Headphone News

Newly formed Cold Fusion Entertainment are introducing a set of headphones incorporating an iPod Nano dock.

Nice idea, shame it’s been done before. Twice.

[Found via Gizmodo]

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Headphone News reader Emmanuel has posted a review of the Bose TriPort IE headphones that I thought was worth recreating as a post of it’s own. Take it away Emmanuel:

I was looking for a pair of headphones for my SonyEricsson W950i to replace my Sennheiser CX300 when I came across the aforementioned Bose at an airport duty free shop. Mostly out of curiosity, I decided to purchase them and may I say what a big mistake that was.

At this stage I should perhaps say that I am lucky to own a pretty good range of headphones including Shure, B&O, Sony, Sennheiser, Etys, Grado and now the Bose.

Build quality: The build quality is not as good as the pictures imply. They are made of poor quality plastic and the logo is just another piece of plastic glued on. The cable is of regular quality on par with the CX300 but keep in mind that the Bose are twice the price.

The pads, although good quality silicon, keep on popping out. This happens very regularly indeed and some point I thought I lost one them.

There is one good quality item though; the little leather case. Other manufacturers should take notice of this little case.

Comfort: I found the IE are very very comfortable with the largest silicon pad fitting my ear perfectly but take note: these are not in-ear as the name suggests; they sit outside the canal like regular earphones.

Sound quality: Where do I start? As soon as I hit play on my w950i I was shocked; the track was Her Voice Resides by Bullet for my Valentine encoded at 256Kbps VBR. The only thing I could hear was incomprehensible bass completely overshadowing everything else. I promptly changed the EQ settings to Treble Boost to no avail; there was no treble to speak of.

Given the fact that the w950i is not the greatest sounding MP3 player, I plugged them in my HD5 player. There was a marginal improvement on Judas Priest’s Hellrider encoded at 256Kbps ATRAC3+ but the improvement was really rather insignificant and came after a lot of tweaking the player’s sound preferences.

In general, the sound lucks detail and clarity. There are no highs, overwhelming lows but with no detail. I thought of giving them a chance in case they needed burning-in but no, after a week of 4-6 hours of listening they really sound bad – certainly not as good as the £70 tag implies.

Conclusion: Poor build quality, poor sound quality, good fit and good leather case. The Bose TriPort IE are seriously overpriced and seriously over-rated by pocket-lint.

I have since replaced them with the Sony MDR-EX90LP which I am quite happy with.

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Peripheral manufacturer Altec Lansing have introduced a new Upgrader series of headphones for users who want to upgrade from the basic headphones that ship with digital audio players. The range will feature a total of seven new headphone designs split into two categories.

The SnugFit range are a noise-isolating design intended to block out external sound. They will be available in over-ear, in-ear and standard head bud designs.

Second up is the AirFit range, which are comprised of four over-ear designs but promise to be breathable to reduce the chances of hot ears. Sounds like a good idea, hopefully it’ll work.

Available soon, priced from $29 to $199.

[Found via Gadgetell]

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