The iPod has fundamentally changed music in a lot of ways, mostly for the better. It drove the music industry to accept digital distribution models, rather than selling us whole albums when we only want two or three tracks. It created the option to carry your whole music collection with you, instead of a handful of CDs you could manage to carry around with you. But there has been one major downside, and that’s sound quality.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the way most digital music sounds, and the true audiophile can choose to buy or stream their music specifically from services that provide higher quality files (Spotify in particular provides truly amazing sounding options for premium subscribers). The one inescapable, often flawed, reality of portable music is headphones. Specifically the cheap, low-quality earbuds that come with iPods and virtually every other portable media device. You’re simply never going to hear the same song as the artist recorded when you listen to those things. They don’t have the range or power to reproduce everything you’re supposed to hear.
Fuse takes an interesting approach to this problem with their InTune headphones. You pick your favorite type of music and buy earbuds tailored to make it sound great. InTunes come in four flavors, Jazz/Classical, Rap/Hip Hop, Rock/Blues/Country, or Pop/Easy Listening. None of them provide you with the type of fidelity you can get out of a great sound system or a pair of $200 headphones. The sound you do get though is better than what you’re probably used to in a pair of earbuds t
hat costs just $25.
InTunes come with three different sizes of ear gels to help you find a better fit. I find them comfortable, and they provide reasonably good noise isolation as well. They do run a bit large compared to other similar gels I’ve used in the past, so I use the smallest size, when I usually use the medium.
The obvious downside to this concept is that most people listen to more than just one type of music. That means potentially needing to change headphones when you change tracks or ending up with even worse results than those iPod earbuds on the wrong song. At first glance, it seems like anyone with even slightly eclectic tastes in music won’t get anything out of InTunes. Plus, I don’t expect most people to buy all for varieties for $100. At that price, you could just buy one pair of higher quality headphones.
Personally, I see a few scenarios that make InTunes a lot more useful. The first is if you have playlists that fit your mood or activity. I don’t think too many people need classical music or easy listening in their workout playlists, for instance.
What I find more interesting is how well InTunes worked for Pandora Radio. Any given channel tends to be a good fit for these headphones, which means the right headphones are easy to choose without planning out a whole playlist. That made these earbuds a surprisingly good fit for most of my listening.
If you’re looking for great sounding portable music, now is your chance to try these out. We have one of each variety of InTunes to give away to four lucky readers. Here’s how to win a pair: simply comment on any articles we publish this week, and we’ll choose the four best comments for the week this Friday.
Good luck and good commenting!
Personally, I just can’t see committing to one type of music. The reason not to buy nice big Bose headphones is that they are very inconvenient to lug around, especially if you’r someone like me who spends 2 hours a day on city buses. So i don’t see a great advantage or big plus to having two or three of these Fuse ear buds, they add up.
As an audiophile and musician, I am always looking for good quality headphones to really key in on the musical arrangements what I am listening to. I have an Ipad and have considered getting the Dr. Dre Beats headphones but cannot justify spending $200 on such bulky headphones.
In reference to InTune headphones in this article, the idea of different styles of headphones for each style of music clearly was not meant for the average musician or music listener who listens to more than one genre.
However, at the end of the day these seem like a pair of headphones that as long as they fit comfortable and produce sound quality that isn’t “tinny”, I’d be ok with them.
I think you’re getting the wrong idea if you think about these headphones as being customized for particular types of music. In my car stereo, it has several EQ/effects settings — one of which is called “Jazz” for example. Is this some special jazz-compatible mode? Does it only sound good with jazz? I doubt it. For me at least, I think of these modes as personal preferences. In other words, some people like their sound clean and flat, and for them they can select “Classical” mode, and others like lots of thumping bass, and they can pick “Xplod” mode.
These different models of headphones have slightly different frequency response, as you can see on the InTune web site. Rap/Hip Hop has more bass. Pop/Easy Listening has a mid boost, and the others are more flat. They could have just as easily given names to these models that reflected that instead of which music they supposedly go with. So think of it as picking what sort of sound shaping you like, which may or may not correlate with what type of music you like listening to, and then get the model that matches that. Maybe you are the kind of person who chooses different EQ settings for each type of music. In that case, get one of the flatter models and an MP3 player with EQ.