I recently bought some new earphones, these are the Sennheiser CX300’s. I love a good Sennheiser product, I use both their headphones and earphones. I have had quite a few of them over the years.

Headphones

• HD410
• HD455
• HD475
• HD580
• HD600

Earphones

• MX5
• MX500
• CX300

The CX300’s look identical to the Creative E-630’s (think thats the model number) but like most things this is due to them coming from the same place in china, there are lots of collectors that have also noted a pair of Sharps (MD33’s) that again look similar. The difference in each case being that they all sound very different and also have very different specs.

These are my first set of isolating earphones and they take a bit of getting used to. When you first get a pair you will put them in and everything will sound dull, this as I found out is due to them being pushed in too far and this creates a pressure build up in the ear. Once you are past that problem and get used to inserting them they sound great.

The CX300’s sound closer to headphones than to earphones. They have a very odd bottom end that kinda reminds me of a speakers bass, apart from that they are really well balanced across the whole band and they really don’t have much grain in the mids for something in the price band. To be honest I think these are the best earphones I have ever heard, they are comfortable once you get used to them, they sound fantastic. I have seen reports that these beat the £100 Shure’s but again I haven’t confirmed this for myself.

If you do get these phones be prepared to re encode your ipods music library as you will soon notice the difference between low bitrate nasty sound and good sounds!. As always I recommend a min of 192K VBR AAC, or 320K AAC. If you can the Lossless is the best option. I might post some differences between bitrate sound quality if anyone is interested. Let me know.