New Apple In-Ear Headphones

[ak40ozKevin]

Considering the sheer volume of mp3 players Apple sells I think they could easily afford to sell well below the margin of smaller earphone manufacturers.

It's my understanding that there are very few balanced armature producers so the drivers Apple uses will probably be shared with most of their competitors. While the implementation of these drivers is the most important part, it's not hard to imagine that these will be decent enough considering Apple had to contract an outside manufacturer to create these.

I'm sure they'll handily outperform the likes of the UM1 and the lower tier Shure lines at much less cost. I'm looking forward to hearing impressions of the first batch.

 

[minjae0810]

wow you guys are getting so angry over this..
we shouldn't just judge this just from the price and that little graph.
there is always something with crappy specs that sound great or vice versa right?
In the end, it's just a matter of personal preference.
I'm not telling you to stop arguing, because that would be too boring, but
just don't make statements based on assumptions or whatever you know just because you think you have the "brain".
Apple hasn't published anything yet and we haven't seen or heard the product as of now. Just because it sounds too good to be true, you shouldn't judge it. Apple has done a lot of revolutionary things. They might "revolutionize" the IEM market, we don't know. I see some people are getting worried that small businesses might get crushed; but then it's just business,economy and who offers better stuff for the money; just competition - that's how we improve. Apple is not a headphone manufacturer, but that was the same with the ipods; they were only making macs back then. Also, what I can see is people comparing the price of the other IEMs with 2 BA's in it to the price of the new apple IEMs. I think that the pricing is mostly, if not entirely, the company's choice; and they would price it similar to the other ones on the market. Seriously, how much money does it take to make those tiny things? I know they take a lot of research and a lot of delicate processes, but still. I think what apple can do is, since it's a big company, something the small companies can't do. I might sound like an apple fanboy or something, but my point of view is not limited to "apple is always fantastic" and if a company other than apple makes products of my need better than apple's in what I consider important, I'd buy them and I do. The apple bashers are the real fanboys; their view is limited to apple sucks and apple sucks only; if apple products suck for them and they allegedly "don't care", they shouldn't be wasting their precious time arguing and caring all about apple. If i don't like someone or something, I would just leave them alone; why would i waste any of my time doing so much for them! Please be rational. wow I wrote so much.. lol thanks for reading. This is my first post btw.

 

[knights]

i wonder what will be the reaction here if lets say ety build this apple headphone, or bose badge on se-530....

headfiers1: its fantastic soundin dual-drive headphone from ety...
headfiers2: damn bose for making such expensive headphone with bloated bass with very poor highs...

 

[ameyer17]

Quote:

Originally Posted by knights /img/forum/go_quote.gif i wonder what will be the reaction here if lets say ety build this apple headphone

I'm fairly sure Etymotic won't ever build a dual-driver IEM.
FWIW, I'm guessing* that Ultimate Ears built this.



*Not based on anything other than UE and Apple are both California-based.

 

[Aevum]

i still think that the shape and low price leads to the recent experiments philips has been doing with armature headhpoens,

as for the ety vs bose comments,
if bose made the SE530, it would not cost $450, it would cost somewhere near $800.
and i dont tnik the apple fan boys with be happy with ety made headphones...

 

[lewislink]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aevum /img/forum/go_quote.gif i still think that the shape and low price leads to the recent experiments philips has been doing with armature headhpoens,

I think I agree with this. Philips all of a sudden releases some very high tech canalphones recently and now Apple is in with a dual driver canalphone of similar shape. When coincidences such as this happen in the industry it usually means the two companies releasing comparable products relatively around the same time were partnered for a cooperative product.

 

[SactoMan101]

In some ways, Apple's new in-ear monitors remind me a lot of the Sennheiser CX500 IEM's that I use with my 3G iPod nano, not the very best sound quality but definitely a huge leap forward in sound quality over the headphones Apple provides with their players at a reasonable price. Hopefully, the new Apple IEM's will actually sound good because frankly, a lot of iPod users are buying third-party high-qualilty IEM's to get the best sound quality out of their iPods.

 

[HellaChinese]

when are they due?

 

[deviationer]

do they come in black?

 

[fiiophile]

Quote:

Originally Posted by deviationer /img/forum/go_quote.gif do they come in black?

Yes, they probably will be manufacturing those as i read from this thread a few pages back.

 

[fdhfdy]

Why need a mic there? get it , used to audition voice by making phone calls.

 

[sandino]

GUYS< HAVEN"T THEY RELEASED THIS YET???


I mean, it would be very nice to have a real review of this, finally. If there's one already someone point me to right direction!

 

[irjoe]

hm, i thought 7 pages worth of thread, a review was due somewhere, but i guess they haven't been released yet

lets all just patiently wait.

personal note: not expecting too much out of apple... esp after purchasing a macbook pro and getting annoyed by the fuzz from the audio out.
//end personal note.

 

[jonathanjong]

Eh? They've been released for a while now. And there are reviews here. Use the search function.

 

[HeadKase]

I bought em and would have returned except I lost one of the pieces and the Apple store sucks with returns. Not that they're all bad.

The good:

1) The dual driver works like a sound projector throwing sounds all around your head like the way high end speakers throw various sounds in the air.

2) Brings out nuances in the music that you haven't heard before. When you're listening to the right kind of music it's like you're hearing it for the first time. Reminds me of old Spica speakers. Threw sound around in the air in an entertaining, gee wiz kinda way, but at the end of the day were too lightweight sounding to be taken seriously.

3) They're fast.

4) Nice separation between instruments. Instead of hearing a foreground and a background, you hear both the foreground and background in relief. As if they each have their own amplifier or speakers.

The bad:

1) light weight sound. Even after quite a bit of burn in, they don't have a deep weighty live sound. Weak on the lower mids/ upper bass with some occasional lower bass. Forget dance music, large orchestral pieces etc. Works better with fewer instruments, acoustic stuff.

2) upper frequencies are detailed but could use some refinement.

3) Microphonics - not at all good for the gym (which i bought them for) since you hear any contact your clothing etc makes with the cord very loudly - plus your own breathing, etc.

4) Way too limited on types of music that works. I have to keep going for small ensemble or acoustic guitar kind of stuff. Anything too dense instrumentally or deep sounding gets cut off at the knees.

Now that I'm stuck with em, I'll keep listening and hope I'll like them better - since there are some cool aspects about them.

Overall, they've just whet my appetite for some better sounding multiple drive phones. i hear the effect of the multiple drivers and i like it.