A few months back I sold my iPod Classic locally here in Zhengzhou. The guy who came to buy it was an audio nut too. While we did the deal we listened to each other’s earphones and talked a lot. I really liked his old jazz, and he preferred my Phonak vocal-focused pair. Somewhere in the conversation we got onto how people around us don’t get why we buy earphones. I said most people listen to my Audio-Technica im03 and ask why the hell this thing is so bad, the bass is completely gutless, and he said the same: for a lot of people, if the bass sounds good the earphone sounds good, which is exactly why that garbage Hi-PDA earphone got so many people saying it was great a while back. “Good listening habits matter. Bass isn’t everything.” I totally agreed with that line.