In-Ear Headphones vs. Headphones

[Señor Kaoss]

After reading the latest article on which brand of headphones are best, I began to wonder if in-ear headphones are a thing of the past. I'm fairly new to Dj'ing, and have yet to buy anything as far as headphones are concerned and am curious what y'all think. What is most important to me personally is having a pair of in ear or regular headphones that will either completely eliminate or minimize the damage dealt to my hearing once I start to work in the 110 + Decibel range while at the same time giving me decent sound quality

[derjay]

sure in ears have the advantage of size and an isolation that most standard ones will not achieve, however, most dj headphones are not built to entirely close anyway.
Personally I don`t like the feel of in-ears and the risk to blow your ears with them is quite high too

[TreTuna]

Yeah, the chance of blowing out your ears is a big risk with in-ears.... Personally I wear earplugs whenever I play in places that are louder then about 100dB, which of course is any club. I'm also an audio engineer so my ears are my livelihood in my business. I definitely recommend a good set of cans rather then the in-ears...

[illstep]

how do you blow your ears with in ears? i dont get it. blowing means damaging? how does an in-ear damage more than another headphone at the same volume?

[djalexlaine]

the sound levels are more concentrated. sound is pushed directly into the ear canal.
in ear monitoring is really about if you like it or not. the big issue that i find is that you are tethered to the mixer (or soundcard). with headphones you pull them off and you are free. so with in ears, you have to unplug something. which some people dont mind. a guy i know named greg chin (dj stryke) uses a high end pair of m audios and he loves them.
i would recommend buying an entry pair and seeing how you like them. and then buy a high end if you do. m audio has a couple pairs or like 100 USD.

[Jack Bastard]

After fucking around with various headphones for many years, I would say for djing you can't beat a set of Sennheiser HD25s but for production and general 'cross between a high end monitoring systen and a sofa for your ears' type of thing you want to be looking at the Beyerdynamic DT770s or above.

[TreTuna]

Blowing out your ears deals with SPL levels in your ear canal. With in-ears it's closer and more concentrated since, like Alex Laine said, it's pumping the sound waves directly into your ear canal. The only way to truely protect your hearing is to wear ear plugs in a noisy environment, which is what I do. While in-ear monitors can isolate your ears from outside sources very well, here's the kicker.... With either in-ear or cans, I still have to turn them up loud enough to match the volume of the speakers that are pumping in your other ear in order to beatmatch properly. In a club, that means LOUD. Now at this point with in-ears, I have to deal with that volume the entire time, but with cans, I can pop in my earplugs and it brings both volumes down a notch and keeps them even! Badabing! I can hear properly and I'm not damaging my ears.

Mind you I already have minor tinitis (aka permanent ringing in my ears) from working in clubs, and I'm not trying to make it any worse!

In-ear monitors work very well for musicians as they are wearing both of them the entire time, and they can adjust that volume however they want as they isolate the user's ears from the outside noise as well. This isn't as true for a DJ as we are taking them off, putting them on, and taking them off again, so we have to deal with possibly damaging sound levels a different way.

Of course this is just my opinion backed by some facts of life. If you like in-ears, by all means use them. I have before and they do work very well, I just like my hearing and know myself, and I'd probably hurt my hearing if I used them too much.

[cielomobile]

Interesting, so you guys wear earplugs in the club? Biggest venue I've played was a small club (a few hundred people maybe, I can't judge size very well), would you recommend wearing earplugs for even a venue that small? I want to protect my ears before I get much of a chance to damage them.

[wrong chris]

in ear headphones are terrible for your ears. it's a good way to shoot your hearing, especially for djs and musicians who are often exposed to loud environments and listen to music more often than most people.

[cielomobile]

Listen to music more often than listen to people?