Question How to choose low-end ear buds in a fixed budget?

[windflash]

WARNING, long post.

Now where do I start...
The main goal of not buying the thing at a closest bus stop for like, two bucks, is for them to survive in the jeans pocket longer than 2 months and not sound like sandpaper.
My last pair was chosen blindly and it was Sennheiser CX300II (sounded like heaven compared to $2 ones and snuffed exactly after the 2-year warranty voided if anyone cares) and I've never tried anything for more than $40, so should be no problem finding stuff, right?..
I was thinking I know what I want: in-ear headphones, wired, strong cable in connector area, preferably longer than 1.2 meters, priced around $25, with at least according sound quality... But when I put "in ear, wired, price low to high" in on multiple e-shops, there were still a hundred models or so -- nothing strikingly different between them and yet with different prices.. I just don't see where it comes from.
I know that I don't need a lot of impedance, and that wider Hz range will benefit me but not too much, and still... Unlike when I go to buy a CPU or mobo, I feel like I totally don't know what I'm buying and the joke will be on me if I pay 30 bucks for some crap that breaks in a week because I never saw the signs of it being crap when I was choosing. Worse still -- trying to google the stuff sends me to generic posts that explain "there are h\ph that go in your ear, the ones that go around it and the ones that go on it" and don't help a bit, OR some top5\top10s, that was selected out of the pile by the author god knows how and each model is obviously 4-5 stars rated because it's "the" top 10. And because of the tops I got the feeling that I can't even cut out unfamiliar brands from my list, because I did not knew 7\10 brands any top was listing.
I'm sorry for the long rant, really, but it is precisely this frustration that made me decide and bother some people about it. Pls help.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

The cable will always be the weak point with ear buds. $20 or $2000 the cables can break. The really good ones have replaceable cables but they tend to start at a higher price point than your budget. One of the better, cheaper options with a replaceable cable is this Massdrop x NuForce EDC.

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-nuforce-edc-in-ear-monitors

A little cheaper the MEE Audio M6 is pretty well regarded.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B4PR2GD/ref=psdc_172541_t1_B074THQXDR

Not sure of anything cheaper with replaceable cables that I'd recommend.

 

[windflash]

The cable will always be the weak point with ear buds. $20 or $2000 the cables can break. The really good ones have replaceable cables but they tend to start at a higher price point than your budget. One of the better, cheaper options with a replaceable cable is this Massdrop x NuForce EDC.

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-nuforce-edc-in-ear-monitors

A little cheaper the MEE Audio M6 is pretty well regarded.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B4PR2GD/ref=psdc_172541_t1_B074THQXDR

Not sure of anything cheaper with replaceable cables that I'd recommend.

Thanks for attention to my humble thread ^_^

It's nice to get live personal recommendations really, but still... It's not what I'm looking for. I want to know for myself how the choosing process even works. You can't touch them, you can't hear them, you can't squirm 'em to see if they creek and you often need a month or more to find out if there're any problems with the model, so how do you manage to even make a choice in such a big market, using only what you manage to dig on the internet? Do you just have to try\have other people try and find out? Even if I take an hour off of some DJ's day to give me a full list of 20 semi-unique positions, I'll never be satisfied unless I know exactly how and why he dug those out of the pile..

 

[windflash]

Detachable cables is not what I look for either.. I just got a general feeling that if you buy something with a warranty, it will at least work for that time period. And honestly, 2 years for 30 usd? I'm fine with that but the $2 ones obviously didn't deliver, so I know that the cable can be crap even considering the whole situation with earbuds and whatnot.
It's just that I'm used to research carefully into everything I buy to get the most for my money, and here... It looks as if there's nothing to research as I see it now, and that's what really bothers me. There can't be no real criteria for what ear-ins you buy... Can it?

 

[Deleted member 217926]

One of the few reviewers I know of that might cover what you're looking for is Damir Franc ( The Nitpicker channel name ). He does one review in German and one in English of each product.

https://www.youtube.com/user/nimrodity9/videos

I trust his reviews to be honest and I tend to agree with his headphone reviews so I trust his ear.

Most good audio reviewers don't review lower end models.

Detachable cables fix the known weak point on any earbud or IEM. I've got some 1More Quad driver IEMs with a kevlar cable that would be hard to break. But hard doesn't mean impossible.

 

[windflash]

One of the few reviewers I know of that might cover what you're looking for is Damir Franc ( The Nitpicker channel name ). He does one review in German and one in English of each product.

https://www.youtube.com/user/nimrodity9/videos

I trust his reviews to be honest and I tend to agree with his headphone reviews so I trust his ear.

Most good audio reviewers don't review lower end models.

Detachable cables fix the known weak point on any earbud or IEM. I've got some 1More Quad driver IEMs with a kevlar cable that would be hard to break. But hard doesn't mean impossible.

The channel will surely help a lot, thank you!

But what about your recommendations? Does headphone community has some sort of big metaphorical scene of products that people just "know of"? Is that just it? Say, there's a new pair -- it's good, but people don't know that yet, and then reviewers in the community pick up on it and tell their big audiences that it's good, and if a lot of competent reviewers say it is, people in the community kinda begin to know the model and recommend to everyone?
Is the specific of this market in the fact, that you need to compare to know, and a big collection\experience to compare, thus it's built on the shoulders of professional reviewers?

And of course, I can't deny that if one man, out of the community, had a thrilling experience with that one or two pairs of IEMs he'll recommend it to people looking to buy IEMs, and that's totally reasonable even if you don't know any reason for exactly why they work so good.

 

[jsmithepa]

Unfortunately I know of no headphones reviews like they do with "boxes" with response graphs and everything.

Headfi.org is where u wanna go, that's ALL they talk about. But don't expect many if at all, mention of budget. Many of the talks revolves around Senheiser, Ultimate Ears, Shure, Etymotic, well-known brans, and start ~usd$100. audio heads over there consider Dre a "punk" brand like Bose and not serious audio quality.

 

[windflash]

Thank you all very much for detailed replies!
While I had no real questions to ask, I had a gap in my theory, and it's now more or less filled.

What I've learned from your answers here (for possible future readers):
The headphones market isn't much different from any other market -- it's just bigger in numbers of crap that's not worth being highlighted at all.
It might appear as though some brands get pointed at on purpose \ because they paid the showcasing person, but they're mostly not. If we're about quality, the obscenely large amount of choice in the "headphones" tab is an illusion. 10, maybe 20 quality brands giving you a wide range of specific models, and the other stuff is just filler, trying to steal the spotlight or a good brand that haven't yet showed itself to the world but I mean who'd risk it if you're just a buyer.
The purpose of reviewers is not to make you buy what they get paid for or make you buy something expensive -- every showcase is rated good by them, because they want you to only choose from the good stuff, and avoid everything they don't deem worth their (or your) attention.. Again, if we're talking straight quality, the choice range is really as small and, most of all, defined, as anywhere else.

Keep reading if you're not convinced

Let's use GPU market for comparison.. I have a satisfactory understanding of gpus, and I can make a recommendation on red or green, what re-seller company to buy from, where to buy and what details to pay attention to, depending on the overall build of the PC -- if someone asks. I feel pretty confident when buying a GPU, and that's what I was lacking about headphones when I started this thread.
The thing is... I never actually bought a GPU once. The model list is manageable, the comparison, although with complicated terms, but is debatevely straightforward -- once you set up a rig with the game and swap cards one after another, listing their price... So to find out what GPU market is and how to choose your own GPU? Only a bit time consuming, not difficult.
It's not done this way with headphones... Or so I thought.
The process for typical buyer who just wants the best bang for the buck is essentially the same -- find a bunch of competent reviewers and use their opinion. Brands have trends about quality and that kinda stuff that they tend to keep overall, and you need to compare if you want to find the best stuff...
Difference with headphones is about the low entry price. People don't casually buy GPUs -- too expensive to do that if you don't know what you're doing. People do, however, casually buy headphones -- few bucks at a nearest store and you have yourself a thing you can use.
I thought reviewers have some concealed method for picking the top 10 out of literally thousands of models -- they do not, it seems. Brands got trends they tend to stick to, like any other market... Example alert! If a company made 100 GPUs and they were all at the very least decent then who dares to say that the 101st will be utter crap no matter what? That's right, it "can" be.. But very unlikely.
it's just that, since a pair of headphones is a technologically simple device, there are a lot more brands for the competition trying to steal the spotlight, with most of them screaming "made in some China basement" in your face -- while the number of good ones is still pretty manageable. Not to mention that headphones have criteria other than quality and performance.
And despite the big number of differently priced stuff of the same brand that look like the same model, the build or sound quality will not range that much in a small price range if we're still talking about the same brand -- it might just be the same model, with different designs. Reason for difference other than the possible impedance difference\lack of gold coating on the connector is mostly that 10 entries in the shop being priced exactly the same would look a bit suspicious and\or make the brand look cheap and unserious.

With that giant heap of mostly useless text I ask to close this thread, as my "theory hole" was filled. Please forgive my strangeness, all the answers really did help.

 

[jsmithepa]

In addition to Math, Science, English, Civic etc, schools should have a mandatory class on reading B.S. and able to filter useless stuff, more so from the Internet.

Nothing I didn't already knew.

Headphones specific reviews (I trust mostly other users) pay attention when they talk about "signature" when they talk about what type of music, when they talk about "accurate" "clinical" and u know what they are talking about after your 3rd pairs and having spent a few usd$hundreds, as with anything else, your first 2 pairs you don't really know what you are looking for because u don't know your own taste. People tend to not wax philosophies on budgets, once in a blue moon u would hear "usd$50 headphones sounds decent for the $$."

 

[Deleted member 217926]

The headphone and IEM market is just like anything else. There are some lower priced stand outs and there's some higher end stuff that's basically junk. And as jsmithepa said above once you've had a few pair you start to know what you're looking for and what others are talking about when they describe something.

Brands tend to have sound signatures they are known for but you really have to go model by model. You can't just say 'this is brand X, it's going to be great'.