20. On The Graph And To The Ear

We made our measurements using one of our in-house couplers. As with all earphones of this type, the response depends a lot, both for test measurements and actual listening, on the acoustic coupling with the receiver (either the test mike, or your eardrum).

The best curve we were able to get, showing very linear bass, a huge resonance peak in the treble centered at 5 kHz, followed by a rapid dip...

If the acoustic coupling is poor, the bass fades...

• Fontopia MDR-EX71SL...
• • AudioOutfitters
  • $37.99

The impedance was in line with the specifications, and the curve shows the resonance peak at 5 kHz that we saw on the frequency-response curve.

The EX71 proved to be very comfortable for an intraaural model. It seems to adapt well to most ears. The fit, in fact, is one of this model's best qualities.

Our first impression from listening was that the sound was very "bright," emphasizing any hiss existing in the source material. In other words, it's a hard listen. True, that's not surprising given the response curve, but it's really very audible, especially if you've already blown your ears away with too-high volume levels. Tweaking the parametric equalizer improved the situation - listening was less painful and the hiss went away. The extreme highs sounded far away and it would be difficult to get them to come back under the circumstances. It's true that this is often the case with consumer-level intraaurals. While the bass was relatively weak - compared to the omnipresent treble - it did show good low extension. And here, a little judicious equalization set things right.

Yet still, we have to say that the best we could get was "not so bad", rather than what we'd call "good". The resonance in the treble is really too strong for good listening, especially with music that uses that register heavily, like brass. And the transducer didn't handle the positive correction in the bass very well, responding with very un-musical noises when the volume was pumped up. But if you like "chicka-chicka-chicka," you'll get all you want, and more...

It was hard to evaluate the volume level possible without distortion, because the EX71 really gets too aggressive if you push the decibels. With an MP3 player, the volume limits were just okay, since this model isn't really very efficient outside the range of its resonance peak. So the bottom line on this set is clearly negative if you like your music reproduced in a linear fashion and without coloration. This was an unpleasant surprise, because Sony is capable of making some very good earphones.