Guys, these Philips SHE3580 have to be heard to be believed. I know I kind of implied in my review that they need EQ to sound great but you know what? It may all be down to personal preference. AFAICT these have a V shaped sound signatrue but I always have trouble picking out vocals from instruments whichever phones I use so this may just be personal bias kicking in. I showed these to my brother and let him hear it with and without my "setting for everybody" EQ and he even preferred the original sound!
Then I tried customizing an EQ to his ears ala PiccoloNamek's EQ thread and found that for his ears there's very little that needs be changed.
He didn't say much about the sound but he did ask if he could keep the pair I gave him to do the tests on
Seriously, these were the phones that got me back into music after a years long hiatus. And even after I got back into music the broken Etymotic ER-4P I had sat for months in disrepair. I was wondering what better sounds I would hear from them... but not wondering too much.
Finally I sent them in for repair, and after they came back, I didn't hear anything special that would sway me from the $10 Philips! The Ety's treble was smoother... but the Philips' treble was even smoother with my custom EQ dialled in (again, YMMV regarding the necessity to EQ). And the bass... is earthshakingly deep. And the fit and comfort... these Philips just pop right in my ears and stay there. I was never comfortable with the Etys until I cannibalised a pair of tips from an extra pair of the Philips I wasn't using and adapted them onto the Etys using decored T-100 comply tips as an adapter.
Then the Etys broke again... for the fourth time for me. This time one of the channels went intermittent and when I tried fixing it by pulling and reconnecting the plug to the bud, the socket came out with the plug after the 3rd try or so
Meanwhile, the original pair of SHE3580 I got before I sent the Etys for repair are still going strong... taking more abuse than the Etys with nary a scratch (well, the heatshrink over the I-connector came off when I tried pulling it out of a particularly stubborn socket, but I suppose that can be superglued back on... not that I bothered. It still fits snugly over the I-plug and only comes off when I pull particularly hard. I take that as a sign that I have to be more careful pulling the plug out of this particular socket. The wiring inside the I-connector is potted and the pot can be pulled with no worries over stretching the wires inside). They have also taken blasts of accidental high volume noise from my computer's headphone out and aged like a fine wine--the bass just got deeper.
Finally let me quote why I liked these so much in the first place from another thread:
Quote:
Of course I would never have bothered to do any of that if I did not hear potential in these phones in the first place. The 5 things counting for it were
1. solidly constructed, completely closed enclosure with no ports; closed speaker design means no flabby ported mid-bass
2. metal grille over drivers instead of fibre plug means sound reached ear more directly
3. incredibly precise channel matching, 2 pairs of $10 SHE3580 I own each have better matched L/R drivers (as I heard from sine sweeps throughout the frequency range) than the Etymotic ER-4Ps I have now!
4. incredible bass and treble extension, treble going beyond the limits of my hearing and bass still going strong way down at 30Hz
5. just a general feeling of "these actually sound pretty good" when I first paid $10 for them and plugged them in my ears, and moments where I got this nagging suspicion that I was hearing things I never even heard on the etys.
