[BL33DnEaRs]

Surely most of us started with either a cheap or free pair of earbuds.  When and which pair of iems or gear made you say whoa!  For me it was going from OEM buds that came with my phone and purchasing the GR07's, started hearing things in my songs I have been listening to for years that I've never heard before.............then it sent me to here, or hear, to continue the chase.

 

[H20Fidelity]

I started the hobby or seeking a (single) set of earphones in general when I wanted to listen in bed for 1-2 hours a night. At the time I was using some (can't remember) brand earphone through my Nokia N95, which at the time I thought sounded pretty good. At this stage I had no idea about bitrates or Head-fi and traveled to my local shopping mall to buy earphones.
 
I figured at the time $50 should be enough and saw a well-known car audio brand at the mall called "Kicker" who sell car sub-woofers. They were selling an earphone so I thought my dreams had come true and purchased them immediately. I didn't open them until I got home with great expectations, I was of course, left disappointed.
 
I continued going back n forth to the mall trying higher priced models like Sennheiser CX300II until I did what many nOObs do, purchase beats tours. While they were probably the best I'd heard (at the time) I thought 'there must be more to this', 'this can't be the best earphones available in the year 2000+" 
 
I found myself browsing utube one day where someone informed me about Head-fi. After I joined I read about SoundMagic E10 which are less than 1/3 the price of beats tour, being skeptical I went ahead. When they arrived I was extremely satisfied, I understood there was a more to the portable audio market. I sold the beats tours quickly and began researching on Head-fi, all these new names and brands I'd never heard of googling them, looking up their prices, all the fun and wonderful things which happen when you first join here...
 
Now, I've probably spent well over $10,000 on portable audio and my basic price range is around $1000 per IEM.
 
tl;dr: SoundMagic E10

 

[BL33DnEaRs]

  I started the hobby or seeking a (single) set of earphones in general when I wanted to listen in bed for 1-2 hours a night. At the time I was using some (can't remember) brand earphone through my Nokia N95, which at the time I thought sounded pretty good. At this stage I had no idea about bitrates or Head-fi and traveled to my local shopping mall to buy earphones.
 
I figured at the time $50 should be enough and saw a well-known car audio brand at the mall called "Kicker" who sell car sub-woofers. They were selling an earphone so I thought my dreams had come true and purchased them immediately. I didn't open them until I got home with great expectations, I was of course, left disappointed.
 
I continued going back n forth to the mall trying higher priced models like Sennheiser CX300II until I did what many nOObs do, purchase beats tours. While they were probably the best I'd heard (at the time) I thought 'there must be more to this', 'this can't be the best earphones available in the year 2000+" 
 
I found myself browsing utube one day where someone informed me about Head-fi. After I joined I read about SoundMagic E10 which are less than 1/3 the price of beats tour, being skeptical I went ahead. When they arrived I was extremely satisfied, I understood there was a more to the portable audio market. I sold the beats tours quickly and began researching on Head-fi, all these new names and brands I'd never heard of googling them, looking up their prices, all the fun and wonderful things which happen when you first join here...
 
Now, I've probably spent well over $10,000 on portable audio and my basic price range is around $1000 per IEM.
 
tl;dr: SoundMagic E10

Crazy isn't it?  No telling the $ we've spent on "name brand" crap that inferior priced supremely surpasses in performance.  We all are to quick to judge by the costs of something thinking it is a direct correlation to the way it will perform.

 

[H20Fidelity]

Crazy isn't it?  No telling the $ we've spent on "name brand" crap that inferior priced supremely surpasses in performance.  We all are to quick to judge by the costs of something thinking it is a direct correlation to the way it will perform.

Yup, but the portable audio market is now becoming silly in itself. Too many companies caught onto the money grab game. More drivers, higher prices, less thought in implementation, push push push, sell sell sell.. More drivers, higher prices.

Need a sift the size of grand canyon to spend your money correctly.

 

[pedronet]

Honestly... although it's still cheap, my IM50s. They were the upgrade (emphasis on "the") that kicked me into headfi.
I couldn't even think on spending more than 30$ on earphones back then.
 
I remember the impact that the IM50s had on me, it was like discovering a new audio world, much superior to the one i knew, a really happy feeling.
They also defined my favorite sound signature. Although there are many iems better than those, that set will never leave my collection 

 although i often use other better iems, i still listen to the IM50s of course. It's always nice to remember the day 1 on this journey, they still sound amazing to me.
 
One thing i know it's this journey is far from over 

 oh what have we got ourselves into... 

 

 

[B9Scrambler]

For me it was JVC's HA-FXT90. They were already pretty old by the time I got my hands on them, but they were just showing up in Canadian retail stores in the area. Still one of my favorite earphones despite now having better. Such a fun, aggressive sound. I also have a second pair as backup...you know...just in case.

 

[Cinder]

For me it was the earbuds that came with my HTC One M8. Then, in a year, they fell apart, and I bought my Macaw GT100s. That was also a huge step forwards.

 

[andrewwardell]

My entry into the 'better than stock' world was, of all things, the Koss 'The Plug', which I ran off a Panasonic MP3 discman before getting my first proper DAP (Toshiba F20).
 
Depending on who you walk to, The Plug aren't that much better than stock earbuds, but the foam eartips allowed me to actually realise the potential of headphone audio that I had not been able to with any of the dollar store or department store earphones I had before then, and was not able to recapture for years after they died. 
 
These days I'm still a big foam tip advocate, since there isn't a lot of point in my getting an arguably better sound from Silicon tips if they aren't going to stay in my ears long enough for me to appreciate it. I am planning to try spinfits with my next headphone purchase though.

 

[Signal2Noise]

It all began with my first iPod (U2 Edition) which was a gift and a set of Shure E2C earphones which was based on a friend's recommendation. I ended up re-ripping all my CDs at higher bitrates due to the initial quality imperfections I started to notice.

 

[wskl]

In the 80s, I started using the Sony Walkman cassette player which came with airplane style headphones, this was followed by portable CD player, then the thumb-sized mp3 players which appeared during the 2000s.  So I used whatever head/earphones that came with them, when internet was more accessible in the 2000s, I did some research and purchased a pair of Sennheiser PX100 from Amazon around 2005, mainly because they were a bestseller, and that was when I realized I could get better sound from stock earphones.