Anyone that knows me knows I'm sorta obsessed w/ audio technology. Headphones, stereos, pre-amps, amps... that sort of thing.

I already own a set of grado sr125 but with my new ipod shuffle, but for practical reasons I had to get a set of ear buds.

I had a pretty good reason for the In Ear Monitors (IEMs). I wanted to use them on the metro and while I was biking around. Most importantly they had to sound good cause I'm spoiled like that.

So I debated between the Etymotics er6i and the Shure e3c's for a long time w/ my audio-crazy friends. It came down to the fact that my friend GB was gonna buy the e3c's and I was gonna buy the er6i's. Purchased from buy.com these cans were $92 shipped.

I have to say that in the three days I've had these things:
1) My ears have gotten used to having silicon nipples shoved into them.
2) They sound great.
3) The level of isolation pretty much allows me to hide from the outside world.

The first worry was that they wouldn't fit. I have pretty small ears. And at first these cans are pretty uncomfortable. To get the best sound out of them you really do have to shove them almost the point that they touch your cochlea but once you master how to shove them in...

As far as sound quality goes: OMFG they're awesome. Nice and clean articulate highs, headful bass and that isolation.

These thing supposedly provide upto 32db of isolation... If you know anything about math, 32db is HUGE. Basically when you shove these things in you can't hear very much at all. I liken it to having your head underneath four or five pillows and underwater. Loud sounds will register to you, but conversations will be totally gone. This is a feature.

Overall I give these cans a 7. The "Shove-in-head-until-you-see-yellow" was basically why I rate these lower than they should. We'll see how I feel about these things in 2wks.

--- [a month later] ---

DAMNIT! I can't reply to these things if I'm the one that posted. BUG!

Anyways I did a dumb thing and got a shampoo and a haircut w/ these headphones still in my ears. Bad mistake. The headphones got really wet and after a couple of days all the sound in the left ear disappeared. I called in their customer support and asked if there might be a problem and the nice lady told me that "you probably have to replace the filters". I did and they're back to sounding groovy.

So I went back to the etymotic site and bought more filters and some new ear plugs and a case... that added $40 to the cost of these headphones but the quality has been worth it.

--timball