Why did the K314P earbud climb to 1000 yuan? Back when I bought mine, it just sounded like a bright, airy earbud with a bit of a bass deficit. Though to be fair, I never listened that closely… I just figured: At this price, an earbud is only good for making some noise… Turns out the K314P made quite a name for itself with that noise. According to the various audio gurus, the K314P’s treble can match or even exceed the K3003—you know the K3003? The big hybrid flagship! And then it got discontinued… and nothing else reaches that treble height. So the price went up.

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.