40$ Skullcandy vs Free Sansa OEMs vs Grado SR60

If its not already obvious, the Grado's win this head to head competition.

I love my Grado's I can't wear my Grado's out in public because they're not closed ended so ambient noise comes in loud and clear. Impossible to use on a bus. Sometimes I feel bad when I do wear them at a lab because they leak out noise just as well as it lets noise in. They're great in a quiet room but not so great for general use. They're cheap (70$) excellent headphones that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys music. If you're not satisfied with Grado's then you should go see an ear doctor. For urban use, I'd prefer the Sennheisers and a girl around school wears a nice set of Shure's. I hate/envy her when she walks around with them on.

My urban set is some OEM Sansa ear buds that came with my Sansa Express. They're not amazing but they work. Which is pretty much all I need until I can save up for some in ear Shure's or a nice set of cans. I didn't know how much I would miss them until they broke.

They broke 2 months ago and it pretty much killed me. I have a 3+ hour daily trip to school which is needless to say... BORING. So the last month was pretty bad. When I get desperate enough, I would pull them out and try to salvage whats left of them.

The problem with them is interesting. The internal wires are pretty beat up (took the head off for a look) and weirdly, they created a nice band gap filter internally. The frequencies they filter out are roughly around the mid to high  vocal ranges. So when I put on some music with vocals, they would magically disappear. Its pretty impressive since they do a really good job at filtering out vocals. Some songs would get garbled up completely while most are just plain odd. I miss vocals now.

I figured out how to fix the buds by plugging them in slightly and forcing the buds to go into mono mode. Solved the problem. I thought I would have to dissect it and resolder everything but this is a much easier fix. They're built quite sturdy with the wires nicely mounted to the plug. Unfortunately, the wire broke pass the plug.

I won a 300$ gift card at school so I used some of it to get some ear buds at the school's bookstore (wish my bookstore stocked iPods). My dad obviously doesn't like the idea, said I could buy a pair at any store (although, not with free money) and my girlfriend hates Skullcandy's designs. So I got something cheap and black because everything goes well with black. Plus, white is so pretentious because everyone who owns iPods has them. I would love to get white cables and buds but iPods really ruined it for me. I paid 37$ for it and I figured it should be decent enough for the ride to school and back. I was wrong.

The Skullcandy Smoking' buds... they're bad. Really bad. For nearly 40$, I was expecting buds that will be at least equal to OEM Sansa's. Instead they were no better than the 2 set of buds I bought my brothers last month. I got them some cheap noise canceling Panasonics for roughly 8$ each. They were on sale and I was making the trip to buy some electronic headers anyways.

What is wrong with the Skullcandy's?

#1. I can't hear a damn thing. In order to listen to them, I needed to raise the volume to the maximum of my Sansa Express. I never go over 25% for my Grado's or the OEM buds. At that volume, I still can't hear any distinct instruments. That leads to number 2, the quality of the audio.

#2. I put on Tegan and Sara and was immediately appalled by their sonic quality. The guitars were completely destroyed. How would you like it if someone ripped out all the chords except for one. Yea, thats what it sounds like. There was no bass of any sort. I had set my equalizer to maximum bass and zero treble and it barely helped. The highs were muddled with the mids and created the equivalent to listening to ear buds with a lisp.

My Sansa gives Tegan and Sara more respect than the Skullcandy's. It was so bad that my girlfriend even said that it lacking richness. She has a pair of WESC's ( and they're actually pretty good for their price and looks). I can't believe I dropped 40$ on a set of ear buds that I absolutely dread using. As one forum user said, "Whats worst than Skullcandy's? A rock." Although my dad did buy some knock off iPod at the dollar store. Those would definitely rival a rock.

I actually had the Hesh cans in my hands and ready to purchase them but decided not to because I didn't want to get stuck with a bad pair of headphones. I originally figured that getting a decent set of cans would be a better idea than some ear buds. They're usually better sounding. I'm still wondering how they sound in comparison to Grado's and WESC's. I also didn't want to explain why I chose to buy 60$ headphones instead of the cheaper ones to my parents (note, I did get free money but that doesn't stop them). They think I buy expensive gear all the time although I can't barely afford a cheap little tilt sensor my microcontroller. I'd much rather spend the money on some gyros and motors.

The school has a no return policy with electronics so I'm stuck with them forever. So I gave my buds to my brother since hes not as concerned with the issues as much as I am (or maybe he is but doesn't mind since I just bought them 3 pairs of ear buds in under a month). I'm going to stick with my Sansa's until graduate and buy a new set of proper cans.

So what did I learn? That the bookstore sells some crappy stuff. People who own Skullcandy's don't really like music. Your first gut reaction is probably the better judgement.