Splash Damage: Skullcandies

Ah, you know what they say about candies, they rot your teeth. Likewise, the Skullcandy Smokin Buds (profiled in the previous post) will rot your ears. Because they sound coyly sweet, yet leave you wanting.

Once you ditch the crappy ass pack in buds and start using the buds that gives you good seal (like the ones from Sony or Ultimate Ears), you start to grove to its tunes. It’s easygoing, fairly balanced with a touch of extra bass here and there to round out the sound, and it’s generally agreeable. In that manner, it’s like a candy. Sweet and generally desirable. And cheap.

However, once you dig deeper, there is something missing. Like, for instance, soundstaging and wideness. Much like the Apple In-Ear buds, the Skullcandy offers sound that gets unnecessairly comfortable and familiar with your braincase. I don’t know about your listening preferences, but I like my sound to be (at least trying to) coming in to my ears from outside. The whole sound in your head thing always bothered me with certain headphones, and phones like the Skullcandy and the Apple In-ears are two of the worst in this aspect.

Not to mention the entire sound feels like it’s on a two dimensional plate. There’s no semblance of up nor down with these. Much like a set of Technics DJ phones, it’s very linear. At least with the Technics phone, the soundstaging was forgivable. The flat, small sound presentation serves to make the Skullcandy rather unsatisfying in the end, much like a candy trying to quell a full on hunger. Ultimately unsatisfying despite the rather pleasant beginning.

To be honest, it’s had about 2 hours of use at most. Burn-in, mechanical or psychological (I tend to lean towards the latter these days, especially with the smaller earbuds), still needs to take place. I’ll let you know what happens later once I get acclimated to these, and these to me.

One thing’s for certain, it’s nowhere near close to dethroning EX90s.