Important Tips and Myths about High-End In-Ear Earphones and the iPod

a) VERY IMPORTANT for all in-ear earphones we sell: the EQ on your iPod or MP3 player should be set to OFF. The iPod and other player's EQ is designed to make CHEAP $10 earbuds sound a bit more decent. With a high-end in-ear earphone such as the ones we sell, those "EQs" will do nothing but distort the sound.

b) If the seal is not right the earphones will sound thin and lacking bass. Remember, no seal = no bass, weak seal = weak bass. This is true for all in-ear earphones and it does take at least a couple of days to get a good seal.

c) The in-ear earphones usually take one week to 10 days on average for customers to get the proper seal, performance, and comfort from them. Once you obtain a good seal and comfort level, the process will become second nature and the bass will be delivered.

d) The foam sleeves will, in general, provide the best results. Make sure you squeeze them before inserting them in your ear and wait until they are fully expanded.

e) If one of the transducers plays at a lower volume, or has no sound at all, or if the general sound quality is poor, there’s a very good chance the tiny opening is blocked. This is extremely common if you push it in too far or if it’s simply pushed against a cartilage wall inside your ear canal. In this case, move it up, down, left, and right to find out which position sounds the best. Sometimes the ear tips will get clogged with wax even with new items as it may collect wax on the very first time you insert them. Check the sleeves themselves.

MYTHS and FACTS About High-End In-Ear Earphones:

• Importance of Impedance - This measurement is relevant for full size headphones but absolutely irrelevant with in-ear earphones.
  
  
• Frequency Response Curves - I can't say I like this or that type of frequency curve because it will depend on the amp, speaker, recording, and worst of all, the song. For me it just doesn't make sense to discuss freq response curve, specially with in-ear earphones, because however the freq curve was measured, it can never be replicated. It's a guesstimate in the best case scenario. Ear canals shapes and sizes are active elements in determining one's true freq response curve for a given in-ear earphones. A bit different than full-size headphones which you can use the Neumann head to measure all of them and maintain a relative standard, but even then, one would struggle to defend it as a more valid measure than a subjective description of what a headphone sounds like (see below article by J. Holt). Once ear canal's shape and size, quality of seal, eartip shape, size and material, enter the equation, you can pretty much toss your freq curve graph in the garbage can.
  
  
• Sounds Like? By J. Gordon Holt
  
  "Subjective audio is the evaluation of reproduced sound quality by ear. It is based on the novel idea that, since audio equipment is made to be listened to, what it sounds like is more important than how it measures. This was a natural outgrowth of the 1950s high-fidelity "revolution," which spawned the notion that a component, and an audio system as a whole, should reproduce what is fed into it, without adding anything to it or subtracting anything from it.
  
  Traditional measurements of such things as harmonic distortion, frequency response, and power output can reveal many things a product is doing imperfectly, but there have never been any generally accepted guidelines for equating the measurements with the way they affect the reproduced sound. And there was strong evidence that many of the things people were hearing were not being measured at all."
  
  
• Digital Compressed Files - many believe that an iPod which carries compressed files is unable to sound better with a higher-end in-ear earphone but that's completely untrue. All the tests conducted here include iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, iPod Touch and iPhone and the sound quality is incredibly better with our earphones.
  
  
• iPod amp quality with in-ear earphones - some believe you need an external amp to drive earphones in order to appreciate the sound quality difference. That is not true. You don't need an amp. In-ear earphones are extremely efficient and require on average half the volume setting than an iPod stock earbud to output the same perceived volume level due to the isolation, proximity and the nature of the balanced armature drivers. One my improve the performance with an external portable amp but there is also the possibility of adding hissing to the sound.
  
  
• EQ Off - we strongly recommend that the iPod EQ be set to OFF because we have seen to many times that cause distortion with the highly sensitive and efficient balanced armature drivers. You can try but if the sound quality degrades, turn off the EQ and it should sound great again.
  
  
• Earphones don't have bass (or do they?) - high-edn in-ear earphones use balanced armature drivers which do not move air like the inexpensive dynamic drivers of the Apple stock earbuds and for that reason they require a very good seal in order to deliver the bass that is expected from them. On average customers will take 7-10 days to achieve that seal quality once they try the different sleeves since what you need to accomplish is match the anatomy of your ear canal with the eartips shape, size and material that will best provide comfort and seal. Patience will pay off big time.
  
  
• You need to shove the earphones in your ear as far in as possible (do you really?) - that is not true. You need to gently find that "sweet spot". If you push the eartips to far in you may block the opening of the nozzle and the sound quality will deteriorate. Be gentle and patient for the first few days.