I bought the Ec2's from a retailer. I did have a problem with the first set. I returned them directly to Shure and got a new pair within a week.

I have used Shure mics before and their customer service it truly outstanding. They have patiently supported stuff that is 12 years old. In one case they no longer made a part and referred me to a retired Shure employee who did a cottage business fabricating such things.

Great people.

One question:

What is the burn period for these things? I did try the 5's on a no questions asked return offer directly from Shure. They did not seem so much better than the 2's for the realtively few hours I used them. I put that down to my ears and/or the noisy ambience air travel - but do these thing improve with use?

Most headphones get better with age, so to speak. Some say the burn-in on most cans is roughly 100 hours. I noticed significant improvement on the soundstage and bass response of my Sennheiser PX200s after about 70-80 hours of use.

My E4cs have had about 50 hours or so and not really much change. For the first new nights, I left them plugged in to my hi-fi with music going through at a slightly higher-than-comfortable volume. Some say spoken word is better, or even white noise, but who's to know?

Edited to add: also, don't forget: using a pair of Shures or Etys with an Ipod or most other mp3 players is somewhat overkill, I would say. Regardless of the bitrate of the file you're playing (even lossless), the circuitry of an Ipod is, in my opinion, simply too sub-standard to get the best out of any high-end headphone/canalphone. I had an Ipod Mini for 4 hours once. Gave it to my wife because the sound, compared to my Minidisc, was simply awful.

I think that the Ipod makes my Shure E5s sing. I have most of my music stored as uncompressed .wav files. Still the high bitrate variable mp3 files also sound pretty good if the source is high quality.

True, good phones will help, but if the source of the sound (not the file) is lacking, I don't think you'll maximise the capability of those cans. Sony, for example, is known for it's sound capabilities, as is Creative. Sure, you can have awful files being sent through a Sony or Creative player and into a set of Shure or Etys and the sound (subjectively) will be awful, but I guess the point I was trying to make (unsuccessfully now that I've re-read my post!) is that excellent equipment + excellent sound file + excellent phones/cans = excellent sound (again, subjectively). In my opinion, the Ipod just doesn't fit into that equation as 'excellent equipment' in terms of sound quality. I will, however, freely admit that I didn't try lossless on my wife's mini - i tried 192 (and higher) AAC and mp3. I found that LP2 ATRAC3 from Sony (recorded optically direct from CD) was superior. But, to each his own - these are my opinions only. We all have different ears, and what really matters is what sounds good to us!

I do agree with the theory of garbage in/garbage out, but many use these headphones to reduce or eliminate the drone of the airplane as well as the blabbermouths talking in nearby rows.

That said, I could not justify buying the super-high end shures but can certainly justify spending $100 bucks for some peace and quiet.

Sometimes, when I feel the need to be really isolated, I wear my Bose over the inserted headphones. The only noise you hear then is the sound of your beating heart...which always reminds me that I should exercise more.

heh - score8 raises a good point: on a plane, high-fidelity can be rather elusive due to incessant environmental sounds (i.e., 2-4 big Rolls Royce engines!)

I've heard two camps of thought about this.

Camp #1: Burning in your headphones improves the sound quality.

Camp #2: Burning in your headphones does nothing to the equipment; rather, it's more a psychological effect, where your ears/brain gets used to the sound of the headphones and they start to sound better. In other words, you just think you're burning in your equipment; in reality, you're really burning in your ears.

I have no clue which camp has got it right. I haven't seen any controlled tests of either hypothesis.

I've decided to splurge on the EC5's. When I google it, I get links from Amazon for $329. However, when I click on it, it takes me to the Amazon page and a $499 price (even when I put in the shopping cart). Am I missing something here? Or is the deal just gone. Anybody have any current deals?
Thanks in advance