The Piranha is Razer’s second attempt to create a gaming headset. You can read what I thought of their first attempt here.

First impressions

The Piranha looks like a typical headset. On-ear cups, flexible mic-boom and an adjustable headband. The Sennheiser PC150 follows the exact same recipe.

An obvious difference (at least in the dark) is the glowing Razer logo. To power these LEDs the Piranha has a small USB plug. This plug is not used for anything else, so if you don’t like the blue LEDs, simply unplug the USB connector.

Cables and connectors

A nice touch is the braided cable. This rope-like cable feels like you could climb a mountain with it and will certainly last a long time. The braided cable splits into three rubber wires for the audio, mic and USB plugs. The three seperate wires are very long compared to the two short wires on the Sennheiser PC150. This enables you to have the microphone input and headphone output some distance apart.
The Piranha’s heaphone-plug is connected to the control unit of my Logitech Z-5500 on my desk, while the microphone is plugged directly into my soundcard. This wouldn’t be possible with the Sennheiser PC150 without an extension cord.

Halfway the braided cable there’s a small inline volume control, mic switch and shirt clip. The volume dial feels ok, and the shirt-clip does what it’s supposed to. Unfortunately the mic switch feels very cheap and flimsy. You could easily switch the mic on/off accidently.

Headset and sound quality

The headband has some padding and can be adjust to fit nearly any head. The mic-boom is attached to the left earcup and can be easily adjusted. The boom itself is flexible and you can bend it into position.

The microphone will enable others to hear you loud and clear.

I’m not too impressed by the ‘uni-directionality’ of the microphone. Typing on my keyboard was picked up just as easily as my voice. Overall the microphone is good for a gaming headset.

The other important aspect is the sound quality of the headphone. The Piranha produces a darker and bassier sound than the Sennheiser PC150, which is also a bassy headphone. Overall it’s not bad for a gaming headset, but it’s not really better than the PC150.

Conclusion

The Piranha is a nice headset. Decent sound and microphone quality, good ergonomics and a solid quality feel (mostly). The Piranha doesn’t offer any new features for a headset, but it does a good job of the basics.

It suffers most from headsets like the Sennheiser PC150, which offer almost the same features for half the price. In the end I would recommend this headphone to anyone looking for a good gaming headset. But I’d also point out the cheaper alternatives and HiFi headphones.

Pro

+Well built headset, very nice cable

+Microphone and sound quality are OK

+Good ergonomics, comfortable

Cons

-Expensive

-Cheap microphone switch

My current love affair is with an AKG K601, AKG518DJ and Shure E500 (aka Shure SE530). I’m going to try reviewing all of them this year (and comparing them with each other), starting of with the Shure E500.

Full review of the E500 after the jump

Before I begin, a short introduction, explaining what kind of earphones the Shure SE500 competes with:

• Single driver microspeaker: Most of the cheaper IEMs (Sony EX71, Sennheiser CX300, Creative EP630, Shure E2c) are of this type.
• Single driver balanced armature: A slightly more expensive type, used in the Shure E3c, Shure E4c, Shure Se310
• Dual driver balanced armature: Slightly expensive type, used in Westone UM2, Shure SE420, Shure E5
• Triple driver balanced armature: Top of the line universal fit IEMs, UE Triple Fi 10 pro, Shure E500

Beyond the rather expensive triple driver universal fit IEMs there are the custom fit IEMs. ‘Custom-fit’ means you’ll have to go to an audiologist to get ear impressions made, after which the IEM manufacturer will mold your earphones. The recently released Ultimate Ears 11 Pro even features 4 drivers. The ‘Pro’ in the name is not some marketing bullshit, it’s actually a product intended for artists (and demanding audiophiles of course). I’m not going to talk about the custom-fit IEMs, simply because I don’t own one (…yet).

Instead I’ll be talking about the Shure E500.

The Shure E500 is a triple driver universal fit IEM. This means Shure somehow managed to squeeze 3 balanced armature drivers into each of the two small earphone housings. 2 drivers provide the bass, while 1 driver provides the higher tones. I’ve previously owned the single-driver Shure E4C and Sony EX71 and I’ll make brief comparisons to both of them. I’ll also be comparing it to the full-size (over the ear) AKG601 and (on the ear) AKG518DJ.

The box

The packaging of the E500 is very nice. It comes in a small cardboard cube which holds a aluminium cube. The sturdy packaging ensures these expensive headphone reach you in one piece.

The tips

Being an universal IEM and because people’s ear canals vary greatly in size, you need some way to get the IEM to fit. For this reason there are a lot of different ear tips. In the box are a number of different ‘tips’. You put these on the end of the earphone.

• 3 pairs of different sized hard transparent rubber tips
• 3 pairs of different sized flexible grey rubber tips
• 1 pair of tri-flange tip, which go really deep into your ear
• 1 pair of yellow foamies

The photo on the right shows all the accesoires you get with a SE530. I got the photo from Headroom an excellent site that review and sells headphones.

The SE530 also ships with 3 pairs of different sized olive shaped black foamies. My E500 didn’t come with this type of eartip, but I ordered them online through eBay. The small black olive foamies are my favourite eartip. They provide excellent isolation, great fit and insert easily. Before I got the black olive foamies, I used the grey soft rubber tips, but they had an uncomfortable suction effect when I took them out.

The phones

The E500 has some small improvements to the earphone design compared to the older Shure E4 I used to own. One of the problems of that IEM was that the ear tips sometimes got stuck in my ear when I took the earphones out. The tips simply slipped off the earphone-shell. The E500 has a small ridge on the earphone that prevents the tips from slipping off.

Isolation

An important benefit of IEMs the passive isolation. It’s also possible to get earphones with active isolation. These earphones use microphones and anti-sound to cancel out the noise around you. However, this uses batteries and affects the sound quality.

Passive isolation is ‘free’ and it’s about as effective as putting your fingers in your ear. Nearly all IEMs offer some degree of passive isolation and the E500 is no exception. The isolation makes sure a ride on the subway is a near-silent experience.
A downside to this isolation is called ‘microphonics’. This means that things hitting the earphone wire or sounds from your body get amplified. You’ll hear the clicking of your teeth, your feet hitting the ground and your heart beating during the more quiet parts of the music. Another effect is the transfer of movement against the earphone wire to sound. The movement of the wire across a sweater will sound like scratching in your ear. A way to prevent this behaviour is to use a very flexible, almost rope-like, wire for the earphone. Unfortunately, the E500 uses a rather stiff, plastic wire, which doesn’t really help at preventing microphonics. This is partially made up by the way the E500 loops around your ear which makes the microphonics ‘bearable’. Still, Shure should take a look at Westone’s wires for their IEM’s.

The sound

My main problem with the E4c was the lack of bass. The Shure E4c is a very neutral headphone (at least in the low-mid range) and I found this sound-signature not ‘exciting’ enough. The E500 adds a nice little bump to the lower the frequencies that I really like, without getting muddy. My old Sony EX71 added a BIG hump to the lower frequencies and made the bass really ‘muddy’ and uncontrolled. Compared to the AKG K601 the E500 has quite a bit more bass, and I prefer the E500′s bass to the K601′s. The AKG K518 has more bass than the E500, but its bass is overpowered and kinda muddy. I prefer the E500′s bass to the K518′s.

The mid-range is where Shure earphones typically shine, and the E500 is no exception. Nicely detailed and controlled. The highs is where the E500 struggles slightly, and I’ll explain why.

All IEMs have a slight flaw. They’re unable to produce frequencies above 16.5KHz. This is a result of the speaker technology used and is something you’ll have to accept when getting an IEM. If you have golden ears and can hear the full 22KHz in an audio-cd, this might be a problem for you. The E500 makes this problem slightly worse by having ‘rolled-off’ highs. This is part of Shure’s typical sound-signature to prevent making the earphone sound shrill or ‘bright’. This sound-signature also gives the impression that the high frequencies aren’t as detailed as they should be. When I compare the E500 to the AKG K601, I can hear and appreciate the extra sense of detail the K601 produces, but when I’m riding the train, or a bike with my E500, I don’t miss this detail at all.

Conclusion

The Shure E500 is an amazing IEM. The triple-driver delivers punchy bass, great mids and decent highs. The price is reasonable if you live in the USA, but if you’re from Europe like me, you might want to shop around on eBay. I got mine from the UK for about 200 euro’s less than the cheapest Dutch web shop. If you want to play Russian roulette with customs you could get them from the USA for about 300 euro’s less (especially with the current weak dollar), but you’ll want to avoid getting caught by customs.

All in all I definitely recommend this IEM to every audiophile or music lover who can live with the slightly rolled of highs. It’s the best universal fit IEM and the last stop before you’ll have to hit custom-fit IEMs

A few months ago when I sold my Razer HP1/AC1 combo, I had some money to spend on a decent headphone. After browsing through the Head-Fi forums I decided to buy the AKG K601.

It’s a very comfortable dynamic open headphone and has an amazing soundstage. With lots of detail and a pleasant bass response it’s a joy to listen to.

This made me realize that my portable setup had some problems. I was using the Sony EX71′s since 2003 and was really pleased with them. Nice isolation and very comfortable for a in ear headphone. My main issues with it were it’s muddy bass and lack of detail.

So looking for an upgrade I ended up browsing through the Head-Fi forums again and decided on getting the Shure E4C.

These little phones have tons of detail, great build quality and looks, but I found them lacking in bass. According to frequency response graphs it has a nearly neutral bass response, but this a bit too sterile to my taste and decided to sell them.

The headphone I upgraded to is the Shure E500

It has all the detail of the Shure E4C, but adds a considerable kick to the low end, so it’s just perfect for me.

The downside of these In Ear Monitors is the way they completely cut you off from the rest of the world. You can barely hear anything going on around you.

So I was also going to need a headphone for office use. I got my girlfriend a AKG K81 and was amazed at how fun and detailed they sounded considering their relatively low price. So I got the black version of the K81, the K518, for myself.

Now wherever I go, I have great headphone gear with me. I blame all of this mostly on Head-Fi. It’s a great community of headphone fanatics and all newcomers are welcomed with the phrase:

“Hello and welcome to Head-Fi, sorry about your wallet!”