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i am once again in the market for new earphones, the right audio channel has suddenly completely died on my current ones. rip. honestly i was not happy with them anyway, they did really sus things to my laptop

what in-ears should i buy. i'm gonna rank musician opinions higher

important clarification: wired

aaaa i'm so glad i'm a musician now because “wired earphones that aren't terrible” is apparently completely dead as a product category in normie physical retail, but you know who actually need things with wires and care about quality? musicians. music specialty stores have them

i have a lot of feelings and thoughts about the nature of creativity and i think at this point devices that are designed purely for passive consumption and which are unsuited to creation just get me kinda depressed

“musicians” including me, because do you have any idea how many sound-producing boxes with analog audio outputs i have now. i actually wonder if it's even possible to do dawless music production without wired earphones/headphones/speakers…

i am going to buy the shure se215. i don't know if they'll be amazing, probably not, but they'll finally gets me out of the realm of audio products that have non-detachable cables and which are so cheap and bad that nobody bothers reviewing them. i can buy something better later

yooooo the shure se215's come with a nice little carrying case (it's the shape of a round bar of soap, the texture and design of a laptop bag, complete with tiny carabiner and zipper) i'm already not regretting this

oh there's a surprising amount of hiss with my laptop's output. is that an impedance thing? would my audio interface have a more suitable impedance?

‪i don't know if it's impedance or analog noise or DAC characteristics or what, but the JV-1010 has basically no audible noise floor with these, but my MacBook and my PSR do ‬

can't tell you if the shure se215's are “good” but they're certainly not worse in terms of sound than the weird swedish in-ears i was using before, and they're definitely far more sturdily built and less… sus, so i think you can say i'm satisfied

holy shit the sound coming out of these sounds dramatically different for the same song between my work and my personal laptop… it's like a different eq profile, it's absurd. i guess these in-ears are sensitive enough that i have to be careful what i use to drive them…

oops my music tastes are leading me places where i feel like i will need better headphones already… at least these ones will probably never break on me, that's something

the sound differs also between my laptop and my audio interface. most prominently by the latter's lack of noise, but there's also the eq thing and the cymbals are more defined? so this is what professional monitors are like huh. the impedance matters…

oh my god are these already damaged in the specific way that makes one side have less high frequencies aaaaaaaaaa. i might need to try to buy a replacement cable :(

currently incredibly thankful to whichever blessed soul added the “reverse stereo” option to vlc. i felt like i was losing my mind, but no, if i choose “reverse stereo” and then swap which ears i'm wearing these in-ears in, the treble effect in the stereo image is reversed

…and i'm also thankful these have a replaceable cable, because in the same manner, i think i've now isolated the problem to the cable. that's a relief. it would have been very disappointing if the drivers were already broken

i am NEVER buying listening equipment without a replaceable cable ever again in my life. i have suffered so many times with the high-frequency part of the stereo image suddenly getting shifted left or right and every time it's been the cable failing but i couldn't prove it

since i now have to buy another product anyway (a replacement cable), and since i've established that i trust shure to be competent, it's suddenly very tempting to upgrade to one of the higher-end products in the same line as the SE215's… hmmm

good news it might just have been my ¼″-to-3.5mm adaptor being dirty and actually not the in-ears cable itself being broken. i'll consider the replacement cable i ordered in the meantime an insurance policy

@hikari yes, cabled in-ears can have very low impedance, meaning the laptop needs to be drive it at a low volume level, which significantly increases the noise level.

@hikari a cheap option to improve this, is the Apple USB-C adapter, which should work ok for even the most sensitive in-ears according to this review: https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/apple-usb-c-to-3-5-mm-headphone-jack-adapter.23420/reviews

@hikari fyi, you can make them sound “better” (closer to harman curve) with https://autoeq.app