Until now, I've always gone with cheapish earphones (ie.<$20 ones). Now that my current earphones have broken (stock HTC ones that came with my phone, not Beats btw), I'm thinking of going for quality ones this time. From what I've heard from friends who have used them before/are using them, Sennheiser makes good quality ones.
Since this will be my first time going with Sennheisers, I'm keeping the budget at around $50-$100 (hopefully on the lower end), unless of course someone can really justify me getting above $100 ones. But because my audio are generally digital mp3 files, I see no real point in going for those audiophile headphones with superb quality when the audio itself isn't of superb quality (it'll be quite a hassle changing all my audio files over to FLAC, while getting audio CDs for every song I have will be extremely expensive)
Most likely, I'll go for JB Hi Fi as the retailer, unless I can get Harvey Norman or DSE vouchers through points.
So…if anyone here has or is using Sennheiser's earbuds/earphones, could you tell me what model you have and how much you'd rate it in terms of quality? And are the ear canals better than earphones at a similar price range?
Also, on the Sennheiser's website, the two series of earbuds I see are the IE series & the CX series, while earphones use the MX series. Could someone tell me the main differences between the first two?
Oh and if you're wondering why I prefer earphones/earbuds and not go for headphones/headsets, is because I want to use them outside of my house, not always in the vicinity of my laptop…and I'd rather not have a huge pair of headphones with me wherever I go (basically I want them for multi-purpose use while still having a decent sound and build quality).
I've got cx-400s and they have lasted me a good 4 years and still going strong. For earbuds vs earphones the earbuds help to reduce the amount of background noise you can hear meaning you don't have to turn it up really loud and generally other people won't be able to hear your music. Some people don't like the earbuds though as they can be uncomfortable to some.
Headphone wise it's not too bad to take them outside but the full size cans or ones that completely surround your ears can be a burden when outside as they are fairly large and are quite heavy. While the smaller versions px-100/px-200/px-250 are light and very portable but when I tested them they were quite rubbish and sound hollow but that could just be me. You can test headphones at pretty much any Jb-hifi or dicksmith, have a listen and test them with your own music if they let you otherwise just look at the build quality/sound quality and size to decide whether headphones are right for you.