The only ear bud or "in-ear" type of headphones that will give you truly natural bass extensions are made by Shure, Ultimate Ears, Jerry Harvey, and Westone, and there is one by Monster [of Monster Cable fame.] These brands are all considered professional quality and can range in price from $99 to over $1000. The ultimate form of these are what is known as"in-ear monitors" and are most usually used with custom molded earpieces. The reason that bass is the range that is lost most is due to the physical length of the wavelengths needed for that frequency range, and the fact that the drivers in earbuds need to be so small. The typical consumer earbud, even those that cost over $20 re designed to be inserted as deeply as is comfortable into the ear canal so that the process of induction is utilized, thus restoring a better sense of lower bass sound. This has the consequence of isolating the ear from receiving sound from the outside at normal levels, and attenuates both ends of the frequency spectrum, thus making things sound like the old telephones. This makes it nearly impossible to hear our horn sound in anywhere near a natural perspective. A couple of possible solutions are to place a speaker directly next to your practice chair, or to only use the left ear bud and keeping the right ear open. Hope this helps, Paxmaha I used to write here about the joys of playing along with song collection books that have piano or orchestra accompaniment on CD. I mp3'd some of these accompaniments for portability. Lately, I began to use them with noise-isolating earbuds, so as to not fill up my house with loud piano playing, only loud horn playing.
These earbuds (Scosche, pretty good quality) eliminate most of the horn sound, so the volume setting for the accompaniment doesn't have to be so high. But the timbre of the horn seems very much stripped down - I might as well be playing a tin can. This simplified sound though makes it easier to hear certain qualities other than stunning lush tone <humor>, like intonation and quality of entrances. The experience is a little like wearing earplugs when you have to play in a dangerously loud environment, except for the accompaniment sound that you want to come through. Has anyone here experimented with this kind of isolation, find it useful, unuseful? David G. _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/paxmaha%40yahoo.com ________________________________ From: David Goldberg <[email protected]> To: The Horn List <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, January 31, 2010 4:13:16 PM Subject: [Hornlist] earbuds _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
