The Bottom Line: The Etymotic ER4P's get 5 stars all the way. Do yourself and your favorite music artists a favor and go pick these up. $269 at Headroom.
wayfarer88's Full Review: Etymotic Research MicroProâ„¢ ER-4P Consumer Headp...
I purchased my Etymotic ER4P's a week ago. Since then, I have been going through my CD and MD collection non-stop, rediscovering many new tones and intricacies of the music that I had been missing. The quality of the sound coming from these little babys is phenomenal. I use the ER4P's primarily at university, on the bus, and at the gym straight out of a Sharp 821 MD player.
For instance, as I write this, I'm listening to a choral Cantata by J.S. Bach, "Christ Lag in Todesbanden". With my old headset (5-year-old Koss), I felt happy with the sound and amazement at the genius of Bach. With the ER4P's, the musical experience is on a spiritual level. I can pick out individual voices in the choir, and can even hear slight mistakes by the choir and accompaniment! (I have sung this piece before) I'm not sure if hearing mistakes should be considered a positive thing, but I am even more amazed at the beauty of the piece since all the great parts about the performance are crystal clear.
Last night, I listened to some Wu-Tang Clan. Usually, the bass sounds like a background thumping or overemphasized tone. Through the ER4P's, the bass "drum" part of the music actually has a tone that is audible and recognizable. All bass is clear and clean, never thumpy or boomy, and never distorted, even when I turn the bass setting on my MD player to maximum and boost the volume a bit.
I'm also a jazz guitar fan, and my favorite group is the John Pizzarelli trio. The clarity is amazing. Not only are the tones incredibly detailed, but I can hear John's breathing between verses, individual picking, and finger movement on the guitar. This is something I have never noticed despite probably over a hundred listenings.
My experience with heavy metal listening is that strong treble is VERY defined and accurate, yet somehow not fatiguing. I could listen for hours, and my ears don't seem to ever get sick of it.
The ER4P's will change the way you listen to your favorite music. One thing I have also noticed is the crappiness of my MD recordings. There is a fair amount of background noise on some of them that went unnoticed before, but not with the ER4P's. Gotta get me an optical digital cable...
Now for the downside. This is a very short section. In fact the only one I can think of is the slight thumping noise created by contact of the headphone cord with pretty much anything. Please note that I think the claims some people are making about the significance of this is highly overstated. The sound made is barely audible, and when the included clip is used to hold up the cord, it rarely happens anyway.
The ER4P's produce incredible sound and are easily as small as any earbuds on the market, making them perfect for music on the fly. I have had a hard time removing them from my ears just because I love them so much. I guess I should take them out and listen to my professor's thermodynamics lecture though. ;-)
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The ER4P MicroPro earphones are the next best thing to live music, with noise isolation far surpassing that of active noise-canceling earphones.More at PCNation
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