Other Sites

Product: High-fidelity noise-isolating earphones
Developer: Westone
Requirements: Any personal MP3 or CD player, iPod or anything with a standard 1/8" or 1/4" plug.
Retail Price: $399.00
Availability: Out now

The promise of personal re-creation of a music experience is the long-sought holy grail for both listeners and those who want to provide the tools to listen to that experience. Those hopes took a big step closer with the release of the Westone 3 true-fit earphones. Providing three separate sound generating devices contained within each earphone (one for bass, one for mid tones, and one for treble sounds) all balanced for an amazing sound experience. The Westone 3 provides a strong case for being in the concert, or at least feeling like you are.

When I first received the Westone 3 earphones, I didn't use them right off. Rather, I put in another set of earphones I have and listened to the musical Chicagoi>. It's a great recording (more on that later) and I knew I enjoyed the sound of that musical with the older earphones. Then, half way through, I took them out and placed the Westone 3 earphones in.

Wow.

What was clear was now clearer, what was distinct was now more distinct, what was a broad range of sounds became broader. The one dynamic I wasn't expecting is that the bass was not pounding away in my head. Due to the small size of any earbud/earphone, it's common for the manufacturer to super-pump the bass to overcome the physics of trying to get a bass noise out of something so small. Such super-bass noises are artificial, and it's, well, artificial. The Westone 3 has a fully passive balance system. The bass is as "bassy" as it needs to be. It is a full bass, not pushed. You can (artificially) push the bass more via an equalizer, but the final music will not sound as real as it should. Your choice.

When I was a kid, I had a small Sony transistor radio (monaural of course), and I was always taking the small plastic hard ear piece and slipping that into my ear canal. It wasn't comfortable, but the sound was fine (as I had nothing to compare it to). Since it was only in my left ear (monaural remember), I could easily talk with anyone while listening to music. When I first encountered an earbud with the release of the iPod many years later, the earbud became a fine way to listen to music, albeit limited. The limitation came from the fact that since it only sat against the ear, ambient noises were always a potential distraction. And, sad to tell, the quality of the earbuds from Apple is okay at best. They are not bad, but they don't make you go, "Whoa…"

To be very specific, earbuds sit against the ear canal, held in place by tucking them into the small valley formed by the anti-tragus (the part just above and behind the earlobe) and the tragus (the small piece of cartilage that sticks out, often identified as the thing you press against your ear canal to guard against loud noises). While the small depressions formed between these two parts of the external ear do vary considerably from person to person, the earbuds are successfully held against the ear canal for most people. But alas, the ambient noise will always be there no matter how good the quality of earbuds.

Earphones, on the other hand, sit in the ear canal, not unlike the single piece of plastic that sat in my ear so many years ago. However, to compare that technology to the modern earphone is like comparing the rotary phones I used at that time to the cell phones of today. The Westone 3 is more like a smartphone, also a different animal from the average cell phones of today. Regrettably, new technology isn't always cheap; at $399 a pair, these are more expensive than all but the most expensive iPod touch (at the time of this writing). Westone does provide a reasonable amount of extra "stuff" with your earphones, as seen below. Besides a small zippered travel pouch and a 1/8" to 1/4" plug adapter, there is also a small device to help remove any ear wax that can get in the sound tube of the earphones. One of my favorite included items is an in-line volume control. With it you can vary the volume of the sound from the maximum you've set your iPod down to zero. My biggest complaint with the iPod has always been no external sound control for quick grabbing and adjusting. Well, with this volume control placed between your iPod and your earphones, volume control is always at hand.

Lastly, there are ten pairs of ear tips: all of different sizes, shapes and materials. If there is one user-problem with earphones, is ear exhaustion. It turns out, if you haven't experienced this yet yourself, when you have something crammed into your ear, after a period of time, your ear doesn't feel as good as it did earlier. The larger an item you are trying to shove into your ear, the more uncomfortable your ear will feel. It's just that plain simple. To accommodate this, Westone provides 10 different pairs of ear caps for you to experiment with. There is no real difference in purpose for any of these; it's not a situation where you might use one type for classical and a different ear cap for rock, or one for walking and one for sitting. All you need to do is to guess as to which one you want to try out first and then change as appropriately for comfort.

The one other dynamic you need to get used to is putting them on: from our experience with earbuds, we expect the cords to hand down. They don't with the Westone 3 earphones. In fact, the cords face forward. In the image below, the earphones are just as they should be if there was a head between them facing to the left. The wires should leave, and then circle around over the ear. The body of the earphone is left to sit within the ear region.

The reason for this is to help avoid one of the biggest drawbacks to earphones: conductive noise. When you have something shoved into your ear, anything that is attached to that thing in your ear will carry noise to your ear. That is, the sound of the wires dragging across your shirt will be amazingly loud. By placing the wire over your ear, most of that shirt-dragging noise is attenuated long before it ever gets to your ear.

There are other problems with earphones and noise—mostly your noise. You've probably never heard yourself walking before, but when you have earphones in your ears, the sound of your body thumping away for each step will be a profound awakening. If you try eating/chewing something, you'll discover that earphones are a great way to diet: you eat or you listen to music. Corn chips are an extra step up in noise, trust me.

Then there's an issue of safety. In most states, it's illegal to wear headphones, earbuds, or earphones while driving. I'd go so far as to warn anyone against wearing these if you are taking a walk in your neighborhood. These are for isolation and enjoying music. That same isolation will prevent you from hearing cars, dogs, seedcakes, etc, and can be considered a major invitation to an accident. On the other hand, these can provide the isolation and comfort you want on a plane, bus, or a car where you do not have to interact with anyone and are not responsible for the transportation. When I'm wearing these, I cannot hear my wife talking to me a few feet away, while the dogs barking and the phone ringing are but a distant noise.

[Note: Before someone writes me a nasty note comparing the sound isolation of these earphones to a deaf person and wondering if I'm against deaf people driving and walking around, please keep in mind that deaf people are used to hearing nothing and know how to defensively walk and drive. In addition, they are not being distracted by what they are listening to, for obvious reasons.]

The last negative I could mention about the Westone 3 is you will find there are two types of music on your iPod: the group that sounds wonderful and the group who's recording dynamics were not up to snuff.

I have a copy of the opera Il Travatore with a recording that's not very good. I never noticed it when I was wearing earbuds or standard headphones. The poor quality sounds simply wafted through and I couldn't hear the nuances of the over-impedance of the recording. With earphones in general and great earphones like these, the quality of the recording was unmistakably poor.

On a whim, I purchased a set of very cheap earphones, and, ironically, the over impeded sounds on the poor recording were not all that evident. I can't say the opera sounded any better, but the poor quality of the earphones did mask the poor sounds of the bad recording. It was "different" bad.

It should also be pointed out that podcasts suffer from similar but different problems. Podcasts are compressed to significant levels and quality of sound is very low priority. As such, podcasts will probably sound poor in a way that you probably would not have noticed otherwise.

Because of all this, it's probably better if you were to keep your earbuds for podcasts and use the Westone 3 earphones for music that's worth listening to. To reiterate, though, at $399 the Westone 3 earphones are not cheap and probably cost more than the music player you are using them on. But using these earphones on your iPod will be like getting more for your money from your iPod. Simply put, poor earbuds/earphone/headphones on an iPod will limit the quality of the sounds you will get from your iPod. Good earphones will let you get your money's worth from your iPod. Consider them as part of a package.

With that being said, I do have to do my public service announcement:

• Never wear your earphones while driving, bicycling, motorcycling, running a boat, skateboard, running tools or even walking in the neighborhood. We need to listen for those who are not watching for us, and we need to keep our attention on what we are doing.
• Never play music too loud when using earphones. It's bad enough to blast music with earbuds and headphones, but at least some of the music can escape. With earphones, there's no place for the music to go but to slam against your eardrum. And let's be honest here, to do so is dumb. I said, to do so is dumb!
• Do not wear these when you are supposed to be having a conversation with your loved one. You will not be able to hear him/her and nodding your head up and down as if you agree and/or understand will come back to bite you. Pull the damn thing out of your ear and listen to your loved one. Once the conversation is over, you can go back to your music.

Now for some technical data from Westone:

In short, these earphones are a pleasure. If you can afford them, go treat yourself.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.