Don't be satisfied with anything less (Sony MDR-EX 70 SL)

Member Name: Pablosammy

Product:	Sony MDR-EX 70 SL
Date:	25/03/04 (2068 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Loads of detail, Short cord for in-line remotes, Blocks out outside noise

Disadvantages: Cables are a bit thin! Yep, I'm struggling that hard to find negatives!

You've just bought a state-of-the-art minidisc player for £200. It's fully compatible with your super-fast PC via its expensive-looking docking bay, and its display glows a cool blue. After writing a few minidiscs using the latest high quality compression format (virtually indistinguishable from the CD original) you're going into town to do some shopping and you take your fully charged gadget and slip it into your inside pocket. Then you plug the equivalent of a piece of string and a paper cup into the headphone socket, and you might as well be listening to a tape cassette playing on a 1980s Walkman.

I've never understood why manufacturers' supplied headphones are of such inexcusably poor quality. They are painfully uncomfortable, lightweight and virtually unbearable when it comes to sound quality. Apple did themselves a favour by supplying semi-decent earbuds (with neodymium drive magnets, no less!) with its awesome iPod, but even these pale in comparison to the quality you can get by spending a little bit of money on a good pair of 'buds. Just like an audiophile leaves a little bit of his budget for buying good cables for his new separates system, everybody who buys a portable CD/MD/MP3 player should spend a little on new headphones.

The difference is indescribable, and I'm not talking about spending hundreds of pounds either. £15 will get you a really good pair of earbuds that will begin to properly complement your (potentially) fantastic-sounding digital music player. Saying that, you could spend upwards of £300 on earbuds, but I doubt you can afford them and I seriously doubt whether your portable music player will do them justice either!

I personally spent a little more than average on some top consumer level sony MDR-EX71 earbuds. They cost me £35 on the high street, but after
spending £400 on a 40GB iPod it's a rather minor expense! And I'll tell you this: I don't regret it for a minute.

The earbuds are designed to fit inside your ear and form a seal, a little like some of the rubber earplugs you can buy. This helps by blocking out a lot of noise from the environment you are in, and also keeps a lot of detail in. As a result, you can listen at lower volumes whilst revealing previously inaudible detail, protecting your eardrums! Another benefit is improved bass weight, something I imagine every personal music fan has bemoaned the lack of sometimes in the past. The design ensures that your fellow train-passengers won't be able to hear a squeak from even the loudest music. The 'feel' takes some time to get used to, but after a while you forget they are there. This is in contrast to cheaper in-ear headphones which tend to get painful with prolonged listening.

Packaged with the earbuds are; an extension cord, a plastic 'pod' (described later), a soft drawstring bag, and 3 differently sized sets of earbuds for differently sized ears!

The earbuds are thoughtfully supplied with a very short cord, a perfect length for those of you who use an in-line remote. For those of you who don't use one, worry not; Sony supplies an extension cord too. The plastic 'pod' holds the earbuds and can be used to protect and organise the earbuds themselves when not in use. It can also be used as a wrap-around to shorten the cord when in use. A little soft drawstring bag is also packaged, which you can stuff the cable into instead of wrapping it around your player. The plastic pod does an excellent job of stopping the cable getting tangled whilst inside the bag. Wrapping the cable around the player is common practice but is generally not advised, as it can cause fatigue damage to the delicate fibres ins
id
e the wire. This is something manufacturers fail to point out, so you have to replace them when they stop working! Solution: use the pod and the bag.

The most important feature is, of course, the sound quality and these 'buds shouldn't disappoint! With the seal formed properly the bass is weighty without being overpowering, the midrange is crisp and transparent and the treble is carefully controlled so it's not abrasive at all. I've listened to everything from classical to metal on these headphones, and they are truly an all-round performer. They will make the most out of your music on-the-move, while remaining discreet (they are so very small!). For those of you who don't want to shout the fact you have an expensive iPod on your person by using the distinctive (pretentious?) white headphones, these are the perfect replacement!

One thing I noticed was that these 'phones are significantly quieter than the iPod earbuds they replaced. Whether this is a deliberate safety feature or the result of a higher impedance, it matters not. The in-ear nature ensures that you should never have to listen at excessive volumes anyway, and while I now have to play some of my quieter iPod tunes at close-to-full volume in noisy places I never find that the volume is inadequate. For those of you with iPods or some minidisc recorders, if you find the volume is too low you can always increase the volume at which you record your music via the settings menu in iTunes or otherwise.

For those of you who are still not satisfied by the MDR-EX71's noise-blocking qualities, the MDR-MC11s at around £90 are (as far as I can tell) the same as these 'phones but with a noise-cancelling circuit which 'listens' to your surroundings and adjusts the output accordingly to 'cancel' sounds like traffic
or train
-noises. Smart, eh?

So overall, these headphones are a relatively small expense with an immeasurable improvement in listening enjoyment and comfort. I cannot recommend them enough, and I urge anybody that reads this review to make a comparison with their existing headphones and 'see the light'!

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