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.

Back when I bought my first pair of balanced-armature IEMs, the UE TF10, I had this weird sense of superiority. Because everywhere online said BAs were the new tech, wiping the floor with dynamic drivers in every way — superior resolution, badass multi-driver setups, vocals so poisonous it hurt, etc., etc. Looking back now, BAs aren’t all that. Not that those strengths are bad, I’m just saying that when I listen to music with BAs, something always feels missing. Sure, the Focal (Phonak) female vocals were poisonous, sure the ER4P’s treble was transparent, sure the UE900 had strong instrumental expression — but it never quite had that flavor. A while back I was eating with a friend. The restaurant had a small stage, and a resident singer was up there performing “Love Like a Tide.” After that song, I think I understood what BAs lack. What’s missing is that sense of atmosphere, like sitting in a tiny bar and feeling the music reverberate through the space. BAs are too cold and clinical — that’s when the dynamic driver needs to step up. The Sennheiser IE 80 is probably a pretty good dynamic.