When it comes to buying earphones to listen to music, I’ve never considered myself an audiophile — just some poor bastard afflicted by OCD. In elementary school, I downloaded a song called 《爱就一个字》 from 商都信息港 at 33.6Kbps. It was only 3MB, 128Kbps if I recall correctly, and at the time I thought the sound quality was absolutely mind-blowing. Then in high school I bought Sony’s “perfume bottle” player and downloaded albums from Ukoo.net. 192kbps VBR was already considered good quality back then. I couldn’t really tell the difference, but one time I downloaded a 128Kbps song, gave it a listen, and something felt off. So I figured I’d buy a better pair of earphones. I saved up and got the Sennheiser MX500. Put them on and instantly felt I’d wasted my money: “This is no different from my old 10-yuan earphones!” I saw people online saying these had “good bass extension,” didn’t quite get what that meant, so I asked my classmate Lu Da. His answer: “Ah, that? It’s just the sub-bass effect, man. When it hits it’s not boom-boom-boom, it’s more like there’s a bit of echo and springiness to it — pong pong pong.” I sort of half-understood. Then one day one of the MX500’s drivers died, and I had to grab a stock earphone that came with a PDA. Maybe it was slightly better than the 10-yuan ones I’d used before. Put it on, turned on the music, and immediately something felt wrong. “How does this sound so different from my MX500?” And that’s how the tragedy began.

Back in high school, when I’d scraped together every last cent to buy a Sennheiser MX500 and plugged it into an iPAQ hx2412 to listen to Tony Daimoku with great relish, I’d already heard of Audio-Technica and was quite impressed by it. The reason wasn’t sound quality or anything like that — it was just that hearing the name made a triangle (the little steel percussion instrument I’d banged in elementary school music class) pop into my head. Later, as I sank deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit of audiophile mysticism, the idea that “Audio-Technica = female vocal poison” gradually dissolved into my brain. Honestly, I’d always wanted to try out just how poisonous the legendary Audio-Technica was for female vocals. Later I bought a CKM55 — no particular feeling on first listen, but after listening for a while, especially after switching to other buds later on, I realized what was good about it. That feeling of retaining both female vocals and bass at the same time was indeed nice. After that I kept wanting to get an Audio-Technica around the thousand-yuan mark, but Audio-Technica’s good stuff, including the CK100pro, can’t be had for a thousand yuan — too expensive, couldn’t afford it. Until one day my brain short-circuited and I bought Audio-Technica’s new product, the ATH-IM03, and my wish to “finally listen to a high-end Audio-Technica” was fulfilled.

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.