More stuffing, please.

I've been sitting with my head tilted at a weird angle and holding that pose unnaturally still for quite sometime as I listened to some soothing music from my headphones. Some internal connection in one of the ear pads' probably gone loose, as had the connections in the volume control potentiometer along the headphone wire. Any disturbance in my head's attitude would mean erratic connection and re-"tuning" my head to make the right connection again. I also know that the headphone's circumaural (around-the-ear) "cusion"'s surface has started peeling off and would've left specks of black cushion material in my hair and on my pinnae.

So, here I was with the third clone of Rs.100 Intex headphone that' exhibiting the same symptoms of aging as it's previous selves.

That's when I thought of stepping up my "interest-level" (and budget) in my headphones to the same level as, say, buying a processor.
(That's also when it dawned on me that the philosophy behind those "I got it 4 cheap" t-shirts is not of getting cheap goods for the task but of getting better goods for cheap.)


That meant a lot of pre-purchase research. It's amazing how much one could be expected to spend on a pair of "cans" (which is the "in" parlance for these). I mean, I have a pair of earphones that cost me a whole Rs.15 (~30 cents?) that I bought off of a peddler. It could leave one to wonder what possible improvement could've warranted any headphone to cost a 100 fold, and beyond. It could've left anyone to wonder what possible trait of the earphone was scaled a 100 times over -the quality (metric?) or the frequency range or the amplitude?
But then again, cost need not scale linearly. After my experience with the purchase of my ATP3, it would've been stupid of me to ask those questions. Yet, the doubt remained throughout my purchase as I've never worn any 'can' that's worth more than Rs.200 before. Sure, I've read praises and firtst-hand accounts of the revelation in musical clarity experienced by first-time buyers of quality cans, but it'll help you only so much when you are a skeptic at heart.

Anyways, without further rabble, here's my newest pair of dandruff-catchers(now do u wanna share my earphone?) cum earmuffs(feels good during winter) cum earplugs(as in, cuts off outside noise somewhat) cum head massagers (good bass response). And they double as headphones too, woohoo!


If you are on a budget of around Rs.1000, these are the best of the bunch.

Mod:
Of late, I don't seem to be content enough with stock anymore. I get this uncontrollable urge to apply a mod, however small, to make my possession more mine. Perhaps it's an underlying urge to differentiate myself among the sea of stocks, or perhaps, stocks just don't cut it.
I am not going to elaborate the mod I did here. You can find it here. It's a simple mod involving padding up the inner-back wall of the cans for improved sound-stage (perceived width of the sound source) and stuffing foam in the ear-muff part of the cans. The sound-stage increase may be chalked up to placebo, but the extra stuffings of foam definetly enhanced the comfort-level. Now that is a very simple mod that has a great practical impact. I don't know why the manufacturers skimped on the foam. So this is to Philips: "More stuffing, please".