Towert7
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2005
- Posts
- 5,853
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Hello all. I have had my new Shure SE310 black IEM headphones for about a week now. Here I'll post my initial impressions and feelings. To sum it up though, I am very disappointed.
The good:
They are very small and very light. That much I love about them!
The bad:
First thing first, opening the box. Yup………. It’s one of those plastic form molded type of boxes that are dam near impossible to open even with the most rugged all metal electrician scissors. I was lucky I didn’t cut my hands trying to open it. You’d think companies would learn not to use this stuff by now…
On to the headphones themselves. They came with a variety of ear plug styles, and the cable extension. The cable extension is almost always needed. Frankly, the cable length of the earphones without the extensions is JUST a little too small. It’s about 1.5ft. That’s just a little too small to even reach my Ipod nano in my shirt pocket. I don’t know what Shure had in mind when they put such a small cable on. Personally, I think a 2-3 foot cable would be much more sensible, that way the extension cable would only be needed for longer reaches (such as your pocket or the amp on your desk). In addition, since the extension cable is almost always needed, there is another grip I have with it. With the addition of the extension cable, you get a big and bulky thing hanging 1.5ft from your neck. This is much heavier than if it was just a cable. Also, since my shirt pocket is offset to one side, it frequently resulted in the extension part hanging to one side and pulling on one of the ear plugs more than the other. This created an uncomfortable situation.
I understand Shure was trying to be very conservative with cable length for extreme portability, but they my have been a little too conservative.
The ugly:
(Sound Quality)
First things first, I have tried all of the ear plugs styles to see which produced the best fit. It was a close fit between the small rubber ones, and the small foam ones. In the end though, the small foam ones were more comfortable and produced a better seal. In addition, they were much easier to take out of my ear without that suction cup effect. The ear pads that are used changes the sound slightly, as does the rotation angle of the earphones and the insertion depth. I found the best sound was produced by inserting the earphones in almost all the way, and with the ear phones in a vertical orientation (so that both cables were pointing vertically upward). I was also able to rotate the earphones so that the cable was pointing horizontally out in front of me, or vertically down to the ground, with almost equal results. The triple flange plugs were too big, and left the earphone body hanging outside of my ear to much. So much for fitting them, now onto sound quality.
This is where I was left very disappointed! These earphones were a double edged sword. On one hand you have the fact that they are only a few millimeters away from you ear drum. So naturally they were quite detailed. On the other hand they just sounded so boring, dull, and lifeless. My general opinion of them was a very closed in sound, with very little musicality. The bass was nonexistent for my tastes. It had practically no slam and it had absolutely no bass weight even though it extended easily down to 30Hz. I had noticed that using the rubber ear pads helped increase the bass slam slightly, but even then it wasn’t anywhere near what I would have liked. With the rubber ear pads the bass weight was still totally absent. The mids were “ok”, but not very involving. The highs were also not very pronounced (rolled off). So this created a sound of practically just mids, with very little life to the music.
Dare I say it? No highs, no lows, must be Bose… except in this case it was the Shure SE310!!!
Seriously, it is so bad, I prefer both my Senn PX100W and Koss KSC75 to these. They have, to me, a much better bass and a much more musical experience.
I know it’s bad when I would reach for a pair of 20$ headphones over these 250$ earphones. I will admit that the SE310 was more detailed than both of these, but in the end it did not matter to me, they just sounded so lifeless.
My goal in buying these was to have a nice IEM that would replace my PX100W, with better sound, and much better portability. The fact that I wasn’t very happy with the cable design, and the fact that I thought the PX100W sounded better, led me to be very saddened by these earphones.
Needless to say, the SE310 will not be replacing my PX100W, which is sad because I really wanted a nice IEM for better portability. Speaking of which, I wonder what the Shure SE210 sound like…….. can it be worse?
I would not pay more than 40$ for these earphones.
Most of my listening has been done with my home setup for sound quality:
MHdt Labs Paradisea+ DAC > HeadAmp GS-1 > Shure SE310.
I also used them directly out of my Ipod nano to test portability.
Now onto some pictures:
Click for larger
Click for larger
I hope this is helpful,
~Drew
The good:
They are very small and very light. That much I love about them!
The bad:
First thing first, opening the box. Yup………. It’s one of those plastic form molded type of boxes that are dam near impossible to open even with the most rugged all metal electrician scissors. I was lucky I didn’t cut my hands trying to open it. You’d think companies would learn not to use this stuff by now…
On to the headphones themselves. They came with a variety of ear plug styles, and the cable extension. The cable extension is almost always needed. Frankly, the cable length of the earphones without the extensions is JUST a little too small. It’s about 1.5ft. That’s just a little too small to even reach my Ipod nano in my shirt pocket. I don’t know what Shure had in mind when they put such a small cable on. Personally, I think a 2-3 foot cable would be much more sensible, that way the extension cable would only be needed for longer reaches (such as your pocket or the amp on your desk). In addition, since the extension cable is almost always needed, there is another grip I have with it. With the addition of the extension cable, you get a big and bulky thing hanging 1.5ft from your neck. This is much heavier than if it was just a cable. Also, since my shirt pocket is offset to one side, it frequently resulted in the extension part hanging to one side and pulling on one of the ear plugs more than the other. This created an uncomfortable situation.
I understand Shure was trying to be very conservative with cable length for extreme portability, but they my have been a little too conservative.
The ugly:
(Sound Quality)
First things first, I have tried all of the ear plugs styles to see which produced the best fit. It was a close fit between the small rubber ones, and the small foam ones. In the end though, the small foam ones were more comfortable and produced a better seal. In addition, they were much easier to take out of my ear without that suction cup effect. The ear pads that are used changes the sound slightly, as does the rotation angle of the earphones and the insertion depth. I found the best sound was produced by inserting the earphones in almost all the way, and with the ear phones in a vertical orientation (so that both cables were pointing vertically upward). I was also able to rotate the earphones so that the cable was pointing horizontally out in front of me, or vertically down to the ground, with almost equal results. The triple flange plugs were too big, and left the earphone body hanging outside of my ear to much. So much for fitting them, now onto sound quality.
This is where I was left very disappointed! These earphones were a double edged sword. On one hand you have the fact that they are only a few millimeters away from you ear drum. So naturally they were quite detailed. On the other hand they just sounded so boring, dull, and lifeless. My general opinion of them was a very closed in sound, with very little musicality. The bass was nonexistent for my tastes. It had practically no slam and it had absolutely no bass weight even though it extended easily down to 30Hz. I had noticed that using the rubber ear pads helped increase the bass slam slightly, but even then it wasn’t anywhere near what I would have liked. With the rubber ear pads the bass weight was still totally absent. The mids were “ok”, but not very involving. The highs were also not very pronounced (rolled off). So this created a sound of practically just mids, with very little life to the music.
Dare I say it? No highs, no lows, must be Bose… except in this case it was the Shure SE310!!!
Seriously, it is so bad, I prefer both my Senn PX100W and Koss KSC75 to these. They have, to me, a much better bass and a much more musical experience.
I know it’s bad when I would reach for a pair of 20$ headphones over these 250$ earphones. I will admit that the SE310 was more detailed than both of these, but in the end it did not matter to me, they just sounded so lifeless.
My goal in buying these was to have a nice IEM that would replace my PX100W, with better sound, and much better portability. The fact that I wasn’t very happy with the cable design, and the fact that I thought the PX100W sounded better, led me to be very saddened by these earphones.
Needless to say, the SE310 will not be replacing my PX100W, which is sad because I really wanted a nice IEM for better portability. Speaking of which, I wonder what the Shure SE210 sound like…….. can it be worse?
I would not pay more than 40$ for these earphones.
Most of my listening has been done with my home setup for sound quality:
MHdt Labs Paradisea+ DAC > HeadAmp GS-1 > Shure SE310.
I also used them directly out of my Ipod nano to test portability.
Now onto some pictures:
Click for larger
Click for larger
I hope this is helpful,
~Drew
