Buying new earphones!

My iPod earbuds are really crap. And so are yours probably, unless you bought one of the newer iPods, so in your case they're slightly better. I think.

But still, they suck. I was listening to them on the train the other day and I remember why I stopped using my iPod. Because listening on the train was as good as not listening unless you turn the volume up pretty high.

Recently I've started listening to my iPod (1st Gen 4GB Nano), mainly because I was going away to SEAMC and I needed some entertainment other than quadratic equations and the lot. So I took out my iPod again, and used playlists for the first time so I can pick about 600 songs onto my iPod Nano. The packaging and the website kinda promised 1000 songs. Oh well. 400 songs. Same difference.

So one time on basketballforum.com, a forum I frequently go to, someone started a thread on headphones. I took a look inside and some of those guys were discussing stuff like how Bose was complete shit for their price, and someone posted a link to this audiophile forum, called head-fi.org.

Curious, I go on the website, and before long I find myself wondering if I need an upgrade from those iPod earbuds myself. I started a thread with all the specifications and I got recommended some full size headphones called the AKG K518DJ. Below is the headphone that people kinda recommended. I found a headphone place in Hong Kong that sold them for $450, which is pretty cheap considering how far these headphones can go.
But obviously, with a set of headphones like that, I am not going to get any looks from people and I will be able to put it in my pocket comfortably.

So I asked for some earphones, and for those audiophiles if you were gonna get those you're gonna go in ear, also known as IEM. I got recommended like these really n00b ones and this pair called the Head-Direct RE2. Head-Direct is a relatively new Chinese company and the only place you can buy them is like from their website.

Today, after Mother's Day food shopping at Taste in Festival Walk, I decided to stop by Broadway to see if they had any of the headphones mentioned. The n00b ones (JVC Marshmallows) were there, in black as well for 188. I had money so I decided to buy them.

I got to try them like right away on the bus and man, what a transcending experience! They're the noob ones as well.

From a pretty normal person's point of view who still listens to music with the built in speakers in his monitor, it was quite a difference. The sound sounded a lot more thick and powerful, a lot of the extra background noise like the engine of the bus was blocked out.

I liked pretty much everything about it. It looked really normal, they were comfortable. The noise cancellation was perfect for me. Blocks out most background noises but I can still hear the thing telling me what the next station is and I can hear Indian men talking. My mom has this issue that those noise canceling headphones will cancel out like fire alarms and cars honking if they are right about to hit me. Since most of the background noise was gone, I could put the sound to a lower more comfortable level.

And all that can be had for 188 at Broadway! I probably could've gotten them cheaper if I looked, but whatever. They're cheaper than those iPod earphones, so next time they break and you're looking for a pair of cheap earphones, the JVC Marshmallow is the way to go. They come in lots of different colors as well if you look around. Here's a pic of my new earphone and my pretty good condition iPod Nano.

Ok. I don't know how to rotate it in this blog thing. Oh well. If you really want to know, it's Rising Down by The Roots. No I don't 247 songs in my music library. I just put what I feel like on my iPod Nano. Sometimes I load it up with like 600 sometimes I just put around 100. Sometimes if I really like 1 artist I'll just fill up my whole iPod with songs by that artist. But that hasn't happened since my Linkin Park/BEP days. :(