The latest edition to my hearing aids.

Crossroads Quattro

Westone UM1

Ordnance .22 Headphone Amplifier

Quattros are red and UM1s are clear.

My UM1s and iPod combined is a disaster. It completely brought out the unpleasantness in Apple media players. The vocals were so sharp and fatiguing even though the clarity is comparable to my old SE210s. Perhaps it might be something to do with the fact that I have not burned in the UM1s at all. When hooked up to the amplifier and laptop, the sound was so much warmer and the vocals were so much more tolerable compared to the iPod Touch. So sensitive it is that I could clearly hear a slight hiss when there is supposed to be silence and when artists were singing, I could hear them breathing before each verse. So far thats all I can tell from it after two hours listening to them.

The Quattros are an entirely different story. The bass coming from them is much louder although not as clear as the UM1s where the vibration from the cello can be distinguished from the other instruments. The Quattros have specially made bass plates designed to adjust the amount of bass produced by the earphones. Number one being the loudest bass and number three being the least bass. Personally I felt that number two produced the best balance between the bass and treble. Number one created slightly muffled bass which I do not like at all and number three had too little bass.

When I first tried the amplifier, the sound produced from the Quattros were much clearer with lesser muffled and hiss produced from the cheap parts Apple uses to make their iPod volume control. By using an LOD, you effectively bypass the volume control and go direct to the source although one needs to have an amplifier for volume control. My Quattros also performed better in terms of bass.

All the above can be found in Jaben Networks as a package of $259. Getting them separate will cost almost double of that.

Going on to Creative’s ingenious creation. The X-Fi technology. X-Fi processes the sound signals to give a much clearer and enhanced output no matter what earphones one is using. I was impressed at how much better my earpieces could sound through the X-Fi MP4 player. Clearly, Apple has not won me over completely yet.