Shure E2C Consumer Headphones

Product Rating
4.55 of 5
22 reviews

Price Range
$66 - $99

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Product Description

Summary

I' ve got e2g's, the black version.....
This is entry level hi-fi, you can hear where your mp3 music is compressed...
Your mp3 quality shoulb be at least at 256kb/s....

comes with 9 sets of fittings, putting them in requires a bit of practice...

Then it's time to enjoy

Strength

-perfect fitting
-in-ear, so good looks
-seals off, maximal music enjoyment
-reasonable price for earphones, great price for the quality
-2 year warranty, including CABLE

Weakness

-what do you say??? (sealed off)
-€99,- remaines a lot of money for earpnones...

Summary

Better than the E3C for the money. I bought both at Best Buy at the same time. About a $100 diff in price. I listened to the same songs with both, many, many times. I noticed they definately sounded different, but the E3Cs did not have as much bass and deaper tones, while the E2Cs sounded fuller on the low wnd of the spectrum. I fiddled around with some of the EQ settings and came to the conclusion that the E3s sounded more "tinny" and were slightly better at the high treble end, while the E2s were better at the low end and thus sounded more complete overall. I do not hesitate returning the E3s, although they did look nicer and were smaller.

Strength

great sound

Weakness

Bigger than E3c. Price.

Summary

A competent ear phone that is great for plane rides or when you just want to listen at reasonable levels when the environment is noisy.

One of the things that leads to fatigue on plane rides is that you have to increase the volume to overcome the din of the jet engines. These earphones should help that in two ways. 1) It is a decent headphone in terms of overall sound quality 2) It effectively blocks out sounds from the environment.

Comparisons:

My long time reference headphones are the Grado SR-60s. I have lived with these headphones for over 5 years. In this comparison, the source is a Sony SCD-775 5 disc carousel capable of SACD playback. However, in this comparison I have only played back redbook discs as my favorite music is on CD.

I will comment on the SCD-775 being warm in overall balance but very very revealing in the mids. Compared to the SACD Mods version which I also owned at one time, it is not as revealing nor as strong in the bass. Presentation on the SACD Mods player was more lean.

The Grados have deep bass missing whereby Orchestral crescendos have imacpt but no weight like the fundamental is missing. The Shure E2C, however, went deeper and has good impact. A good demonstration of this is the Deutche Grammaphone 4d recording of Firebird Suite, track 13. The Shures dug pretty deep and had good impact and in terms of depth, bested the Grados easily.

Moving up the scale, the Shures have good midrange transparency which can make the sounds of different instruments easy to distinguish.

The weakest part of the spectrum for the Shures is the treble. The Grados show this quite clearly. What is missing from the Shure's is the shimmer of cymbals. More importantly, the "AIR" around performers is significantly reduced compared to the Grados. While it may seem insignifcant, this is the very thing that gives so much life to music. It gives that breath of life to music which makes it alive. To give an example, one of my favorite singers is Norah Jones. She is technically gifted although not a "belter" type singer (loud like Celine can be). On the other hand, she has very good emotional transmittal and has a very intimate voice. Part of the intimacy comes from the breathiness of her voice. Grados capture this aspect while it is lost on the Shures. It is also very evident on flutes and even guitar if you listen for it. A loss of sense of breath going through the flute as it is played. For the guitar, the reverberent field around the strings is lost.

Given a choice of either deep bass or clean extended treble, I will take the treble. Therefore, at home I easily reach for the Grados everytime.

On the other hand, the Grados are not nearly as portable nor can they match the Shures in terms of isolation.

I must point out that one of the reasons I picked the EC2s are the stable load it presents.

I am very interested to hear the Etymotic ER6is for comparison.

Strength

Good isolation

I generally found the earphones to be comfortable and have not problem wearing them for hours. As you would expect, they were not as comfortable to the Grados but that is expected.

Weakness

Treble is suppressed and can tend to be shouty in the upper mids.

Summary

Great sound quality improvement over OEM phones.

Strength

I had used earphones by Sony and the earbuds include with my Creative Zen Micro Mp3 player. The earbuds would not stay in my ears and I had to crank up the sound volume to hear at the gym over other noises. I was concerned about gradual hearing loss, so purchased these for 1/2 retail on Ebay. It took about 2 weeks of trying the different included attachments before figuring out which ones fit me best and how to properly insert them. You will know they are in right when you cannot hear most external noises, but hear your own breathing and voice as though you have completely plugged your ears with your fingers.
Once this was done, the difference was amazing. Deeper bass and clearer overall sound allowed the use of lower volumes. These stay in my ears well once inserted and the extra long cord is perfect for my 6'3 ht.

Weakness

I takes a while to figure which attachments work best with your ears.

Summary

These headphones work wonderfully. Just wearing them cuts out a lot of noise, and when you have music going it's amazing. My iRiver's volume goes from 0 to 40. At 3, I can't hear people talking from 4 feet away. At 6, I can't hear them talking loudly or almost yelling. At 10 or 12, I couldn't hear someone screaming at the top of their lungs at me from 3 feet away (it was a test). This is great when you want to be free from distraction, but can be annoying when you can't hear the phone or the smoke alarm or whatever. Also, my parents are starting to get pissed that they can never get my attention. I tell them to stomp on the ground a couple times, that works pretty well. I'm not sure I'd recommend these for someone who lives in the city, since you couldn't hear a car horn or anything. I love the sound quality. I can hear everything, and I constantly find new things in my music that I didn't notice before. It has wayyy more bass than any earbuds I've used before (obviously). I've never used any really nice headphones before, so I can't speak for people who really know what they're talking about, but for anyone who is sick of their iPod earbuds the E2's are amazing. They're very small and portable, however, the case that they come with is kind of hard to use. You have to wrap them around this little plastic thing and then zip it closed. I usually just put them in my sweatshirt pocket or leave them around my neck. They come with hard plastic earpieces, soft rubbery earpieces, and foam earpieces. The hard plastic was very uncomfortable to me, so I tried the medium soft ones, and they worked perfectly. If you look at the directions for a second, you see how to put them in and you should be able to get a good seal. I let 3 of my friends and my brother try the headphones with the medium soft earpieces, and they all got a good seal with no problem and were amazed by the sound quality and noise reduction. If you can't get the plastic ones to work, you can always use the foam, which you compress and then let expand until they fit your ear. They're pretty comfortable, except that after an hour or so one of my ears might itch a little bit or need a slight adjustment. It's a little hard at first to get the wires to stay behind your ears, which is where they go for more comfort and so they stay better. After a few days, though, the cord gets sort of shaped to stay there. I like the way you tell the left headphone from the right one: the right one is half black and half clear, and the left one is all clear. It sounds weird but it works. So, after using them for about a week, I can't believe I ever used lame earbud headphones and I will never part with these Shures.

Strength

Cuts out all outside noise at far under 50% volume Great clarity and bass Compact and portable Many earpieces to choose from

Weakness

Can't hear people trying to get your attention Sometimes make me itch just a little Kind of pricy