The famous deal-hunting site SMZDM has a few headphone holy grails: Creative IE3, Creative Air, Creative Live2, AKG Q450, and whatever else I can’t remember. Basically, every time there’s a JD.com audio coupon, these earphones get trotted out and recommended, until almost everyone has a pair—it’s practically a recurring segment. As for the sound quality of these headphones, not many people actually talk about it seriously. Based on my own experience, I can only say some of them aren’t really for the masses. The typical one is the Creative IE3: its sound is too treble-heavy, the bass is just sad, and plenty of people who bought it hoping for thumping bass are probably disappointed. Another Creative product, the Creative Air, has been tagged as a “female vocal poison.” Oh great, female vocal poison again. After the last Phiaton, I thought I was done with female vocal poison, but people keep making the same mistakes. This time I got a 100-off-400 coupon, and my hand slipped and I bought the Creative Air, because the IE3 had already been taken by someone else. I have to give JD.com credit here: they deliver even during Spring Festival, and efficiently too, though the courier guy told me after delivering this that any order placed today would have to wait until after the holiday.

I’m the kind of guy who feels like something’s missing without BGM, so I need music with me in all sorts of situations — whether I’m alone for a long stretch or just trying to wall myself off for a while. Anyway, this habit started back in middle school when I began listening to the radio. In high school I got my first MP3 player, a Walkman perfume-bottle model. I honestly can’t say exactly when I started inexplicably chasing sound quality. Anyway, once I had a job and money, I accumulated a bunch of slightly more audiophile-ish gear — players, sound cards, headphones, earphones. So this time I’ll talk about the three IEMs I’ve actually been listening to: TF10, ER4P, and Creative IE3. I really hate using baffling vocabulary when describing sound quality — half those terms I can’t even feel the meaning of myself. So, as the title says: no mysticism, just impressions. Source: Sony F807, all music in FLAC.