e-earphone to open world's first CIEM specialty shop

Starting tomorrow, e-Earphone will open the world's first CIEM specialty shop, under their shop. Impressions cost 5.400- ¥, or about 54- USD. Cash only. Akihabara only.

The timing couldn't be more perfect; I'll be in town to meet a mate from Woodbridge, Ontario. I was thinking of dropping green on a new impression or two anyway.

And my friend will be 'farting' around Akihabara... whatever that means. Just in case, I asked him not to come to the basement of e-Earphone's building where things will go down. 

Details here (Japanese text)

Why hearing protection matters

“Hearing protection is central to our enjoying music and life to its fullest.”

Preach it, Cymba.

“Well, it’s no secret that hearing protection companies understand acoustics quite well, and end up creating very capable and isolating IEMs. Etymotic and Phonak’s (now defunct) Audeo are two very clear examples.”

Yep and more yep. On pages two and three, Sinocelt goes on to describe a number of musician's and other earplugs, and the affect they have on music. Why hearing protection matters is an important article. And um, Chase Emory, turn the volume down a bit, eh?

This will be (insert company name)'s downfall

John Gruber concludes the above about the cable industry, citing an article by The Verge about Comcast's efforts to lock customers into their service. But his next sentence:

“No company with such disregard for their own customers will succeed for long.”

could be said of 

This is the world's first mass-produced balanced earphone

While essentially Sennheiser MX300 clones, and cheap pack-ins, the above earphones were the world's first mass-market balanced earphones. They came with the Sharp MD-DR7, which works great as a cheap-ass 16-bit DAC for AK100/120/240 devices and which I remember at Headfonia. Best of all, these phones used the standard 3,5mm plug wired for TRRS.

Sadly, no upgrade options existed in 2002. Today they do, but, as I explain, today we battle against myriad competing headphone jacks/plugs and company locked-down formats. It's more the Wild West than ever it was.

Read the entire article at Headfonia: Back To The Future Friday: The World’s First Balanced Earphones

Bose sue Beats

Bose. Remember them? They wish you did. Now they're suing the only headphone company non-audiophiles know, Beats. It's delicious. 

via Techcrunch

More delic are the comments from MacRumors readers about the tussle:

“Stridder44: One crappy headphone company suing another crappy headphone company

bearboy: Oh no, here comes the Apple/Beats apologists!:mad:
Rating: 19 Votes

DavidLeblond: Bose felt threatened. For the longest time they were the #1 name in expensive sub par audio equipment until Dre came around and took the crown.

Moopy Sac: “Fascinating that they wait until Beats is acquired by someone with deeper pockets. Good luck getting any money, though. If Bose ever gets a payout, it’ll be ten years down the road. And the general impression I get from people who work in the speaker business is that Bose isn’t really that good.”

Headphone quality does not seem to have much of a positive correlation with company value.

But Bose is still head and shoulders better than Beats.”

Head and shoulders, eh? Oh Moopy Sac, dear Moopy Sac. It's like the blonde leading the blind.

There's more gold to be had in that MacRumors thread.

This is what a ring of balanced armatures drivers looks like

Here are various balanced armature earphone speakers arranged and labelled by forum.ru fan, Hardcorist. 

Cymbacavum, who pointed this out, says this:

“Those poor earphones…”

Here is the post in question.