Do-it-yourself, Comfortable and Secure Custom Earphones

1 | Carrie Baker

June 14th, 2010 at 1:00 pm

In Bulgaria K340 are sold for about $100, and that seems like a fair price for them. At $120-125 they are a bit over-priced. I read a lot of praise for them on this site, so I would rather concentrate on the things that could be improved with K340 so that prospective customers get a better idea of the product:

1) These in-canal buds let too much oustide noise in. People usually buy portable headphones to use oustide the comfort of their homes, however restaurants, cafes, streets – not to mention trains and planes – are usually rather noisy environments, and some of these places also play music for their customers… K340 are almost unusable under such “normal” conditions as it is hard to differentiate between the oustide music/noise and the sound you are listening too.

2) They have a rather “modern” design (uneven component surface) and you will soon find out that dirt accumulates in the small openings of the bud’s body.

3) The circular form of the silicone tips applies a certain amount of unpleasant pressure on the ear-canal. Maybe it is just me, but the small and medium size tips deteriorate sound quality and the big ones shall make your ears hurt. One gets used to it after a couple of days, but it is difficult to forget you are wearing ear-buds… their presence is felt clearly. (I have read that Klipsch buds have oval tips, so in principle this problem could have been easily avoided – at least other manufacturers have.)UPDATE: I now own both AKG K340 and Klipsch Image S4, and I can confirm that Klipsch are much more comfortable to wear. There is also something esle to consider: the opening of the eartip of AKG is much bigger (probably 10 times bigger), and therefore a lot more dirt accumulates in it. As far as sound quality goes… AKG sounds more “neutral” and for certain songs that is better. Sound isolation with Klipsch is better though.

4) You have to insert them deep into the canal of your ears for the sound quality to improve – this is a must-do! (some amazing bass will appear then), however from that point on you will also be listening to the sound of the cable rubbing against your shirt, cheek, hand; to the sound of your own breathing – in fact you will start hearing most of your bodily sounds in a strange and disturbing manner. Which, of course, may easily be the case with all in-canal ear buds, but it definitely is a point to consider with K340.

5) The cable is a little on the short side. They could have probably thrown in another 20-30 cm of cable for the price, no?

6) The volume control is a nice feature, but it does not mute completely. Why? To me, that’s a drawback.

7) Their sound quality may be good for a headphone so small, but viewed objectively they sound less impressive than my old Panasonic RP-F500 headphones – and those cost 30% less when they were new.

As mentioned elsewhere, the lettering “L” and “R” is so small, it is difficult to read. This is especially true at night in the dark bedroom when I am trying to tell left from right without waking up my wife and son. I can imagine that people with weaker eyes than mine will be very frustrated with this design flaw. UPDATE: I have, however, found out, in the process of using this product, that on the left earbud there is a small circular bump that one can feel with his finger even in a completely dark room, so therefore there is no need to read anything to know for sure which earbud should go where. Good for AKG!

To summarize:

I believe this is a good product, maybe a little too expensive at this point for its true value; the sound is amazing for such a small pair of headphones. spme small things could use a little improvement: design should be smoother, and the cable – longer. It would have been nice if the volume control could mute all the way down. The biggest drawback in my opinion is the leakage of oustide noise into the sound picture, but if you listen to K340 at home/in a quiet environment, that should not be a problem.