Selection Guide

Rating the music reproduction of the earphone is a very subjective thing and I will not get into description of how they sound only how they reproduce music. I have been a musician for 50 years, playing jazz, big band,ancient music consorts with period brass, and woodwinds. My music collection is over 3 terabytes I have every sort of music you can think of. To test the UE500's I listened to several Big bands, John Philip Sousa marches, Jazz of numerous types, orchestral heavy metal, Orchestrated music, the ancient stuff, world music, and pipe organs both church and Wurlitzer, and New Age. Pipe organs are very hard for any audio transducer to reproduce The UE500's do a great job of it. The other musical genera sounded as it should having personally played a lot of this music I know what it is supposed to sound like. The real suprise was Mars Lasar his works sound fantastic on the UE500. An example of this is The track from "when World Collide" titled "Children of The New Age" was astonishing it has a children chorus singing, on my other earphones the vocal track is very muddy and hard to understand on the UE500 it is crystal clear. Pipe organ music is reproduced with very little low end distortions which can be removed using the graphic equalizer. The only complaint I have, and it is a very minor one is with the foam ear pieces they slide off of the earphones, hopefully they stay in your ears, but they can come off elsewhere when removed and would be lost. These foam earpieces are very comfortable they are made with the expandable foam. Mush them down, fit them in your ear, lightly hold the ear piece with a finger and the foam will expand to fill the space in your ear sealing out a great deal of external noise.

I can honestly recommend the UE500 for listening to any sort of music you like it will do a great job. I have purchased earphones that cost much more then the UE500's that didn't sound half as good. This one is a no brainer. 8^)


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This is an update to my earlier review: (3/21/2012)
There are problems. First the earpieces both the silicone and the foam come loose, hopefully in your ear. I have already lost 3 sets. The second is the insulation on the ribbon cables have become very stiff, so stiff as to make it very hard to keep the earphones from falling out, or keeping them in the proper position for the best sound. This is very irritating. These are still fantastic sounding but the lost earpieces and the stiff cabling has caused me to add yet another set of such phones to the earbud drawer to join the 20 or so that have already been discarded there. I have to change my recommendation to a purchase something else. 8^(

These are by far the best sounding earphones in the price range. The bass is perfect, not overpowering but can be felt. The mids are ok, very clear. The highs are beautiful, so much detail and so crisp. The highs make this pair sound like there are BAs in it. But again everything is perfectly matched and the highs are not overpowering. The only problem was the cable was thin and the logo on the earphones scratch off easily.

In the end these are probably the best iems you can get at this price range.