Review on 🎧 Etymotic Research MC5 Noise-Canceling In-Ear Earphones by Pamela Beatty

Finally something that fits my ears well. If you have a small ear canal this is for you. I would even prefer a slightly slimmer fit. The level of detail in the sound reproduction is simply outstanding. The noise insulation is excellent. In fact, I would *not* recommend wearing them if you're caring for young children or doing anything that requires you to be aware of external noise occasionally. They insulate very well (I think it has to do with the fit and design to really fit the ear). I don't think these headphones make up for poor quality music recording or poor quality music playback hardware. I used them to listen to 4 different sources[1] MP3 player: iBasso DX50 (uses WOLFSON WM8740 192kHz/24bit DAC chip.)[2] MP3 player: Kenwood MediaKeg MG-G608[3] Dell XPS13 laptop[ 4] Universal Gigabit (circa 2008) iBasso desktop audio recordings at 256 kbps and higher sound best. fell off the etymotic like you're sitting in a clock. Sounds really good. Any music with a strong human voice (especially acoustic recordings) sounds very good. If you listen to Sarah Brightman or Alexandro Safina, you'll be able to appreciate the nuances in their voices that are otherwise difficult to discern. These Etymotic headphones isolate the different components of a musical composition really well. So for a strong vocal performance or a strong instrumental performance, they are just exceptional. Also, some artists create a noticeable depth between passages and it's good to hear that. Basically, if the recording is good and your player/amp stack allows it, you will hear the sound as if you were 20 meters from the performers. Etymotic's ability to deliver this level of clarity and detail is not for nothing a) you need a good quality recording b) my hearing aids [1], [2], [3] - so very good. But equipment [4] does not. So you won't enjoy sound if your computer/motherboard's audio chip is average, especially if your recordings lack base. In fact, these headphones do not improve the quality of listening to bad recordings or devices. .They aren't terrible in these situations, but you have to play around with software equalizers and have different settings for different types of bad shots. Because these headphones don't compensate for poor quality (so you have to use equalizers), I prefer the detail, clarity, noise isolation, and comfort of these headphones to anything else I've tried in the in-ear department. And in my opinion they perform better than some of my full-size headphones because the recording and player/amp electronics are good so far. I've noticed that some of my other headphones (the ones on my desktop [4] ) tend to compensate for this far below par audio processing gear, so I don't use the etymics there.