| Re: Sony Ericsson W950i and headphones
I have a W950i, which I use to drive a pair of Shure E500. The Shures might be out of your budget (I got mine for ~£200 while in the US), but I've also used their E4c model. A couple of things I've found:
- The quality of the third party fastport->3.5mm connectors is crap, noticably worse than the supplied sony-ericsson hands free stereo adaptor. A headphone with a short cable (and extensions) is therefore a big advantage, since it can used with the supplied adapter without leaving you struggling with loads of cable. The E500 are great in this respect, but the E4 cable + handsfree was far too long, which was one of the reasons I upgraded.
- Highly efficient phones (i.e. most IEMs) can be driven quite easily by the phone at low volumes, but in quiet environments there is an audible hiss from the noise floor of the phone. It's not noticable outdoors (walking, on a train etc. ) though - I can only hear it while sitting at my desk at work. I use the attenuator supplied with the E500 to get rid of it (turn the phone up, and the attenuator down).
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