Diddy's headphones thread

[Diddums 4,346]

I like good quality sound. I am also in a line of work which means that my headphones often fall out of my ears from pretty high up and can land in puddles of water, so I go through them like mad. In the last year I'm on about my 6th pair. That means I need cheap and good quality sound. 

 

I went through a long lovestory with wireless headphones, mainly Enacfires. I started with their E18 headphones which impressed me for their price, however once these died and were replaced under warranty and died again, I remained with Enacfire and ordered the E20s. Again wireless and very impressive sound quality, with a charging case big enough to double as a battery bank. Nice on paper, never used it once. They died eventually so I got another pair of them which also died. Including warranty claims, I think I've gone through 8 pairs of Enacfire headphones. I can't comment on build quality because as I said, they don't live a normal life with me. For all I know they could've lasted a century under normal conditions.

 

Anyway, Enacfire was removed from Amazon for some reason and their own site wanted £6 for shipping, and I thought that's just taking the piss. A quick search on that Google they have now ended up with me ordering a pair of Jlab Go Airs. Initial impressions were good, the battery life was phenomenal and the sound quality wasn't bad either. The downfall was the irritating touch buttons they use. The entire side of the bud is a button and they were a terrible fit so I was constantly pushing them back in to my ear and skipping tracks / pausing/ changing volume by mistake. It was irritating as hell but I wasn't gonna get rid as I knew they wouldn't be long for this world. The charging case has a USB plug built in to it so you can plug it in very easily which is just as well, the case battery is quite small. Luckily the bud batteries could last me almost a whole day. I couldn't in good faith recommend them as they're a perfect example of shoving tech in to stuff for extra bling whilst not really caring about practicality. Also the volume wasn't very good, I quite frequently found myself loading up VLC player to play music as I could push beyond 100% volume on that. 

 

Anyway, whilst I wait for the warranty replacement to arrive I thought I'd give something else a go. I watch a lot of stuff on youtube from an aussie chap named Dankpods who I've come to regard quite highly about these things as he's got a degree in music and really seems to know his stuff. 

One set of earbuds he often mentions are the KZ ES4s. They're wired which put me off but I thought I'd give them a go anyway. Simply put, these are the best sounding earbuds I've ever owned and completely and comprehensively shit all over any set of wireless buds I've had. The cord has those shapes in them to hold the buds in my ear so they're not constantly falling out. This was a sticking point for me as they looked fiddly and uncomfortable, but the reality is that I don't even notice them and because my earholes are no longer a supporting structure, they're a LOT more comfortable too. 

 

The cable is actually barely noticeable at all, but then I've always been used to those shitty bargain-basement earbuds that you get with phones that always have cords made from the stickiest stuff in the world so they're constantly tying themselves in knots and being a pain in the ass. None of that here thankfully. An added bonus of being wired is that the microphone is in the cable meaning I can actually use them for calls. None of my wireless headphones were suitable for calls as the mic is in my ear and asking it to hear me clearly is far too much for them. I'd always have to remove one from my ear, answer my phone and then tell my phone to use its own devices for the call. This may seem trivial, but when you're taking 50+ calls a day, it gets irritating. The flip side of this of course is that I don't have buttons on the earbuds so I can't skip tracks without pulling my phone out my pocket. Not a deal breaker but this might matter to some. 

 

The sound stage is a lot less bassy than my former earbuds and I thought this would ruin them for me, but the sound quality is so much better that I'm actually preferring them and I'm hearing sounds in songs that I've never heard before. These are, without a doubt, the best sounding headphones I've ever owned and yes, they sound better than my £250 Astros for music (not exactly what you buy Astros for so not really a valid comparison but just adding a bit of context). 

 

To give this a bit of context, my Samsung phone has that orchestra ringtone that Samsung uses. You'll know it when you hear it. Getting used to this ringtone with these headphones was weird as hell because I didn't realie that my phone was ringing at first, I actually legitimately stood there wondering where that sound was coming from. Herp derp.

 

They don't have any noise cancelling but the loops on the ears means they fit so well that I can't hear anything around me anyway. It's eery as hell at first. 

 

Their appearance is also pretty cool, I've got the blue ones which are see-through with a red circuit board inside them, so they definitely look cooler than the shit ones you get with phones. 

 

TL;DR - if you need cheap headphones and can live with a barely noticeable cable, these are the best £20 you'll ever spend. 

 

I'll update this now and then but I can see these lasting me a long, long time. 

 

 

[FallenDark200 168]

Kz-Dq6 no more said if you wanna spend extra 10 bucks go for the new kz tribrids not telling you what to buy but I have multiple pairs of iems, ranging from cheap to expensive as hell and kz is a amazing company. 👏 enough said. Sorta what you said earlier your not going to notice the difference between a 30 dollar pair of kzs to a lot of 100 to 200 dollar iems unless there certain tunnings 300 to 500 you'll notice a marginal difference and 7 to 1000 you'll notice a bigger difference 😉 but only if you wanna spend money on something that crazy. I only req kzs for budget options then anything above that is magird Teas and above that is the shouer ejo7m then the unique melody mest. Soooooooo what am I saying is buy kzs get a good cable. Got a perfect place that's makes amazing cables for about 30 bucks that has lasted me in a dirt and steel environment and machine coolant environment for over a year now if you'd like.

[FallenDark200 168]

Oh and btw wireless earbuds are shit and alot of gaming headsets are dog water for music thats why I have a audiophile desk setup with my pc.

[Diddums 4,346]

Cheers dude, having seen how much bang you can get for relatively little buck has opened a whole world for me! I was honestly expecting to pay £200+ to get a sound stage like this, so getting it for 10% of that blew me away. I'll likely be trying out a few different ones now, I can see this becoming a great hobby for a fairly small outlay. 

 

Those tribrids look good too, might make this my next purchase 😄

[FallenDark200 168]

If you wanna experience true full blown clarity and sound separation tribrids are a must. Litterally it's nutty I can't listen to music on shit headphones or iems anymore. I currently using shouer ejo7m tribrids that's cost 10 times as much as thr kzs and they only outperform in certain departments by margins and I also use a wireless dac so I can skip songs and have better input then my phone Input depending on your music library will matter but seriously kzs you can't go wrong. But like I said it boils down to what you listen to really so im no expert but I have my fair share in the hobby lol between all my audio equipment stuff I have id say for pure music enjoyment I have about 3k in it now if not more. But that's almost a 2 year length. Also expensive isn't always better in the audiophile realm. But if your purely just using iems and not over the ears you'll save your wallet trust me. Cans will get expensive as fuck for a really decent pair. For something to match those tribrids I mentioned you would spend about 500 bucks to match the sound quality you'd get out of a 40 to 50 buck iem lmfao.

[phil bottle 9,754]

11 hours ago, FallenDark200 said:

If you wanna experience true full blown clarity and sound separation tribrids are a must. Litterally it's nutty I can't listen to music on shit headphones or iems anymore. I currently using shouer ejo7m tribrids that's cost 10 times as much as thr kzs and they only outperform in certain departments by margins and I also use a wireless dac so I can skip songs and have better input then my phone Input depending on your music library will matter but seriously kzs you can't go wrong. But like I said it boils down to what you listen to really so im no expert but I have my fair share in the hobby lol between all my audio equipment stuff I have id say for pure music enjoyment I have about 3k in it now if not more. But that's almost a 2 year length. Also expensive isn't always better in the audiophile realm. But if your purely just using iems and not over the ears you'll save your wallet trust me. Cans will get expensive as fuck for a really decent pair. For something to match those tribrids I mentioned you would spend about 500 bucks to match the sound quality you'd get out of a 40 to 50 buck iem lmfao.

 

You seriously know your stuff there 🙂

I only really listen to music via Spotify and the quality of their streams is so poor I've never felt the need to invest in audio stuff. I do have a lot of vinyl but when I play that I make sure my neighbours hear it too, if you know what I mean. 

 

I do hear though that Spotify are going to be increasing the quality this year, so may need your advice if that happens, music is a very important part of life for me.

[Diddums 4,346]

Just now, phil bottle said:

 

You seriously know your stuff there 🙂

I only really listen to music via Spotify and the quality of their streams is so poor I've never felt the need to invest in audio stuff. I do have a lot of vinyl but when I play that I make sure my neighbours hear it too, if you know what I mean. 

 

I do hear though that Spotify are going to be increasing the quality this year, so may need your advice if that happens, music is a very important part of life for me.

 

Do you have the quality turned up on Spotify? There's a setting which you can change. That said, I want the best quality headphones I can get for that very reason.

 

I'm seriously considering a FLAC player now 😕 

[phil bottle 9,754]

1 minute ago, Diddums said:

 

Do you have the quality turned up on Spotify? There's a setting which you can change. That said, I want the best quality headphones I can get for that very reason.

 

I'm seriously considering a FLAC player now 😕 

I do and pay for the extra quality, but I believe they are properly upping the quality this year to audio philemon standards and keeping the price the same. Which I agree would make ne start considering buying more shit I can't afford 😅

[phil bottle 9,754]

 

This was their announcement last year about Spotify hi fidelity:

 

"Artists and fans have told us that sound quality is important to them. We agree, and that’s why today at Stream On we announced Spotify HiFi. 

Beginning later this year, Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi and listen to their favorite songs the way artists intended. 

Read on for five things you need to know about our new high-quality music experience:

High-quality music streaming is consistently one of the most requested new features by our users.

Spotify HiFi will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio format to your device and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers, which means fans will be able to experience more depth and clarity while enjoying their favorite tracks.

Ubiquity is at the core of everything we do at Spotify, and we’re working with some of the world’s biggest speaker manufacturers to make Spotify HiFi accessible to as many fans as possible through Spotify Connect. 

HiFi will be coupled with Spotify’s seamless user experience, building on our commitment to make sure users can listen to the music they love in the way they want to enjoy it. 

Spotify HiFi will begin rolling out in select markets later this year, and we will have more details to share soon."

[phil bottle 9,754]

They need to hurry up about it as both Amazon and Apple allow far better quality for their music streaming.

And with that, I'll stop derailing the thread😁

[FallenDark200 168]

Streaming places for music I love spotify have had it for 5 years. Yes some of the files of spotfiy are not the top quality but you'd be surprised how close they are to other companies. I have used tidal and I hate tidal but there quality of music is great 👍 but I use Deezer along side spotify just for like a lot of older non well recorded songs. Most newer music you can't tell the difference in high audio quality files if you got a good Dac amp pushing your iems or cans. The trade off from switching to another media player is seriously vast unless you listen to old old music. Like old country, classic 50, 60s rock and some newer 70 and 80s once you hit the 80s and 90s depending one the genre you can catch very small I mean stupidly small things.