Shure SE530 noise-isolating headphones review

Average user rating

8.5

excellent

Average user rating from 4 users

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Shure SE530 noise-isolating Earphones user reviews

October 17, 2007

Posted by: Insight

"Perfect for me"

What I like:

The quality of the sound is immense with a decent recording.

What I don't like:

Price

Review:

Well after reading some reviews, one decided it was time to find out if the Shure SE530's were as good as people say. Firstly, I also bought and used the Sony NWA805 for the testing, which provides excellent sound and function.

The first questions you tell yourself after shelling out a stupid amount of money for earphones is they had better be mega, or else their going back. So you receive the box and all the junk inside, which is of high quality. I like the cable(s) and the look of the earphones, feels like quality. So I first pop them in after playing around with the foam inserts and compare the sound quality of the STD earphones (032 something from Sony) with these beasts. Hmm, the STD earphones sound better. What the ****, ************ was muttered as utter shock to how bad they were, making the music sound worse than STD earphones. OK, I’m new to this, so did some research and realised I'm an idiot, and the recording level is so poor you would expect this. So recorded some dance-trace tracks on lossless format from CD at 256 and 352 kpbs. With STD headphones on the 256 and 352 kpbs versions sound a lot better than my previous recording, however, I could not tell the difference between the two. I then with nervousness put the SE530's on, and hoped for god sake they outperform the Sony STD earphones. Firstly, on 256 kbps it was a shock, the quality was out of this world, but on 352 kbps it blew me away. Never heard frequencies like this before, the bass can blow your head off. What I like is changing the equaliser settings with these head phones on and hearing the immense changes and variations the SE530’s provide. For dance music they are perfect, and I mean perfect. For pop songs it's hard to tell the difference between 256 and 352 kpbs versions as the music is kind of static and less demanding. Well I have been listening to the SE530's for about 8 hours and they seem to be getting better or I'm appreciating the quality more, as I popped the Sony STD earphones in, and they now just disgust me with how bad they are. Problem is you can never go back and appreciate lesser quality earphones - be warned. Yesterday tried a friends SE4's - they aren't a patch on the SE530's, spend the extra, well worth it.