Shure E2c Sound Isolating Earphones

I love these headphones and the way they sound, and I've been using them as my go-to travel headphones for over a year. Great mids and nice sparkling treble. They lack a little in bass punch, of course, as most IEMs do, but it's definitely there and it's enjoyable (I supplement by adjusting on EQ). They are extremely comfortable to wear and come with a highly impressive array of tips. The cable is the perfect length.
 
My only problem with them (and the reason I'm searching for new ones) is the isolation isn't good enough-it's quite good, but not good enough to really enjoy music when biking, on a train, etc, without blasting your ears out with volume.

Packaging - 
The E2C Come in a rather frustrating box, made of that terrifying packaging that just about everything comes in these days. Inside of the box, you will find a pair of earphones, 8 extra sets of ear-tips, and a wonderful, solid, case for transport. To address the question of whether the number 8 was a typo, no, I couldn't believe what I got when it showed up, personal fit "kit" was by no means an overstatement. 
Design - 
I pretty quickly learned why shure included so many tips, these earphones are designed in the worst manner possible for a beginner to use, I've been using earphones for about a year now, and this was completely new to me, there is a 5 or so step process which one must go through to get the earphones into one's ear, so instead of going about precisely twisting, pushing, and wiggling the 'buds into my ears, I hung them over my ear and jammed them in as I would my other sets. I kept this up for a few days until I figured the process out, by which point in time, I had irritated my ear, and it hurt to insert and extract the bud. Once the earphones are in though, I barely notice them, I've carefully pushed through the opening, twisted into the first stop, decompressed, tilted, and furthered inserted, and I forget about the headphones, except from time to time when I have to play with the piece to correct a fitting difference between my right and left side. Correlating to the fit is the isolation, which is pretty good, I'd estimate 20 - 22 Db, which is better than my klipsch, but doesn't isolate like a pair of full fledged shooting range earplugs. 
Sound - I have had a very limited experience with earphones, and never own more than one set, so anything I say should be taken with a teaspoon of salt, which is why I cropped the rating that I wanted to give these earphones by once star. 
 
The E2C have a fairly normal sound to them, they sound "aggressive" and moderately loud. The bass isn't muddy, but there are some artifacts that may or may not be attributed to the recording that I hear with these earphones. Separation is above average, beating the image S4 which is regarded quite highly by many (according to my memory) in the clarity category, the S4 beat the E2C with a slightly more clear, "shining" sound, which may just be coloration towards the highs which I experienced quite frequently on the S4. I appreciated the sound of the E2C for being slightly bassy, but generally balanced relative to the S4, although it wasn't quite as flat as the superfi 4. The sound coming from my E2C seems to be pretty neutral in the way of coloring, not as dark as my vmodas or superfi, not as bright as my image, which is a great sound for metal. Highs on my E2C seem to be higher than me superfi, and once again, lower than my image (noticing a trend?) the one area where the E2C turned out completely different from either earphones was in distortion, I heard very little distortion at higher volumes with these earphones.
 
Overall - The E2C are a good pair of earphones to look into if you are alright with the minor fitting issues and are lloking for a good all around pair of earphones.

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I'll address my the contradiction in my pros and cons first.  The earpieces are solid and the strain reliefs are good on both the earpiece and the jack.  The cable is thick and inspires confidence but something you won't know from just feeling it, is that it hardens and cracks after a while.  Comfort is good and isolation is well above average.
 
They have a fairly pleasant non-fatiguing sound signature that doesn't stand out for any particular reason.  Detail is average, bass is present but not prominent, it extends reasonably low but lacks punch.  Midrange is free of any unpleasant colourations and the treble is slightly subdued and rolls off early.  Normally this would be a huge negative for me but it works out to make the E2c well suited to most kinds of music and isn't sensitive to certain kinds of recordings.
 
Overall, a good all rounder apart from the cable issue.  If you are after absolute sound quality and isolation, comfort and reliability come second, you can do better.

These things hurt my ear canal too easily unless I use the orange foam inserts, but they get gross and deform a little too easily.
 
Anyway, the sound on these was good enough for me to realize that my iPod had a pretty constant hiss. They also made it apparant that I could only listen with EQ off or the signal would clip. I never listen to these things with the volume up. I'm a quiet listener so I don't lose my hearing, and the iPod's shortcoming became very apparant. So I rated them quite good at first and told people how much I liked them... until I realized that there was no width to the sound. Clarity was missing all over the place in the spectrum and bass is WEAK. The isolation was only so-so, and I've since heard much better sound from products in the $50-$150 range. I use SRS HD Audio Lab on my laptop to try to compensate for its shortcomings, and so far I like it. Using HDAL helped me find out that the bass response, as anaemic as it is, goes down to about 50Hz, so that was cool.
 
As critical as I've been, I've had them for 4 years and I'm not planning to get rid of them.

I got these phones used with a broken plug which I had to fix myself, so I have no idea what kind of life they had before they came to me.  That said...
 
You can do better than these phones.  The sound is good, there isn't any particular strength or weakness upon which I will extol.  To my ears, these are jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none.  There isn't any particular facet of the sound which is outstanding but none which is awful either, they're just sort of...meh.  Unexciting, but fine if you just want a quick listen and aren't going to be paying much attention.