I have no idea why I didn’t start listening to them before, because they’re actually pretty damn awesome. I’ve so far listened to over 100 tracks in the past couple of days (as you can see from the screenshot from Last.fm below), and I must say, they are excellent! I’m up to the 1993 album, Songs Of Faith And Devotion, and I’m not stopping! 
Give them a listen yourself on Spotify and iTunes. 
Published on
5 October, 2009.
Tags: Bass, CX300, Earphones, Excellent, Headphones, iPhone, iPod, Movies, Music, Precision, Sennheiser.
The majority of my music is listened to at home, using my speakers, and I don’t use headphones/earphones very often. I generally only use earphones when going out for a while, or for watching movies late at night. Up until last week, I’ve been using Apple’s rather “meh” iPhone headset. They’re okay, and they do the job, but they sound very tinny, they lack bass, and they always fall out of my ears if I do anything other then sit deadly still.
To be honest, my headphone and earphone history is quite easy to remember. Pretty much: Generic Sony earphones -> more generic Sony earphones -> “sport” Sony earphones (they were yellow, how could I say no? 
) -> some random generic headphones -> iPod Nano 1G earphones -> Logitech USB Headset (which I still have, for if I ever want to use it with Skype or something similar on my PC) -> iPhone 2G earphones -> iPhone 3GS earphones….and now, Sennheiser CX300 II Precision earphones.
So basically, Fr3d and Acksaw were discussing earphones on IRC, and the CX300s were suggested, so I took a quick look and noticed they were only £14 on Play. Not bad. So, I bought a pair. I’ve had them a few days so far, and they’re fantastic. Compared to the iPhone ones, they’re amazing. They sound much clearer, you can hear all parts of the music, and they have ACTUAL BASS! The iPhone earphones didn’t even understand what bass was. These do, and they do so very well. I’ve watched several movies with them so far, and a few episodes of CSI Miami, and compared to the iPhone ones, they just have so much more bass and clarity, it’s amazing. No surprise they’re the best sellers on Play.com. You can pick them up yourself here.
Pros:
- Comfortable to wear, small, and neat.
- They sound fantastic, have plenty of bass, and are loud too if you want them to be.
- Comes with different sized thingies for your ears, and a small pouch for when you’re not using them.
- Cheap in price, but not in quality.
- Cable wraps around the back of your neck to go to the right ear, which I find is quite nice.
Cons:
- The Eco packaging is nice, but good luck getting it back together again easily.
- The cable is a rather annoying stringy-type one, that tangles up quite easily. I don’t like this. I like the cable like the original iPhone had – it didn’t curl up all the time and just sat there.
- When wearing them, you go deaf. Seriously. They’re not noise cancelling, and on a plane they’d probably be pretty “meh” at doing so, but it would be nice to be able to hear someone speaking to me in my own home.
- Doesn’t have a mic or controls for the iPhone, however, there is an almost-identical model with these features, the Sennheiser MM 50 iPhone.
So, yeah. Go and buy some yourself if you’re still using the crappy iPod ones.
Best album I’ve heard so far this year. 9.5/10 I’d say. He’s back!
Published on
19 February, 2009.
Tags: Blu-ray Disc, Crack, Digital Rights Management, DRM, Hardware, Illegal, iTunes, Music, Purchased, Restrictions, Software.
Where DRM works (and I don’t mind it):
- Software activation on stuff like Windows. It’s never gotten in the way for me, and nor for anyone else who’s legitimately purchased their copy. It doesn’t work all that well, since there’s pretty much a crack out within days of the software’s release, but for the consumer, it’s fine.
- DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. It still doesn’t work, since it’s cracked so easily, but it doesn’t get in the way of the average consumer. I can lend my copy of The Dark Knight to 100 people, and it will still work on their player and mine.
Where DRM does NOT work and is a huge failure:
- Music. Why should I pay £7.99 for something that I can get for about £1 extra in a store, which doesn’t have DRM, has physical media as well as cover art, can be ripped in a lossless format, and allows me to play it on any device out there? I shouldn’t. DRM on music is even more stupid when you consider you can get lossless music off bittorrent, and save yourself £7.99 in the process. Oh, and since the iTunes Music Store has gone DRM-free, I’ve actually started purchasing music off it.
- DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. Yes, I already said I don’t mind it, but seriously? Why even bother putting DRM on BDs? Slysoft have cracked the uncrackable BD+ protection within months of it coming out. And it does harm the average consumer too – I’m sure many people have purchased a BD drive only to find that the discs won’t play because their monitor doesn’t support HDCP…so why even put it on there in the first place?
- Games. The new form of product activation on games like Spore…well, it doesn’t work. Why? Because pretty much every game released in the past year WITH this form of protection has been cracked within a week. In fact, with Spore, it was cracked and released about two days before the release of the game itself. So, again, it doesn’t work and all it does is get in the way.
So, DRM sucks. The end. And for the record, I downloaded Spore and tried it out. It sucked. Still, on the upside, I saved myself £30 and got a DRM-free copy that I can use whenever I want and as many times as I want. 
