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General discussion

Headphones help

Aug 12, 2005 4:35AM PDT

Well to start i'm a bit new to this mp3 player thing so after much debate i recently puchased a sony nw-hd3. So far i love it and everything about it, apart from one thing, the headphones. So again i've looked around for headphones and come up with two possibilities, the koss sparkplug (or plug) or the Sennheiser hd202. The koss are in ear and the sennheiser are hi-fi style but both importantly are sound isolating. Firstly if anybody has these are they any good at isolating the sound and how good is the sound quality with both. Also i'm not brilliant with earplugsand find it a bit hard to keep the left plug in my ear for too long. Are the koss phones easy to put in your ear and how well do they stay their.

Any tips or suggestions greatly appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Canals and clipons
Aug 16, 2005 11:54PM PDT

what's your price, and are you looking for isolation?

for earbuds/canals, look for the Sharp MD33, or the Creative version of it for $40. Otherwise, some cheap alternatives if your not looking for isolation would be the Koss KSC35/75s

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Go for the Plugs
Aug 19, 2005 12:58PM PDT

I bought the Koss The Plug earbuds and they are the best I have ever heard music through. They are also extremely inexpensive.

I was a little dissappointed only with the foam pad things on them because they wear out quickly, so I found this site http://www.headwize.com/projects/cmoy4_prj.htm and I did the first modification thing (putting holes in earplugs and using them for the pads). This helped greatly and it makes them excellent to listen to. I am too afraid to do the second modification as of yet, but I think they sound wonderful without it.

Oh yeah, both with the included pads and with my earplugs the phones had amazing noise canceling abilities. I like to play my drums along with my music, but with previous phones I had to turn up my mp3 player up to max volume (30) and I could barely hear it over my playing. With these phones I can turn my music down to 10 and hear it perfectly enough to actually recognize every bass drum hit. I also use them when I mow my lawn and previously I couldn't hear my music no matter what volume level I had it at (our mower is LOUD), but now with the Plugs I can hear it fine at about 15-20 volume level. It saves a lot of battery power with the lower volumes too!

I have found that the Plugs stay in great if you use them the way they come in the package. The instructions say to flip around the pads if they don't have good isolation, but I find that this only makes them fall out easier and the isolation stays about the same. With my new earplugs on them they stay in just as easily as the earplugs do normally (which means it is almost impossible to shake them out!).

If you want great sound, cheap prices, and good isolation, go for the Plugs. They ROCK. Even if mine ever break, I will probably buy them again because they are so inexpensive compared to other products of that quality.

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Also looking for headphones with adjustable L&R sound
Aug 23, 2005 10:40AM PDT

I am looking for Headphones with adjustable L&R sound. I did have a pair about 10 years ago. When I go shopping and ask salesperson I get a "are you from Mars" look. I want to lower background sound on some of my music tracks. Thanks for any help.