Why you should never trust amazon reveiws.... (Sony MDR EX33LPL)

Member Name: PanTaLemon

Product:	Sony MDR EX33LPL
Date:	06/08/09 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great look, not bad quality, very comfortable

Disadvantages: Where was my promised bass, noise-cancelling ability and epitomising headphone quality!?

After sufficing with my original iPod headphones for as long as I could (students, unfortunately, don't have enough spare coinage for additional commodities such as headphones), a trip around Europe relying upon low quality and crackling-bass musical solace to dampen the interminable train journeys was enough to convince me that I was in need of new ones.

After reading excellent, top star reviews on amazon of the sony MDREx33LPL In-Ear Entry Closed Headphones I must say I was fairly disappointed.

Listening to Elbow's Ground for Divorce I was unimpressed with the lackluster attempt of the earphones - the usual hard hitting sound was lost under a tinny sounding background drum rhythm and the former air-guitar inspiring acoustic solo was very lacking in punch.

The Who's, We Wont Get Fooled Again started out well, handling the introductive organ solo beautifully however again the headphones didn't cope well with the beginning of the drums - the headphones seem to make all cymbals sound similarly flat and tinny.

The 'phones fared little better with Knights of Cydonia (Muse) and I actually found myself not really listening to the music much. Similarly with Heartbeats by José González, the gentle acoustics and pleasant vocals were lost under the roar of the bus' engine - a bad effort on behalf of the noise-cancelling design.

There are some advantages to the headphones; they sit very comfortably and come with additional earbud sizes to find an ideal personal size, the noise cancelling design works up to a point (I'm thinking low level traffic on the other side of the road) but is not great, as enigmatically specified in one review, when competing with bus or train engines. To be fair, the sound is not particularly bad, seemingly well suited to fast, upbeat guitar oriented music (such as Pigeon Detectives) and vocals (Ricky Gervais podcast, anyone?), and less towards percussion driven sounds; I was, however, expecting much more from the sony's judging by the amazon reviews.

I suppose in order to listen to my music with any degree of quality (disregarding listening to it on an ipod) I would have to don a massive pair of expert, expensive earmuff-style phones; however, due to the sake of communal homogenity and social acceptance, I think I will stick to the slightly tinny, slightly less conspicuous in-ears.

Summary: Not a bad pair of headphones for the price, just don't expect to be blown away

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