Review: Shure E500PTH high-end earphones

Because you’re effectively listening in a near-silent environment, you can listen at much lower volumes. At this level, even rock music delivers all the excitement you would normally only achieve by cranking it up but without the attendant damage to your hearing. The low volumes will also increase the battery life of your player.

It’s not all about bass and noise, however. The E500s deliver extreme detail and clarity, whatever you play through them.

It’s an utterly immersive sound – every nuance reproduced with precision, no matter what sort of music you’re listening to. You won’t need to reach for the volume control during quiet passages either; be it loud or soft you can always hear everything.

To achieve the best sound quality, you’ll need to make sure the earpieces fit snugly into your ears and this means pushing them quite far into the ear canal. It’s quite an invasive experience, which does feel a little strange at first and not all users will feel comfortable with this. However, once you’re used to it, it definitely adds to the feeling of connection with the music.

An unfortunate side-effect of the sound isolation is that some sounds you wouldn’t normally be able to hear can become distracting. Anything rubbing on the cables or causing vibrations through your head or body will appear amplified – stomping along the street for example, can be sometimes heard as deep thuds.

Failure to achieve the required fit results in greatly reduced sound quality. To help with this, three types of sleeve are provided and they, like human ears, come in various shapes and sizes.

Even with the large selection available, some people have trouble with the fit. Fortunately, custom made-to-measure sleeves are available from third-party manufacturers, who will take a silicon impression of your ear to provide the ultimate fit and sound-isolation.

The E500s cost much more, and require a little more effort to use than most earphones, but if you care about sound quality they’re certainly worth it. Going back to normal earphones afterwards is not an experience we would recommend.

Also consider:
Steelsound 5H v2 headphones
Flexible headset designed with professional gamers in mind

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