably different brand-to-brand. It’s really about how you want to listen. Do you want your chakras rocked by the lows? Are you going through a Coletrane phase and need groove access to the middies? Want to feel like you’ve been resurrected in the piccolo section of the New York Philharmonic? There’s an earphone that caters more toward each range of frequencies. Dump the white buds and go sample a few to hear what resonates with your cochlea. Just remember I warned you about the bliss thing. We’re talking a grasp of the ethereal in the cereal aisle, spontaneous combustion on the bus.