Posted by billybuckwheat 3 days ago
When I'm wearing wired earbuds, the feeling of getting the cord caught on something and having the earbuds violently yanked from my ears is one of the most annoying things, like a slap in the face.
Plus I like being able to put my phone wherever I want, when I'm listening to podcasts while doing yard work. The phone stays in the house, or on a patio table, not in my pocket where pruning shears or dirt will get to it.
There are various other situations where having wires going to my ears is annoying or impossible.
For a fraction of price of professional monitor speakers, you get the closest thing to direct hardware-to-brain audio transmission. It's precise and fast transient-wise.
No reflections, no phase problems, nada. You can choose exactly the type of frequency response you need: flat, V-shaped, U-shaped, bassy, bright, whatever. There are even models with switchable curves.
No need to invest much more money than your speakers cost in your listening room, installing wool/foam pads/draping/soft furniture/bass traps/carpets etc to reduce the amount of reflections and bring frequency responce to anything resembling flat.
That said, there is a huge number of IEMs produced these days and they range from absolute trash to stellar. And to navigate this vast ocean, I find Crinnacle's resourses utterly useful:
https://crinacle.com/rankings/iems/
https://list.hangout.audio/iem
(disclosure: I'm not affiliated in any way, I just adore this guy's dedication!)
Sometimes a Matrix glitch occurs and someone produces a total outlier, like Philips SHE3580, a $10 little wonder I used for many years to write music, and the mixes produced with those translated literally everywhere without any surprises (in audio engineering, translation is the ability of an audio track to sound as close as possible to the sound engineer's intent on as wide range of audio equipment as possible).
They had a single diaphragm drive, which is usually regarded as slow and less precise than other types of drivers, but they sounded very linear and only slightly less precise than many much more expensive models with multiple balanced armature drivers.
I believe, their performance/price ratio was closer to infinity than anything out there on the market.
But alas, built with biodergadation or planned obsolescence in mind, they finally deteriorated mechanically to the point of falling apart completely.
I know kids are switching to mp3 players because of that.
Personally I use wired headphone at home, either open back or closed back depending on the situation and Bluetooth outside when I don't want to be bothered by a cable.
I think it gets the best of both worlds. Couldn't care less if I look 'cheap' because I have Bluetooth headphone.