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Panasonic RPHJE120K In-Ear Headphones

The Panasonic RPHJE120K In-Ear Headphones arrived today.

I put my favorite "Contemporary Jazz Masters CD" in the Laptop. I decided a good initial test might be up against my Dollar Tree earbuds (yes, $1 the pair). Given the rave reviews of the Panasonics I expected to be blown away. Not quite. Ok, maybe they sounded a little bit better, but I have a new appreciation for the quality of the Dollar Tree item. It's really quite good. The Panasonics fit in the ear like an ear plug and are a bit trickier to get positioned right.

The same thing happened to me a few years ago, 1972 to be exact. I had these Utah loudspeakers I had gotten at Team Electronics, Pd $100 for the pair. I had been reading all the favorable reviews on the Large Advents. I figured the low bass would blow the Utahs out of the water. So I saved my nickels and dimes till I got a pair. Turns out the Advents did not blow the Utahs out of the water on the low end. Try as I might, the pedal tones on my pipe organ vinyl sounded all but identical. The Advents did have stronger and better dispersed highs. The 3 1/2 inch cone tweeter in the Utahs was not very strong.

Eventually, I swapped out the cones in the Utahs for much stronger round horns. That was a great swap as the highs improved as did the overall balance top to bottom. The tweaked Utahs are still sitting in my living room and I can still AB them with the Advents. The Utahs are dryer and probably flatter. Julian Hirsch would no doubt have prefered the Advents to the Utahs. I'm still stumped. No hi fi magazine ever gave any Utah loudspeaker the time of day.

I got to thinking about that as I stuck the highly-rated Panasonic buds in my ears. Maybe I haven't mastered putting them in my ears yet. Some reviewers say that could affect the bass a lot. But we have 12,000 rave reviews on Amazon. 12,000 people can't all be wrong.

However, if you have a dollar to spare..., and can't afford $7.88

David


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