You better like your music...because that is all you will hear.

I must have gone through 24 1/2 pairs of ear phone/ear buds in the past 8 years. Some have no sound quality, some do not stay in the ear, and some just fall apart. Any head phone makes the ear sweat so ear buds are desired and the reduced sound quality is expected. The wind noise is always present with this style of ear piece.

This season, I have been testing ear buds recently for the past 4 weeks, trying to find a good sound, good isolation ear bud for my long distance cycling habit. The sound isolation is necessary since I ride about 6 feet from the loud road noise and one hour of road noise contributes to deafening of the inner ear. Good isolation is absolutely key because I do not want to have to play music very loud simply to mask the road noise. That will do just as much damage to the ear.

I have recent tried active noise cancellation which I must say is not all that active unless you pay big bucks for high end headphones which under these conditions would be a total waste of money. I tried the Bose In-ear buds, they simply fell apart after 2 miles, a total disaster.

Then after reading the reviews of these ER-6i I decided to give them a try. I put them in the ears and went for a ride. Oh my gosh!!! The truck traffic turned into just a stinky blur! I heard songs I had never heard before. Even down hill into the wind I was listening to music. I even took the right ear bud out and heard plenty of music and car isolation from just the left ear bud.

The good isolation allows me to listen to music with just the left ear at volume levels much lower than ambient noise. I can now even play less acidic music like classical, new age, and oriental that will help provide a meditative quality and allow the muscles to go further.

Search is over. I just need to tune ear pcs a bit for a more comfortable fit.


Update: Found that some of the shorter ear pcs work well in left ear that seems to be formed much differently than my right ear. I do not need to insert so deeply to get good isolation.