Cheap earbuds got damn good
An audio upside in tech's world of downsides
There was a time, not that long ago, when cheap wired earbuds were an unbridled assault on my sweet hearing holes.
You’d pop into WHSmiths or HMV or Maplins, drop £20 on a budget pair and end up subjected to the tinniest, most frustrating sound quality in existence — that’s if you could even get those damn dangly wires to stay in your ears.
But times have changed, pals, oh lord times have changed — and we’re gonna chat about that today.
It’s been a few years since I’ve needed a pair of wired earbuds. For almost a decade, I’ve been using wireless pairs, like AirPods and the like.
At first, I was a stick-in-the-mud about the gadget, finding the charging and quality irritating, but, over time, they became a revelation. If you’ve ever exercised and yanked wires out of your ears with swinging arms, you know just how enjoyable wireless headphones are.
Yet, as is always the way, technology circles back. Nothing that’s dead stays dead for long.
As part of The Great Uncoupling™, one thing I’ve been looking at is separating myself from modern technology that gobbles up all my attention. One way I’ve been doing this is by adopting different types of tech and making each one more specific.
For example, I’ve been listening to a lot of music on an iPod (there’ll be more on this in a future piece).
And this is where the wired headphones element comes in. The iPod is old enough that there’s no Bluetooth capability or any other wireless connection. Just like some sort of neanderthal, you need to physically plug headphones in.
While I have some over-ears I can use, these aren’t that great for when I’m walking around at home. It feels a bit aggressive to not be able to hear a thing when you live with someone, you know.
It’s always been possible to shell out and get amazing in-ear headphones, but as using the iPod again is an experiment, there was no reason to spend a shitload on a new pair. Trust me, the desire was there, but I managed to resist that siren song.
Yet the spectre remained. Cheap wired earbuds are shit. I knew this. I had experience, hard-fought, unwilling won experience.
Despite all this, I did some research. Maybe things had changed. And throughout this research, one name came up again and again: the Moondrop CHU II. They were listed on Amazon for around €20, so I thought I’d give them a go.
How bad could they be?
The next day, the wired earbuds arrived at my home, and you know what? They’re so fucking good. Genuinely, scarily good.
The sound quality matches almost any true wireless earbud I’ve used. The bass is rich, the trebles clear, and the mids balanced. The Moondrop CHU II are comfortable and feel well-built, I literally don’t have anything bad to say about them.
I don’t think I’ve come across a better price-to-quality ratio in any other product I’ve tried. I’d be content if I’d spent three or four times the amount.
The more I’ve explored, the more I’ve realised there’s an entire world of this sort of cheap audio equipment that younger me would’ve lost his mind over.
And that’s an important thing to remember sometimes. Yes, there are all sorts of negative things that come from tech — and those are vital to talk about — but nothing is a binary. There’s a whole lot of amazing shit happening all the time, and a pair of cheap wired earbuds having amazing sound quality is the sort of small thing it’s easy to forget.
But we shouldn’t. It’s a blessing to be alive in a time when we can get equipment like this for next to nothing.
Some parts of the modern world are shit, but others? Well, we should be thankful for them existing and take some joy in the fact that some things are great. So, excuse me, I’m going to slip my wired earbuds in, and dance in my pants with my iPod.
It’s what younger me would’ve wanted.
Just wanted to say how much I love this Substack and your perspective.