Sennheiser CX 300 Consumer Headphones

I recently purchased a 4gb Ipod Nano. It is fairly reknowned as a very good sounding mp3 player. I listened to it for several hours over the last few days, A/B between my the Ipod stock earbuds and my Audio Technica M30 headphones and determined that there was a lot to be desired from the earbuds. The highs were rolled off a bit, the bass didn't present itself with any authority and the fit of the earbuds didn't allow me to conduct much activiity while listening to my Ipod.

After doing a bit of research on the internet and talking to some fellas at work who own Ipods, I determined that the Sennheisers may be a better alternative. I searched for reviews extensively to see if any other users had found the holy grail of earbuds in the 40-80 dollar price range and it is the best I could come up with.... so....

I purchased a set of CX300's from Circuit City, after a little haggling I convinced the salesman to let me walk out the door with them for under 60 bucks, not bad considering they sell for about 5-10 dollars less, but with a few day wait, from most internet retailers. Most stores that stock them want to charge about 70 dollars.

This item is available in black (which I have) and also in silver.
The packaging is of average presentation visually and they don't offer any little extra's such a carrying case with this product. May be a negative to some people. Overall the product is attractive, the packaging isn't though.

What you get is 3 sets of earbud covers, small, medium and large and the earbuds themselves.

My first impression is that they are extremely light and I'm a little concerned about breaking them because they seem to have no mass. They weigh in at a little over an ounce. The cord is just long enough to reach from my pocket
(where my Ipod is) to my ears, not much more.... so I wish it was a couple inches longer, but none the less it works fine.

To get the best performance out of these, it's important put them in your ears correctly. Pull up on the top part of your ear with the opposite hand while gently pushing these into your ear canal, the objective is to achieve an airtight fit. You'll know when you've done it correctly when most ambient noise is blocked out. The cord(s) seem slightly stiff which may be a bit of a problem when working out, biking, jogging etc.... due to the sound transfer though the cord to the earbuds when the cord rubs against clothing. On the plus side, the cord feels well made.

Afer positioning the earbuds, it's as simple as plugging into your MP3 player and letting it rip! With a little EQ tweaking that is......

To achieve the sound I like usually required a boost in the upper highs, over 7 Khz and also a boost to the bottom frequencies, usually around 80 Hz or so. Unfortunately, there is no customizable EQ setting on the Ipod, so I'm using one of the 20 EQ presets to get achieve what I consider proper tonality.

Once I found a setting I could live with, I found a few songs I wanted to audition as well. The first one was Steely Dan - Black Cow. I only use 320kb/s MP3's as I've found that anything less shows huge sound degradation when played on decent equipment.


The opening bass line is deep and smooth, slightly funky and accompanied by a few guitar harmonics along with a steady high hat, snare and bass drum rhythm. Each instrument is well defined in this recording and I've been using it as a benchmark for years due to the top notch production of this recording.

I rolled the volume up to about 60-75% to get a good feel for how these earbuds would react with this type of material and from the opening segment of this song noticed a few things.
First of all, the bass reproduction is excellent. You can hear subtleties in the bass line itself as well as the punchiness of the bass drum. The bass is deep but also well defined.
Secondly, the midrange seems to be somewhat "in your face". Not in a bad way, but more in a way that results in forward sounding vocals.
Lastly, the very high sounds were what I would consider to be good. Not excellent though. You can hear the high end reproduction is there and present, but not emphasized. It tended to not have that "airy" quality that I've found in comparably priced full sized headphones. At the risk of sounding overly critical, they are fantastic for acoustic based music, but for rock music it seems it may be missing something. However, if you like your music loud and clear, these may be the set for you. They are extremely efficient, rated at 16 Ohms, and they can play very, very loud without distorting.

They aren't the best earbuds on the market,there are a few companies that sell high end sets for anywhere from $100-300+, but for this price I don't know of anything that is better.

I recommend these for anyone looking to upgrade from stock earbuds and especially recommend them to anyone with and MP3 player that had a custom EQ function. They come with a two-year warranty and Sennheiser has instant name recognition for a reason, because they consistently produce quality products.