Once you go black...

So I've owned my itouch for a little over half a year now, since Christmas 07. I've been very pleased with the quality of it... it helps me with everything, especially during school... from keeping me occupied during boring lectures (games, music, and especially the YouTube feature) to checking my email on the fly (like i really need that... for facebook mobile DUH hahahhaa). However, recently i've had negative experiences with the earbuds that came with my itouch. I've had the front ear piece come off and i had to have it glued back on about 3 times now. I must say i abuse them a little... keeping them in tight pants pockets and sometimes dropping them (which shouldn't be too bad, but they've accumulated a couple scratches...), but overall nothing serious... and as lots of other ipod/mp3 owners i blast my music from time to time... which they SHOULD be able to do...

The main issue is that overtime the quality of sound coming from them has reduced significantly... for example... i use to just have to keep the volume level of my itouch at about half-way... or a little higher if i wanted to drown out outside noises. Now to get a pleasurable sound i have to pump the volume level to about... 3/4 and more if i want to drown out noises... To say the least I am very disappointed... but i guess you could say i expected it to happen... as my ipod nano experience, the bass in the earbuds blew out and the quality lessened just like these itouch ear buds... As much as apple ipods are praised for what they do... they are sadly lacking in the ear bud department. Not do they have poor design, but they just die too quickly!

Now before i got my itouch i had something called a gigabeat... which was similar to the ipod video (first generation). It held 30 gb of music or videos, but was under the windows media player OS (horrible at that, but able to be dealt with). It came with ear buds as well, and i must say as normal as the gigabeat ear buds look they are actually quite different. This picture should be a good example.


Ok so i'm sure you can see the apple ear buds... then there's the gigabeat ear buds. Now the main difference i should point out is that the apple ear buds have the whole circle surfaced with where sound would come out... ok understandable since not everyone puts ear buds in their ear the same way? ok... but then when you look at the black ear buds you see that only half of the ear bud has the sound uhhh 'vents' i guess you could call them haha... The half sound vented area corresponds to each ear's inner side... this causes all the sound go through that area causing a higher quality sound as well as higher quality bass that an apple ear bud could provide... this design makes SOO much more sense because usually (with apple ear buds and others alike) half that sound vent is pressed against your inner-ear skin... which suppresses some of that lovely sound... with the gigabeat ear buds you get FULL sound with amazing bass. More over they suppress sound to the outside... so unlike those who blast apple like ear buds (and everyone can hear when passing by) the gigabeat ones dont let out as much sound, but they still do.

One reason why the gigabeat ear buds are better is because that they have a stronger magnet inside them (which is the basis of the sound production in ear buds). I totally forgot i had the gigabeat ear buds till about a week ago, when i got fed up with the poor sound level of my apple ear buds (i noticed my right ear was lower than the left, not pleasant). Now i use them instead of the apple ones. I don't know if there are other companies that sell similar type ear buds like the gigabeat's, but i strongly recommend the 'type' that i explained/seen in the picture. I personally don't like those 'noise canceling' ear buds (that like reach into your ear)... they make you look weird imo.

Hope you enjoyed reading,

DY