E.D.G.E. Acoustics GX400 Enhanced Definition Gaming Earphones - Black

After reading much of the rave reviews and doing a bit of research I decided to purchase this item. This headset is referred to as an IEM or "In Ear Monitor" as an audiophile would refer to them as. So what does this mean? It means you stick it in your ear canal so the music is isolated. Despite the perfect five stars everyone else is giving them I will have to disagree as my experiences are a lot different. I have owned this for a few months now and usually don't like making reviews in the first few days but I'd rather wait a while longer so I can uncover all the bad things that may occur while using it.-CONSTRUCTION-The construction on this headset is decent, I wouldn't call them fantastic or great by any means but for the price of almost two Benjamins I would expect the cables to be a little bit heavier in construction. The Shure SE530 cables are a lot thicker than the GX400's so if you own a pair of SE530's just imagine half of that cable diameter. I feel they could've done a lot better on the construction of the cables and made them a little thicker because I feel at anytime the cable may snap in half. The cable is pretty long and it's about 10 feet in length which should give you plenty of room to move around while it is plugged in. I wish they would have implemented some kind of cable retracting system for it as it is too long in my opinion.-COMFORT-The comfort level of this product is okay for long periods of time but it may be worse or better depending on your ear canal size. This headset comes with 3 different ear pieces/plugs; the large gray one you see in the Amazon.com picture, a medium sized light/sky blue pair, and one-size-fits-all gray/black disposble foamy ear plug type (like the kind you can buy at Lowes or Home Depot). Wearing the large gray ones for a long game session made my ears hurt a lot so I switched to the medium blue ones. After trying the blue ones my ears still hurt so I had to switch to the foamy plugs. I will have to let you know though, although I don't have any medical history of being allergic to latex or any plastics the gray and blue plugs made my ear canals itch like crazy so I had to stop using them. I keep my ears clean and have no cobwebs but the itching was just unbearable that I had to remove them. Another negative thing about the gray and blue plugs are that they get dirty very fast and don't be surprised if they start smelling weird. If you want me to describe what it smells like then I would say ear wax and sweat mixed together. I had to clean mine after every use which is quite annoying so I prefer the foamy plugs better.-SOUND QUALITY-So how does the sound compare? Does it live up to the hype? Well I'll say it's not better than my SE530's for Shure or my SRH840's that I just got today (pun intended). Sound quality level I would say they are about as good as my Grado SR-60's but the bass is not as good because it's an IEM. Compared to my V-Moda Vibe Red Roxx it is a lot better. I would say if you're looking for a good audiophile headset you can find something better than the GX400's for a lot less. The only real reason you would want this is if you want an attached microphone with the headset with audiophile sound quality. Since you are required to insert the ear pieces into your ear canal to make a seal, it is like everyone else described in that you will not hear anything else when it is sealed. So if you're getting bad sound quality then it's not making a good seal to isolate the sound.-REAL WORLD TESTING-So people have been talking about this Marco Polo Demo thing, what the heck is it? The Marco Polo Demo is a mini-game where you have to locate where the noise is coming from. You do a series of tests and after you have successfully located the sound they test you again masking the sound further with loud engine noises which makes it a whole lot harder to find the next sound in the upcoming test session. I've got to the part where I need to find the "Sneaky Guy" with the GX400's plugged in. Needless to say I gave up after 15 minutes of searching everywhere but hold it right there, I know you're going to start calling me out that I'm using an onboard soundcard and to that I simply say "no!" I am using an HT Omega Striker 7.1 sound card which is a lot better than my default sound but wait... here is the real shocker that you will NOT believe. After unsuccessfully unable to find the "Sneaky Guy" after many attempts I decided hmmm... maybe it's not me and it's the GX400 headset. So I restarted the demo with my Grado SR-60's hooked up and started back on finding the "Sneaky Guy" with all the sounds masking him. Lo and behold, eureka! I have found the "Sneaky Guy" in record time with the Grado SR-60's. It took me less than two minutes to find him, I took about a minute and a half to find him which was quite surprising. I was quite surprised myself when I found out that my Grado SR-60's had led me to find him in record time.Here is some more real world testing I want to talk about. I tested the GX400's in many popular Source games such as Counter Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 etc... and they didn't do much better than any of the other headsets I owned. The guy raving about how awesome it was on GRAW 2 must be an isolated incident. The company may have spent extra resources in making the sound realistic if he could hear people's footsteps and gun fire and pin point their direction. Most games these days will not spend the extra resources to do this so these headphones are going to be definitely a hit or a miss. The only time I got excellent results was when the GX400's picked up C4 plants on my tank while I was playing Battlefield Bad Company 2. I was able to hop out of the tank and kill the guy who planted the C4's before he got away and this happened many times. While I can attest that they are great in certain games, in some situations they just really didn't do much better than my Grado SR-60's because the developers didn't bother to do anything extra with the sound such as EAX or 128 channels which is proprietary to Creative and limited to only certain games.-MICROPHONE QUALITY-I used the microphone a few times and asked my friends and the people who I were playing with how the microphone sounded. They said it sounded good and fine to them so there seems to be no problem with microphone quality. But when I test myself in Audacity, Windows Sound Recorder, and Cakewalk Sonar the sound was okay. It's not anything to sing about but it was good enough that there wasn't any static or bad communications. But if you want a microphone to sing on then this one isn't it because the only thing you'll be singing is the blues._____PRO's______Overall, great sound qualityCable is very longMicrophone quality is decentProvided different size ear pieces to accomodate for sizes_____CON's______Price tagEar pieces can cause your ears to be itchyEar pieces need to be cleaned periodically after useIf you're forced to use the foamy ear piece then you will constantly have to purchase new onesCable is very thin and the quality and longevity of them are in question----???CONCLUSION???----With the price tag of about two Benjamins you might be thinking "could I do better than this?" And to that I say absolutely "YES!" You can do much better than this headset and there are lot of better headsets being offered on the table. There is very little reason that anyone would want to buy this. If you absolutely must have an IEM set with a microphone and audiophile grade sound then this is the one to buy but other than that I don't see any reason anyone else would want to buy this. Contrary to belief, buying this will not make you a "Ninja Master Assassin Killing Machine" in every FPS you play as others would like you to believe to be true. On another note, when I received this the original box that the headset was in was quite a bit dusty. I suspect no one has been buying these and Amazon had it on the shelf or in the warehouse so long it started gathering dust which is kind of sad. But now I see why many people may not want to purchase them. As for the GX400's I use them less than any other headset I own and sometimes I even forget that I own them.****EXTRA INFO****These are minor annoyances that you may or may not hate but when using the set with the foamy ear pieces it gets quite annoying to insert them back in when you took them out. Sometimes I may take them out because I have a phone call or a family member is talking to me. Other times family members may be angry because they've been banging on the front door for the past 10-15 minutes and you couldn't hear them and they don't have the key to the house. Before you use seal them in, make sure you notify your wife or whoever that you won't be able to hear them. It's a minor inconvenience but you'll just have to live with waiting for the foam plugs to create a seal again. So you might not like these if you frequently take them in and out a lot.

So I picked these up last month, I have been wanting to get them for over 2 years but spending $180 for gaming ear buds on a tight budget is tough. Are they worth it... YES they are... I use them everyday at work, This are not bass monsters like over ear headphones, the thing is your brain adapts to the bass and after awhile the bass sounds great!The Trebs and Mids sounds FANTASTIC, I use them everyday for listening to music at work, and I had to switch from Rhapsody to MOG due to the fact Rhapsody is still using 192Kbps streams and MOG uses 320Kbps Streams and you can really really tell the difference on these things, considering they are based of the Etymotic EP4's.The last reviews I could find on these things were back from 2008.. and its 2012 now, I searched quite a bit to see if something newer or better has come out... and the answer is no, the market is non existent for gaming IEM's and the other competitors like SteelSerries and Razer don't compare to these bad boys.So with games I use this for StarCraft II and Battlefield 3... with both games, sounds are AMAZING! with Battlefield 3 I let a co-worker check them out when I was playing BF 3 and he was "OH BAJEABUS!" he was hearing bullets ricocheting off the walls, he could hear from where people are firing from, where explosions are coming from he was blown away at the audio fidelity and clarity. The audio details with a game that has well crafted audio, YOU WILL notice a difference! All I can say I am so glad I finally got these bad boys!So my final conclusion is this... if you have seen or even heard about these, but haven't seen a lot of reviews on them, its due to the fact not a lot of people have bought them due to price... but oh man are they worth it.So if you are on the border of picking them up... get them, you won't regret it!PROS: GREAT AUDIO! AMAZING DETAIL IN GAMES.. Just a great solution for a gaming and music for everyday use. Truly outstanding product.CONS: PRICE PRICE PRICE... @ 180 bucks + shipping.. I paid like 200, you have to ask your self are they worth it.. are they, YES! They are. Also the Bass is not a blast your head off, there IEM's. But once your get accustomed to the sound, the bass along with mids, and highs are in perfect harmony.