These are amazing regardless of price. The sound is very likable, energetic, and fun while staying balanced and with natural timbre. The bass has nice impact, just the right amount. And it has decent extension. It is very on time and snappy. Really some of the best bass I've heard from a headphone under $300. The midrange is actually pretty forward sounding, right in line with the bass. It has a lot of detail and sounds natural. There is some cloudiness and fog in the mids, but not from being recessed. If anything they start to sound shout-ey at higher volumes. The treble is rolled off very early and not really detailed at all. The treble is there but stays in the background and never does anything special. But at least they don't fatigue your ears. The soundstage is very very good for an IEM and provides lots of depth and shape. The soundstage and imaging is a big part of what makes these headphones detailed. Everything is placed in a certain spot so your brain can then recognize a sound is being played based on location. This headphone made me realize how much a proper soundstage and phase response makes a big difference. 
 
What I like best about this headphone is its very easy to see the whole picture, all the details going at once and in sync. My brain finds it easy to psycho acoustically comprehend the sound. With the 8320, its like being in a helicopter high above a forest, seeing every tree and getting a vast picture of what the forest looks like overall. With the DT48, its like being on the ground with a microscope, seeing and smelling each tree up and personal.
 
A quick word on the rest: Stock tips suck, they kinda look cheap and cyborg like. The comfort is good enough for me. Isolation is pretty weak, not much to speak of but it does offer a tiny bit. It improves little with better tips. The sound will improve a lot, better bass response and an even more full sound. 
 
I just think these are good sounding headphones regardless of price. They could have changed the tangle prone cable, color the casing, different tips, put a logo on it, and sold it for $100 and I would still buy it. But I do hope they stay cheap. I beleive that eventually, the emerging high end, budget IEM and headphone market from china will dominate this industry. I mean, most headphones don't cost much to make. If you can make a headphone sound like this with dirt cheap materials, then your in business.
 
 

Hello everyone. Tonight I will be reviewing the Bose Around Ear headphones and directly comparing them to my MS-1. 

The reason Im doing this review is because Bose gets alot of hate around here. Yes, there will always be better for your money. But I bought them because I was curious, and to be completely honest, Ive always kinda admired the Bose sound signature. That being said, I have nothing against Bose at all and this review is completely unbiased. 

I burned in the headphones with 100+ hours of pink noise, listening every couple of hours for changes. When I first listened to them right out of the box, I was unimpressed. The bass was quite exaggerated and peaky around 60hz, the mids were distant, and the highs didnt extend far at all. I let them play the pink noise and they started to change after a couple hours. By the time they hit 30 hrs, the bass settled down alot and the peak started smoothing out. The mids were becoming more and more alive as bass got tamer and the highs started extending more. The soundstage was getting bigger and imaging was getting more precise. 50 hrs, not as much change. Maybe less peaky and more mellow bass. The soundstage sounded the same width, but imaging got better. 75 hrs, again, just slightly smoother response, mabey better highs, clearer mids. After 75 hrs, it didnt really change much to speak of. These things changed alot during burn-in, especially after 24 hrs. 

The best way to describe the Bose Around Ear sound is "fun". It does have a dark sound signature and bass is pronounced, but it isnt as sloppy and overpowering as alot of people say. Out of the box, maybe it is. But even though this headphones bass is exaggerated, I can still hear the midrange and inner detail of the music (which is contrary to other reports). These actually arent too far off from my MS-1 as far as detail, everything is there in both phones. And actually, alot details come out stronger and more pronounced on the Bose. Things like ringing timbre of cymbals and even the notes themselves come out quite rich and strong. So rich and creamy in fact, it dosent sound real. The big, big difference between the MS-1 (or other audiophile stuff) and Bose was the MS-1 sounds more realistic, natural and transparent to what was on the recording. The Bose on the other hand has an artificial tone to it. Male voices sound more masculine than life. Bass impact is very strong but not true to the real instrument. Bass guitar sounds too warm and the double bass is somewhat sloppy but still acceptable. One good thing is they extend down to 30hz or so before noticeably dropping off, which is better than my MS-1. The midrange has the tonality of a $20 Sony with certain (but not all) instruments, but is much more detailed. Treble is sweet sounding but dosent extend far enough and sounds a little exaggerated and fake. Everything just seems "enhanced" with extra warmth and richness to make almost any recording sound powerful and enveloping. 

Belive it or not, I can recognize the notes and frequencies of the sounds better with the Bose, which would make them good for transcribing. For example, I hear every note of a guitar solo quite well on the Bose. Every note that comes out sounds rich and authoritative. The MS-1 has a more transparent and cold tone to it but is actually more correct and brings out true richness and impact when the recording calls for it, which is something the Bose cant do for crap. 

The MS-1 are better in almost every respect. But these 2 headphones couldent be more different from eachother. The engineers had different goals in mind. I think Bose went for the unrealistic sound on purpose, and in my opinion did a good job at it. They even say the purpose of their products is to simulate the live sound experience. I haven't been to a concert in a long time, so I dont know about that. What I do know is this singers chest and lungs must have grown bigger when I threw on the Bose. 


I did a blind test on my Dad between the MS-1 and Bose (he knows nothing about audio and dosent care). He said every time that the Bose sounded better. And it dosent suprise me because most average people like that bigger than life, Rock EQ type of sound. Nothing beats the true to life, high fidelity audiophile sound. But in my opinion, Bose did a good job of creating a "pleasant" sounding headphone for the un-educated mass market. They are extremely comfy and lightweight, look cool (IMO), and you can get them locally with ease. That is why they are popular. They sound great without sounding like the real thing, and that is something people can tap their toes to no matter how awful the recording. 

Im returning them tomorrow for a full refund. I cant afford them and I wouldn't use them much anyway. But the Around Ears have my respect and id consider buying them if I wanted a purposefully artificial sound. I like the music that comes out of them, but they just dont sound "right" like my MS1. They do, however, have a unique personality that is enjoyable in its own right. You cant really set a price on something that is supposed to be different than the competition because you have nothing to compare them to. Like I said, these are not audiophile headphones and they dont try to be. Take it for what it is, dont flame me about it.

BTW: Take a look at the pics. The drivers are angled in the earcup, kinda like ultrasones.

First off, there are counterfeit Bose IE flooding ebay like crazy, so buyers beware. It would be smart get yours from an authorized dealer. (In my case, I bought them used from a local friend who got them at best buy). 
 
The comfort is great and I dont find them falling out of my ears. No isolation to speak of, the tips dont seal, and they arent designed to isolate. The build quality uses relatively cheap plastics and thin wire, but everything seems tight fitted and sturdy. Havent broke on me yet...   
 
These headphones have a little circuit board near the headphone jack. It is probably some form of passive EQ or an overload protection of some kind, I dont know. Bose is known to use processing and psychoacoustic enhancements, and its part of the reason Bose products sound the way they do. 
 
The sound of the Bose IE is very strange but good.  Bose sounds good, much like how fast food tastes good. But fast food isnt even quality or real food. Its tasty junk. Audiophile stuff would be a 5 star restraunt in comparison. 2 very different and uncomparable things. 
 
The sound is very colored on purpose, to get a sound thats pleasing to the ears and mind. Bose products tend to give the impression that the music your hearing is a live performance or your in a concert hall, where the room your speakers are in becomes a part of the sound intentionally.  
 
The IE has a big bass emphasis, and a generally powerful type sound that pushes lots of air, but its somehow unharsh and relaxing at the same time. Its got a big midbass hump, which makes it sound tubby. You can really feel the impact of a kick drum, and the rumble of a low bass tone. The bass extension goes right down to the 20 hz region. The bass is loose sounding and is not fast. It does sound muddy, loose, and slow.  
 
The bass almost never sounds distorted, even if the recording calls for it, because the distortion is blocked out by a layer of mud. 
 
The midrange is smooth sounding with no edges, everything seems softened but powerful. Lots of added warmth and a suprising amount of detail, its not too recessed. But there is a strange layer of fog to the mids, which I will try to explain:  It sounds like a heavy blanket covering the musicians, its a murky type of sound that I cannot explain. Whats weird is this layer of mud does not limit the details. What it does is cover up distortions, clicks and pops, compression in mp3's. Then, the headphone somehow amplifies the "desirable" details to cut through through this mud. Its like all the details, naunces, and ambience effects are forced out of this headphone with brute power and impact, pushing lots of air. These impact induced details are effective at letting you hear low level imformation, and the detail seperation is very good. But the timbre sounds murky, too warm and muddy. And the flaws of the recording are smoothed over. The midrange does sound rich and lush, very easy to listen and follow the music, but just wrong.
 
The muddy mids are not caused by the bloated bass necessarily. Its caused from the mids themselves. Its like the mud was designed to hide flaws in the recording, like the harsh "sssss" in a mic, or the loud "pop" of a snare. This makes for a pleasurable sound, but ultimately innaccurate.
 
The treble is the worst part of these headphones. The extension is very weak and there is no detail to the highs. It seems again Bose tried to hide the flaws of the recordings and low bitrate MP3's by putting the highs through a layer of mud and cutting off the extention early. The treble deffinitly takes a back seat to the rest of the spectrum. It does not have the authority to match the bass and mids and purposefully masks distortions, even if it is on the recording. On the plus side, there is no 7-8khz treble peak found in most headphones.
 
The soundstage is spread wide left to right (for an earbud), but every thing seems stretched out and imaging is not very good. It does a good job at putting the voice directly in the middle without the "hole in the head" effect some headphones have.  
 
The musicality is very good IMO. These headphones add much of its own personality and emotion to the music. It is purposefully colored to sound pleasing with any recording. Anything sounds good on these, and always sounds the same. It does this by hiding flaws in the recording, via the mud, then amplifying the desirable sounds. The "desirable" sounds are what Bose thinks you should hear, based on their psychoacoustic research. Its an artificially engineered sound that is addicting. I tend to ignore the faults of these headphones simply because they draw me into the music so much. 
 
 Another thing I noticed is its easy for my brain/ears to put all the details together to complete the "story". It makes you concentrate on the music as a whole. Other headphones feel like your analyzing  each instrument seperately with a scalpel. These headphones are great at letting you hear the pitch of each detail and notes being played, instead of the start and stop of a detail with nothing in between. 
 
This headphone makes it easy to listen to music in the sense that, it does the listening for you and its very easy to stay interested in the song, and follow it. Its a "consumer friendly" sound. I notice details on them that I dont on my other headphones, because they tend to exite certain things and amplify the good parts of the recording while blocking the bad. Even a telephone recording sounds really good on them, better than the actual telephone.  
  
 
I will be upgrading to the IE2 soon hopefully. I recommend these headphones for bassheads looking for bass slam and extention (not quality), and even non critical music lovers who dont really care about uncolored sound or flat frequency response, but still want something that sounds good.  
 
Most audiophiles will hate them, because they dont perform at all when it comes to: frequency response, speed, accuracy, transparency, micro detail, etc.. However, the average consumer will love the hyped up bass and artificially enhanced sound that is built into these headphones. Most average consumers, and even some folks at head-fi actually prefer a colored sound vs. a boring neutral sound. For those people, there is Bose.    

These headphones were not designed very well imo. There is a noticable seal problem. The headband has zero pressure and the earcups swivel in the wrong direction. When you press on the earcups for seal, the sound gets much better.
 
As a result, the sound is suprisingly bass light for a skullcandy. The mids are Ok in this price range and the soundstage is pretty good. The highs are terrible though. Very plasticy, peaky.  
 
Compared to other department store headphones, like Sony, JVC, AIWA, KOSS etc.... These sound about the same level as a AIWA but not a KOSS or Sony. I think the packaging, looks, and comfort take too much away from the potential sound. 
 
Mine are modded and sound worlds better than stock. If you own a par, atleast check out my mod thread: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/472522/skullcandy-lowrider-mod
 
If you are looking for WalMart headphones, look elsewhere at Sony, Koss, JVC. These are very mediocre unmodded, even for only $20.

  These headphones are not really meant for casual music enjoyment or pleasure. They are more of a tool for critical listening, or monitoring.  
 
 The DT48 sound like how water tastes. Very plain, clear, tasteless, boring but still technically correct and perfect. Sennheiser and Denon are like a tasty Coke or Pepsi by comparison. The soda tastes great on first sip. Water (DT48) is boring and can be gross depending on the container its held in.
  
The DT48 really takes time to mentally burn-in because they lack the toe tapping "party" factor that most headphones have. They don't attempt to help you enjoy the music, and it actually can be a challenge to listen to and interpret the music with them because of their lighting speed. They can seem claustrophobic sounding with background music. The DT48 require full concentration, high volume, and critical listening skills or else the musical groove gets lost. Your brain has to be in "monitor" mode.
 
 The DT48 are extremely neutral and uncolored. They sound machine flat, not human ear flat, neutral instead of natural (but can sound extremely natural with good clean recordings). The sound is very normal and plain, with no glamour to the sound. They can sound very bad with certain recordings, and simply brilliant with others.  
 
 The sound is very refined and precisely tuned, like a headphone that's been in production for over 70 years.  Beyerdynamic said in a nutshell: "The sound of the DT48 sets the reference for which other headphones can be judged". This does not mean they are the best sounding headphones in the world. Instead they are a standard headphone that is just a reference, so that other headphones can be  interpreted. They are a great tool for when I'm doing headphone reviews. These headphones have taught me what the music should sound like. 
 
They are used everywhere from studios, to audiologists, acoustic investigators, research facilities, sound labs, and now by audiophiles. They will never be available at Best Buy, your average consumer hates their sound.
 
 
 Bass: Only goes to 55 or 60 Hz before rapidly dropping off. The bass is very precise in timing and never blurred or sloppy, never bloated. The attack is ultra fast, double bass kicks sound great on them. They have almost no decay in the bass, which is partly why they are bass light. There is no mid bass emphasis at all. You can hear the bass timbre decently and it comes through very clean and undistorted, ultra low harmonic distortion. No ear cup resonance, rattling sounds or air whistling. Just very pure tone. There is almost no slam to the bass. You can hear the bass but not feel it. Its a little 1 dimensional due to lack of ultra low sub bass. The bass is like listening to very very high end bookshelf speakers, but without a sub. Not much LFE, and not a lot of air/pressure being pushed by the drivers. You could say the bass takes a back seat to the rest of the sound, but it can be full and engaging with the right recording. In fact they are capable of going deep when the low end of the recording is emphasized to begin with. It will tell you if the recording is bass heavy or not.   
 
 Mids: The best part IMO. These headphones are tonality and timbre monsters. Voices, guitar, electronic sounds, piano, sax, everything sounds right. No matter the singers name, synthesizer effects, guitar amp used, mic, it all gets presented consistently fair and with correct tonality and timbre. By far the best mid range Ive ever heard. The "impact" and physical force of the sound waves  is quite small. It has the loudness but not the intensity. Its like plugging in a usb cable straight to your brain and listening to the music like that. You can hear the start and stop of every detail, and the microphones clicking on and off, extremely subtle recording flaws. Basically, the mid range is absolutely effortless. 
 
Treble: Unfatiguing yet present and not rolled off to my ears. Its in your face, very headphone like. It is not smooth sweet treble like speakers with a tweeter. There is tons of detail and speed. It is never harsh. I can listen to these headphones at high volumes with little fatigue. It extends further than my hearing does, which is good enough for me. And much like the mids, the cymbals sound very correct timbre-wise, and their is a lot of air and ambiance to the sound for a closed headphone. But again, there isn't much attack or authority to the highs and cymbals. This is probably why the highs are unfatuiging. It will reveal bad mp3's with ease. There is still a treble spike around 8khz that is very typical for almost any headphones. 
 
Soundstage and imaging: The soundstage is somewhat small but is extremely precise and is capable of depth and space, again when the recording calls for it. I find other headphones stretching out the soundstage too much and trying to reproduce a soundstage similar to loudspeakers in a room.. The DT48 has a more traditional headphone soundstage that is very accurate. It feels like a small orb engulfing the outside of your head. Most other headphones make you feel like your in a permanent artificial concert hall or club. With the DT48, every instrument/sound has their own little space and shape to it, and imaging is pinpoint accurate and sensitive.
 
Other thoughts: It seems like the amount of detail is unlimited, almost too much sometimes. Its not the fake type of detail like treble happy Grado's, it does not force anything down your throat. The midrange is done right and the most critical frequencies are crystal clear. The sacrifice is in the bass response. The sound in general has little personality/musicality, and that's why they are so uncolored, so honest. They just display the recording as is. The sound is so "normal", but in a perfect crystal clear way. 
 
 
 A lot of people are put off by the lack of slam and impact in the bass, and the lack of musicality. The thing is, they lack personality and musicality without sounding cheap or colored (which is actually their charm). It just lets the recording display its own musicality (or lack thereof). As far as bass, you must remember they are headphones, not speakers. Headphone drivers are very small and cannot move much air to begin with, so cannot do bass like a real sub. In order to make headphone drivers sound like a subwoofer, you have to skew the frequency response and add purposeful reflections and resonances in the ear cups to make up for the loss of rumble. Most headphones do this to simulate a real sub woofer. The DT-48 does not attempt to reproduce a sub woofer or real kick drum. If you want to simulate the feeling of a sub, I recommend the DT770. If you EQ the bass up on DT48, it ruins the sound IMO. They are "bass light" for a reason. 
  
  If you want to be transported to the live event and feel like your physically "there" with the band, like your seeing them live, the DT48 is not for you.
 
 The DT48 instead shows you what was recorded with the microphone. When you compare different recordings, sources, amps, the DT48 really shows you what is going on. It is chameleon like, and can be overly recording-dependent for many people. After all, they are studio monitors. One recording will sound completely different from the next with these. Very accurate.   
 
Comfort on these is not so great, not unbearable but a little bit uncomfortable compared to most headphones because of their clamping force and weight. They take some time to get used to. If your concerned with comfort don't get these. If you never really cared about comfort with headphones (like me), they are just fine.   
 
They are VERY picky about the fit and seal. If you wear a hat or eyeglasses while listening, or cover your ears with hair, wear your beanie, etc... you will be disappointed. They are IEM-like in regards to fit and seal. You gotta adjust them and wear them properly to actually get the right sound. Again, seal is critical with these. The pads will warm up over time and create a better seal the longer you wear them. With the DT48, its best to stay still, minimize movement, and just concentrate on the music instead of head banging. They require all the seal they can get.  
 
Isolation is pretty decent. The data sheet says 12db noise reduction. Not quite the level of a good IEM. But it blocks enough important noises such as your AC, light traffic noises, distant TV's in other rooms,  etc... When the music is on, disturbances are pretty minimal, and the other person usually has to yell (but not scream) to get your attention.  
 
As far as amping, they are not hard to drive power wise. But they really respond to better gear. A portable will drive them fine but will not do them justice. Source is the same. Crap in, crap out applies to the DT48 very much so, in both the amp and DAC. This does not mean you must spend a fortune to make them sound good, it just means they are a window to the recording and gear used. By the way, amping them does not make them bass monsters or anything. It just makes them better at what they are already good at. Don't waste your money on upgrades if you dont like the general sonic signature of them.
 
The sound of these headphones is not for everyone. Many new audiophiles are told by others to look for uncolored and flat response to achieve the best sound. These new people need to take a closer look at their priorities and what they are trying to achieve. Neutral is not always natural.  
 
If you want any and every song to sound amazing, do not buy these. They are tremendously honest. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I got these at Ross for $10. These sound alot like a crappy car stereo with subs hooked up. Lots of bass vibration and thump. Perfect for young kids or people who like that sort of thing.