It is sometimes said that a surprisingly tiny problem can ruin an otherwise sublime experience. A grain of sand in an oyster, a small amount of grit in some spinach, a smudge on a perfectly white wall,
While nowhere near as pricey as the Bose Quiet Comfort series of headphones, I'm pretty enamored of my pair of Er-6i Isolator earphones. Unfortunately they're somewhat fragile, it turns out. After a year of heavy use, staying plugged in to my iPod while traveling and bumping around in luggage, the wires at the jack became loose.
What's really stunning is that with as well as they isolate my ears, that feature just makes variation in sound quality that much more jarring and distracting. Here I was on a plane, getting ready for a 12 hour flight, and suddenly the music is cutting out in my right ear but not in my left. Wiggling the jack made it come back, but if I relaxed my hands, the position of the wire would change, and zzzap the sound would cut out again. Or cut in-and-out. Like that grit encountered while chewing spinach, the entirety of the moment changes from appreciating what one has, to what is going awry with the current experience.
A bit of begging to the IT guy, and a copious amount of hot glue and fumbling later, my earphones are back, usable, if not a little funny looking.
While nowhere near as pricey as the Bose Quiet Comfort series of headphones, I'm pretty enamored of my pair of Er-6i Isolator earphones. Unfortunately they're somewhat fragile, it turns out. After a year of heavy use, staying plugged in to my iPod while traveling and bumping around in luggage, the wires at the jack became loose.
What's really stunning is that with as well as they isolate my ears, that feature just makes variation in sound quality that much more jarring and distracting. Here I was on a plane, getting ready for a 12 hour flight, and suddenly the music is cutting out in my right ear but not in my left. Wiggling the jack made it come back, but if I relaxed my hands, the position of the wire would change, and zzzap the sound would cut out again. Or cut in-and-out. Like that grit encountered while chewing spinach, the entirety of the moment changes from appreciating what one has, to what is going awry with the current experience.
A bit of begging to the IT guy, and a copious amount of hot glue and fumbling later, my earphones are back, usable, if not a little funny looking.
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