Well, in the last month I've learned a LOT about headphones.

I tried out 4 pairs of in ear monitors (IEMs) these were:

Westone UM1, Westone UM2, Futuresonics Atrio, Etymotics ER4S

What do they each sound like?

Westone UM1
Very midrange heavy. Severely recessed treble and bass. An unpleasant and fatiguing upper midrange peak at about 3khz. Usable with precise digital EQ to improve the frequency response. Clear and cohesive sound within the above limitations.

Westone UM2
Same as UM1 in mids and highs. Much more bass, due to 2 driver design, mostly in the mid bass, rather than exceptional low bass extension. 3k peak still there but less noticable because of overwhelming bass. Bass is muddy. Overall sound superficially more balanced than UM in that it only lacks treble rather than bass, but sound is actually less clear, possibly due to crossover. Responds less well to EQ than UM1. Overall not really usable.

Futuresonics Atrio
Absolutely huge amounts of quite nice sounding bass, which nevertheless totally overwhelm the rest of the music. Annoying peak at about 5k whilst less annoying then the 3k peak in the westones is still ultimately fatiguing. Smoother more natural sound in some ways than the westones. Overall not really usable.

Etymotics ER4S
A breath of fresh air compared with the others. Full frequency response. Very good detail and clarity. Bass light compared to many other more hyped headphones, however the bass is there, its clear deep, and correct, just not as emphasised as many music listeners might like. Overall sound is very clear, but nothing like as enveloping and involving as a good set of full size headphones.

The level of detail and clarity is similar of slightly superior to the (full size, closed, pro studio) K271s, but the overall graciousness of the sound and feeling of space and immersion in the music (soundstage) is not as good. The K271 has a little more bass.


Fit, comfort and design

Both westone earphones fit very neatly in the outer ear, with an angled tube that enters the ear canal, with your choice of sealing eartip (the supplied comply foams are excellent) in contrast the Atrio is a similar design but less successful, and the Etymotics are simply a cylinder, with a narrower cylinder extending from it to take the eartip.

The Westones have high quality cables that don't transmit much vibration, the Atrios are less good, and the cables on the Etys are very prone to transmitting vibration to the ear. This can be reduced by wearing the cables over the top of the ear, the westones are designed specifically with this in mind, and even the Etys can be worn with the cable in this way.

I didn't use the silicon flange eartips that came with the Etys and the Atrios, since they just don't work for me. The foams supplied with the Etys are very effective, but don't look like they would last long, and are not as comfortable as the comply foams supplied with the westones. I am now using my etys with the westone comply foams.

At first I found the Etys the least ergonomically successful, that they stuck too far out of my ear, and there was no obvious way to wear them correctly, unlike the westone which is made to be worn in a specific position. This was frustrating since they have by far the best sound. However I found after a while that if I got the angle just right, I could get the Etys deeper into my ear than the other phones, this meant that they stick out less, facilitates wearing the cable over the ear, and slightly improves the bass response. Worn deeper like this they are sufficiently unobtrusive to wear on stage, which is after all the whole point.

After much consideration, we in Pillowfish are going with the Ety ER4S for stage monitoring, rather than getting custom moulded in ear monitors. This is because I have had hard acrylic custom moulded musicians earplugs in the past and found them uncomfortable, and because we feel that the sound quality of IEMs is not as high as we had hoped, so we are treating any non-resaleable purchases with great caution.

However I did research custom moulded IEMs extensively, and top of our list are the Livewires, although I can't speak to the sound quality since I haven't taken the irrevocable plunge and ordered some. It may happen in the future.

Isolation from outside noise

Most full size high quality listening headphones (AKG K701, Sennheiser HD650 et al) are open back and provide very little reduction in ambient noise. I think this is silly, but apparently its easier to make them sound good that way. Some people like to be able to hear the doorbell or phone I guess. Recording studio tracking headphones like our K271 have to provide isolation because otherwise the headphone sound leaks into the performers mic.

In ear monitors seal the ear canal, its critical to the way they work, and so all provide very good ambient noise reduction, although the amount varies. The Et ER4S with the supplied foams eartips claim a ambient noise reduction figure of over 40dB, which is the highest of any earphone, and almost unbelievable. 20-30dB is much more typical. From experience I can confirm that with the ER4s fitted properly I have trouble hearing what someone is saying to me 3 feet away unless they raise their voice , even with the music off. Most other phones are not this extreme, and the amount of isolation varies depending on the eartips used and how good a fit is achieved.

Conclusions

* Full size over ear headphones offer far better sound quality than in ear monitors for a given price.

* my AKG K271 are really very good.

* I don't recommend less than full size headphones for any purpose other than performers who have to look like they are not wearing headphones on stage. The only exception to this is where extreme isolation from outside noise and/or small size are more important than sound quality, for example, I can see the ER4S being great for plane trips, although if you have space fullsize phones with good isolation like these are likely to also be an excellent option. For some reason some people think that wearing fullsize headphones in public is socially unacceptable. I don't really understand why.

* for people listening to our gigs on second life, I recommend a full size headphone. If you want to hear exactly what we are hearing while we play, get the AKG K271, if you want a cheaper option that still sounds good, there are a great many out there, and as I discover more about them I'll post here. If you don't like big headphones or are on a really tight budget the in-earCX300s remain an ok option. I really wouldn't advise any listeners to bother with in ear monitor or ear canal headphones, but if you must, then the ER4S is by far the best I've tried. However that amount of money put into fullsize headphones would get you a vastly better listening experience.

All that said almost any headphone will sound better than laptop speakers, speakers built into a screen, or cheapo computer extension speakers.

To go off topic of headphones, but relevant to listening to SL gigs - For those looking for a budget but high quality small speaker I highly recommend the Fostex PM0.4 , amazingly good sound for the price, although of course the same money put into headphones will get you a much better sound again.

Coming soon, more on full size headphones, I tried the AKG K701, and much to my surprise find that I can't recommend it, more details next time...

Headphones, listening to internet gigs, and in ear monitoring.

There's 2 reasons I'm thinking about headphones a lot at the moment:

1. I'm aware that many of our Second Life listeners are listening back on rather poor equipment, and that an acceptable budget pair of headphones is the cheapest way of getting a reasonable sound when listening to your computer.

2. Playing live on SL a lot and getting a really nice mix in my headphones, as well as using headphone monitoring a lot in the studio, has made me even more intolerant of the lousy sound so prevalent at "real life" live gigs with PA.

For tracking in the studio, and for our SL gigs, we in Pillowfish use AKG K271 closed back over ear headphones. These sound really nice. They have quite good reduction of outside noise, they don't leak sound into the mics, and they have a very open and natural sound. They compete well for sound quality with studio monitor speakers costing 10 times as much.

However, with a street price of around £80 they are what some might consider a little on the expensive side. Also, to sound their best they need a decent headphone amp, not just an ipod or laptop soundcard, and for RL live gigs for some reason it's just not done to wear large over the ear headphones.

So, I've been looking at other headphones, specifically budget sets I can recommend for our fans, and also in-ear phones that we can use live, to get the same results as we now get with the AKGs but without the phones being visible.

We recently got a couple of pairs of the ubiquitous Sennheiser CX300 ear canal headphones.

These are about the cheapest thing I could find that promised to not be utter garbage. In fact they are cheaper than a lot of garbage phones.

The CX300 are now available very cheap, we paid £12.50 per set for ours. We got them to try out the whole idea of ear canal headphones for playing live, and to see if they were good enough to recommend to our listeners.

here's what we found so far:

* they sound really amazingly good for £12.50 - I would certainly recommend them for anyone on a very tight budget, who wants to upgrade from nasty earbuds that came with their mp3 player, but can't afford any significant amount of money.

* they are sensitive to correct positioning in the ear, like any ear canal phone, if they are not fitted tightly you will lose bass.

* they are much less comfortable than good over ear phones, but not bad compared to other in-ear phones.

* the attenuation of outside sound is not as good as the K271

* the sound quality, while good for the price, clear and punchy, is not remotely in the same league as the K271. (I'd be alarmed if it was) The CX300 lacks a sense of stereo image and being immersed in the sound, they can be a bit harsh in the top end and fatiguing overall (though nothing like as bad as the real cheapos) and the detail in quieter sounds and background sounds is not there compared to the K271.

* the CX300 are only 16 ohms impedance. That means most headphone amps can't actually drive them correctly without losing bass. This has probably been done in order to suck more power out of tiny ipod headphone amps to get a decent level, at the expense of sound quality. Driving them with a good low impedance headphone amp will improve the sound a little, but if you have such a headphone amp why are you messing about with £12.50 headphones? (except as an experiment as I am). Bad design decision there. That said, they still sound good for the price even on an ipod or similar, so I guess Sennheiser sort of semi got away with it.

While I'm here I'll mention the other set of headphones I have tried recently, these are Helen's AKG K55 over ear phones. These are AKG's ultra budget closed phones. They cost about £15.

The K55s are in roughly the same league as the CX300, but with different strengths and weaknesses. The CX300 is cleaner and punchier with a subjectively more even frequency response, however the K55s are more comfortable, with better imaging and immersion, and perhaps a little less fatiguing, despite a somewhat zingy high end.

To be quite clear though, our studio K271s are miles better in absolutely every respect than either of the budget options. Nevertheless, either set of budget phones would be a large step up from listening to a streaming SL gig on cheap computer extension speakers, or (horrors!) laptop speakers.

As far as performing live - If I had to - I could play using the CX300s for monitoring, and if fed the right signal they'd probably even be a step up from a typical PA monitor wedge - but they are so far behind the studio phones that I'm used to, that I'm compelled to look further, as I always expected I would.

The next step would be high quality earcanal phones like the Etymotics ER4S (£150) and the next step above that would be custom moulded in ear monitors. (£600) I don't doubt that I'll go to the custom ones eventually, but the price is prohibitive for now, so I might look into the Etymotic products in the meantime. Watch this space.

pickup mounting on a Stephen Owsley Smith zouk

I thought i’d start this blog straight in with some info about how i mounted my lace sensor bronze acoustic magnetic soundhole pickup in my Stephen Owsley Smith bouzouki.

The problem with off the shelf soundhole pickups is that they mount on the soundboard, damping it, and secondarily that they block too much of the soundhole. For some time I have been mounting them in other ways, this is the latest. Firstly I mounted a RCA socket on the transverse brace that runs under the end of the fretboard like this:

this is wired up to the endpin jack.

Then I removed all the excess material from the pickup, including cutting off its plastic casing to make it as small as possible. I epoxied a piece of aluminium to the RCA plug, and attached the pickup to that with stickyfoam pads and a wood spacer to get it to the correct height…

and here it is installed:

the advantages of this system are;

* the pickup is easily removable it simply unplugs and the physical mounting and the electrical connection are achieved with the same object

* minimum soundhole blockage when installed and none when not installed

* only one small hole drilled in the instrument

* mounted on a part of the instrument that is not critical to the sound

There will be a piece of ebony veneer fitted on top of the pickup, to make it less obvious, it is a little steampunk as it is.

UPDATE:here is a pic of the pickup mounted with its ebony cover so it is less noticeable.

Similar setup on a Davy Stuart Zouk

Also I thought I’d add pics of the similar but different mounting system i have for the same sort of pickup on my Davy Stuart zouk. In this case the pickup was left in its plastic cover, and mounted in the traditional electric guitar manner with 2 screws onto a shelf made of a piece of angle aluminium that is bolted in using one of the bolts that secures the bolt on neck.

This was possible in the Stuart because it has a larger soundhole, so partially blocking it was less of an issue, is more heavily constructed so i was less concerned about weight, and has a bolt-on neck so the neck bolt was a ready made place to attach things.