E888 ultimate sony earbud.

Yay, I just got these in a trade with chewy over in asia. He was nice enough to buy them brand new for me as well so I was able to burn them in.

First off the E888 is the very short corded version for use with remotes. I don't have a remote but I do have a nice little extension cable which I am currently using in place of a remote. They are nice looking and these come with a small carrying pouch rather than the weird looking star treck carrying case typically seen.

The build quality is somewhat fragile feeling, unlike the MX500's I used to have which I remember being very solid feeling. It's a nice elegant design and they fit well into my ears with the foamies on. A much better fit than than what the MX500's were able to provide.

The sound at first was not impressive so lets not even talk about it. After burn-in they became more musical and smooth yet the highs still tend to be scratchy sounding. I remember some people mentioning a lack of bass but I have not found that to be the case at all. After break in the bass improved, but you can also rotate the headphones back slightly, so that the stems point forward somewhat rather than straight down. This I noticed helped to increase the bass. The midrange is very dynamic for an earbud and is smooth sounding as well. Listening on my minidisk player brought decent results but I was hearing too many artifacts(due I believe to a very precariously arranged recording process) so I plugged them into my radioshack 3940 portable. There I was greated with a nicely balanced sonic presentation. I was not only suprised by this but a little bit giddy, they are really good earbuds!! I prefer them over the Denon 950's I got in a trade with chewy as well. Not only were they more dynamic and better resolved but they have a larger soudnstage as well. I was very impressed with that aspect of these headphones. They actually have an out of head soundstage which is something I was not expecting from a sony earbud!! Overall you can definately tell they are sony's because they lack certain refinements such as warmth but are easily the best earbuds I have heard.

Bad stuff: As I said they feel really fragile and for portable phones that seems dangerous. They sound bad out of a real headphone amp, really bad out of the xcanv2 and not as bad but bad still out of the creek. They are best balanced out of a portable as has been mentioned before.

If you are a carefull person who absolutely needs portability over all else I suggest these headphones.

oh I thought penultimate meant second to none... Sorry.

thats ok neruda thanks.

In response to thomas I can only say I disagree. They have better soundstaging than denon 950's IMO and are more dynamic in the midrange. IF you rotate them backwards in your ear (top back) then you will notice an increase in bass... The truth is that at that point any more bass and you are talking about duhm-bass pressure levels. Honestly I cannot STAND to use ANY kind of bass boost with them as it provides WAYYY to much bass. They are peaky in some areas most noticeable in the treble, but taken in 3 groupings, bass vs. mid vs. high there is generally a good balance.

Back to the soundstaging issue, seriously try a different portable source or something, it is quite obvious to me that these headphones have a fair amount of openness and decent soundstaging especially considering they are just mere earbuds. They do not compare to sennhieser HD600's but there is some similarity in my spacial perception when comparing the 2 phones. MInd you I said "some" as in a small amount but it is there. They have a sense of space even if it is small it's larger than I have heard from any other earbud.

Also you seem to imply that warmth and dynacism cannot coexist and I am sure they often do. Maybe listening to tubed equipment drive my HD600's has spoiled me but I am positive that the sound I get is both musically warm and dynamic!

Overall I think they are a good buy. In some small way I can sense that the designers at Sony took into account a couple of audiophile ideals when designin them. No they aren't fully audiophile quality, but they are fairly inexpensive and as portable as portable gets.