"news.rcn.com" news.rnc.com wrote in message
...

Well the general climate of opinion seems to be that
EITHER they are
impossibly difficult to fit into the ear properly OR that
they are too heavy
to stay in for longer than a few seconds

I already have about a quart of IEMs in a gallon plastic
bag, and some of them sound pretty darn good to me. So, I'm
trying very hard not to buy any more. I just bought a pair
of Panasonic IEMs because I ended up in Manhattan for 3 days
with my Nomad3 and darn it, no 'phones. Dummm! I'm not
going to buy a pair of the Philips IEMs we've been
discussing just to find out what is wrong with them. I'm
promising myself that! ;-)

As a rule IEMs aren't inherently heavy or hard to fit. Fit
is probably the most variable part of the sound quality and
comfort equation. Basically, moderately tight is good, very
loose is bad. Some people get along with this better than
others. If you can learn to live with it, so much the
better.

No one has given an opinion on quality yet: The highs and
mid range seems to
be OK but they might be a bit lacking in bass

This is either a design problem or a problem with fit. Some
IEMs, particularly the cheap ones, are light on bass.
However, even the good IEMs can be light on bass if the tips
don't fit the ear tightly enough.


OR possibly the iPod Mini
doesnt put out enough to drive the bass drivers in there?

There's no bass driver in low and mid-price IEMs. They do
it all with one itty-bitty driver. The most common symptom
of a a digital player that can't handle the load of the IEM
is for the sound to completely cut out at times. This
symptom seems to be very infrequently reported with Shure
IEMs, and even less frequently with competitive units.