Apple In-ear OEM Earphone user reviews

Pros Super-clean, well balanced sound. Very low distortion characteristic of balanced armature headphones. Very small and comfortable. Incredibly transparent.

Cons Stock tips don't fit a lot of people's ears, and an imperfect fit totally kills bass output on any balanced armature headphone. And I mean totally. Plus, even if they fit, the silicon tips seem to slip out of the ear too easily.

Summary As a audio engineer, I own about a dozen different sets of earphones and in-ear 'phones. My favorite, by far, are my sure SE530s. I have some Sennheiser cx400s which are good workhorses, but lack the finesse, clarity and stunning accuracy of the Shures. For convenience, I bought the Apple's, as I wanted something I could use with the phone for calls.

I found the sound to be quite clear and beautifully clean, but like many, no matter how I tried, the stock Apple tips never made a good seal. The seal is absolutely essential to getting bass out of a balanced armature design. For you non-engineers, just trust me that if you don't have a proper seal, you will have no bass.

In my case, I think the trouble had to do with the largest size being a tiny bit too small, and the silicon being too rigid, yet slick, so they left small airgaps and were easy to remove. I tried using some foam tips from a third party, but their large was more of a medium, and never came close to a snug fit.

Like Michael above, as an experiment, I dug around in my ear-tips from my Shure's and tried their rubber tips which are about the same size as Apple's large tips, but made of a more pliant and slightly sticky rubber.

OMG, what a transformation. Suddenly the sound blossomed, the bass became rich and well balanced, and the "top-heavy" sound was totally mellowed into a rich, well balanced and incredibly detailed presentation.

Make no mistake, these are the best 'phones under $200 I have ever heard. The bass is deep and warm, very detailed, and totally lacking fuzz or buzz that I can hear in the Sennheiser set. Follow Michael's advice, and look at getting tips from a better headphone. The trick is it has to have a soft rubber base that can expand over Apple's slightly larger stub. Some tips, like the Shure foam tips, have a rigid plastic sleave in the tip to keep it's position correct, and these won't expand over the larger Apple posts.

Pros Nice elegant design, small, Tweeters are great.

Cons White color makes them dirty really fast, They are made from the same cheap thin cables as the stock, THE BASS was just dissapointing.

Summary For $79 ... They are not worth it, I pretty much bought them for the MIC so I can use VOIP on my ipod touch, but a week after I got them my local electronics shop was selling these extensions cable that can attach to any headphones and it has a clicker and a MIC for $12.99. So for $79 NOT WORTH IT !

Pros Volume control was a nice idea, if redundant and unnecessary.

Cons Minimal acoustic protection, so you hear too much besides your music. Really poor handling of lower frequencies, very tinny - much worse than former Apple IE's. Fit isn't snug even in the large size. Yet somehow it's 2X the price it was before.

Summary I bought these because I liked the former Apple IE's which were discontinued, but these are worse than their ancestor. Before, I could say that the Apple IE's were some of the best earphones I knew of, especially at the price ($39 for those, unlike the $79 for these). They didn't have great bass but it was pretty good and you could adapt, and the other frequencies were better. Best, they fit snugly and blocked out a lot of ambient noise so you could hear your music a lot more clearly at lower volumes.

This revision has much worse handling of lower frequencies, fits poorly, and is twice the price. I am going to return these and try to get some old Apple IE's on eBay.

Pros handy remote/mic, good sound (except the bass),

Cons sensitive cord, poor bass, not worth it for the price

Summary These headphones have great sound quality (you can hear every instrument/sound in a song). The remote is also very handy, especially when walking around. Although these are some good pros, the cons outweigh them. The cord is very sensitive to movement, so when moving around and listening to music you will most likely hear a ruffling noise from them. The bass on these headphones is also not that great. I have to set my ipod's eq to bass booster just to get a sub par bass sound from songs. Finally, for $30 i bought a pair of sony in-ear headphones and compared to the apple ones (aside from the remote), they are better.