S50 Headphone Comparison
Things are heating up in the world or Sirius Satellite Radio receivers. There is now a possibility of 2 new portable units being available by the end of 2006. You may already be aware of the Live Portable model sl100tk1 that has been announced and now there is talk of another unit being made by Hummax, which is the company that produced the S50. Only time will tell if either of these units comes to the market, but in the mean time, you can email us at sales@tss-radio.com and we will email you any new info about these units as it becomes available.
While we are on the subject of portable SIRIUS, we have begun carrying headphones by V-Moda as replacements for the stock SIRIUS S50 Headphones. I figured it would be a good idea to give them a listen to see how they compare to the original S50 stock “ear bud” style headphone.
I am not a big fan of traditional ear bud style headphone because they never fit in my ears correctly and fall out while I am walking. When we received the V-Moda headphones, I was immediately drawn to the Bass Freq model due to the rubber in ear style of the ear buds. They have a small silicon ear bud that fits directly in to your ear that I found fit much snugger and more comfortably than the original S50 or for that matter any other ear bud I had ever tried.
I did a head to head with my original S50 headphones listening to some of the songs I had recorded off of SIRIUS. The first thing I noticed was a substantial difference in the stereo imaging of the V-modas and the S50 stock headphones. The Stock S50 headphones sound mono to me. It is very hard to place were an instrument is coming from in the stereo feild. The V-Moda Bass Freq have a nice wide open stereo image that add a more natural dimension to the music.
I found that the Bass Freq headphones had a much cleaner, more natural sound. The S50 Stock headphones sound compressed and have an almost FM radio exaggerated sound where as the bass freq headphones have a much cleaner crisper open sound. The S50 stock headphones sound more superficially loud, but the bass freq really has a much more pleasant clean sound. The big question is “how was the bass?” Considering that V-moda named these “Bass Freq”. Compared to the original S50 headphones that sounded mushy and undefined in the mids and lows, the V-Moda has a nicely defined sound where all frequencies can be heard loud and clear. The bass is tight and natural in the Bass Freqs. I do have to say that these may not satisfy any one who is looking for the kind of head shaking bass that a large, over the ear headphones can supply but they are worlds better sounding the original S50 phones IMHO.
