Hands-on: Beyerdynamic Earbuds

Back when I’d just started university, I bought my first pair of in-ear earphones — an Edifier model, I think. Once I pushed them in, I discovered a whole new world.

Over time, “earphones” came to mean “in-ears” as an unwritten rule. After all, if a thing can’t even isolate sound, it just sounds bad, and the lows and highs are hard to get right too.

But people are fickle. Lately I’ve been fascinated by flat-head earbuds, because I dug out an old Creative Air, and its surprisingly wide soundstage caught me off guard. That’s when I realized flat-heads can do things in-ears can’t.

There aren’t many high-end flat-heads, and even if there are, they’re hard to track down. Luckily, Beyerdynamic Earbuds happened to put out an entry-level model, so I gave it a try — and it felt like discovering a new world again. How to put it… that slightly wider soundstage, bass that isn’t too cramped, paired with full mids, really gives you a different feeling when you listen in the dead of night.

Of course, I said the dead of night, because the weak spot of flat-heads is that the isolation is terrible.

The surprise from flat-heads reminded me of my first decent pair of earphones, the Sennheiser MX500. I think a lot of people had the same experience as me.

I remember it was high school. I found a pinned seller on TomPDA and bought a genuine MX500. I even remember the seller’s name — “Earphone Heaven” — a very cheerful older guy. After chatting, I learned he wasn’t really selling these; his main gig was playing the stock market… Oh, I just wonder if he’s still at it.

Online shopping was a pain back then. Taobao was still a mess, eBay was running auctions everywhere, and an earphone for nearly 200 yuan wasn’t a small sum for me. In the end, I snuck out during evening study hall, ran across the street to the ICBC ATM, and wired the money over.

The earphones didn’t arrive quickly — it took 5 days. Delivery wasn’t as developed then; I only remember EMS and SF Express.

My player back then was still the Walkman perfume bottle. I have to say, the first time I put the earbuds in with excitement, I was a little disappointed.

“This is a high-end earphone? Doesn’t sound any different?”

I’ve forgotten what no-name earphones I’d been using before, but I really couldn’t hear a difference at the time. It wasn’t until later, when I was hunting for music and found dedicated music sites, and stopped relying on Baidu Music search, that I downloaded a Jay Chou album at 192Kbps VBR — and finally noticed the sound quality had improved a lot. Maybe everything I’d been listening to was 96Kbps? Or maybe I’d just listened to the radio for too long in middle school.

But even now, I still don’t know whether that improvement came from the better source quality or from the earphones themselves.

But who cares — at least I got to enjoy better music.

So as time passed, the music quality on UKOO went from 192Kbps VBR to 320Kbps CBR. My demands for source quality kept rising, and sometimes I’d borrow a classmate’s CD and rip it to Atrac AAC with that garbage SonicStage for better quality. Then gradually, one night, I heard the bass elasticity in “Fa Ru Xue” was different from before, and later I found Westlife’s “You Raise Me Up” had fuller vocals. I started to understand some of the mystical parameters and gradually grasped the way of the audiophile mysticism. I also began to sense the power hidden in this MX500, and I often bragged to friends about my awesome earphones.

“Look, it’s Sennheiser!”

You know Sennheiser has a decent reputation.

But gradually… one day I noticed that the MX500, which had been with me for nearly a year, occasionally had noise in the low frequencies, like the diaphragm was torn.

It turned out the MX500 really was broken. I didn’t think about the warranty then — didn’t even know if there was one — and just bought that Edifier in-ear I mentioned at the start. I never went back, and drifted away from the world of flat-heads. After all, I always felt in-ears meant high-class, and flat-heads belonged plugged into a radio.

When I got this M&G replica MX500 and put it on, I felt a little lost.

Because I can’t remember what the MX500 that first moved me actually sounded like. Back then I had no comparison or reference — I just thought it sounded good. Listening now, it’s not really good. This replica MX500 has no character: a bit of resolution, a bit of highs, a bit of lows, a bit of mids — a bit of everything, a bit short of everything. No features, no fun, no… that feeling from back then.

A lot of people say this replica really does sound like the original MX500. Sometimes I doubt it. The MX500 I heard back then was really good, but playing “You Raise Me Up” again — whether Westlife’s or a cover — there’s just none of that feeling.

Rather, this earphone has a lot of shortcomings. It’s completely entry-level, just something to hear sound with…

That’s when I remembered I’d also listened to Christine Fan with these things, and it left a deep impression. I searched for ages but couldn’t find her songs on my hard drive anymore.

That’s when I realized: maybe the MX500 in my head stayed back in that era. The me now can’t go back, just like that song can’t be found.

Well, feeling old again.