Musicians love their custom-fit Ultimate Ears headphones, or monitors as they are called in professional circles. But who can afford the $1,000-plus price tag?
While Ultimate Ears has offered lower priced models, the Irvine company just launched the LoudEnough earphones for just $39.99.
These appear to be decent earphones, if you don’t mind that they are geared for kids.
And by ‘for kids,’ I mean they are colorful (available in mint, blueberry and plum), include extra small silicon ear tips and have a mechanism inside to cap the volume by 20 decibels to protect those delicate little ear drums.
“You’re almost chopping the volume in half,” said Paul Manfrini, who’s in charge of product development. “If we limit it so there’s a cap on the loudness, we’re going to help protect their ears.”
Ultimate Ears utilized technology it already offered in its Airline Attenuator, a small gadget that plugs into a user’s headphones and an airplane’s headphone jack. The attenuator levels volume so your ears aren’t suddenly irked when the pilot starts talking on the PA system. Ultimate Ears built an attenuator inside the LoudEnough earphones and that is what puts a ceiling on the volume by 20 dB.
“If you listen to something at more than 100 dB for more than 5 minutes, you start to damage your ears. This will drop volume down by 20 dB so if you’re around 80, you can listen for 3 to 4 hours,” he said.
“It’s not an end-all though because we don’t know if kids are going to crank up their parent’s stereo,” he said. “Parents still need to watch their kids.”
LoudEnough isn’t the only headphone out there for kids. I also spotted the AirDrives for kids and the iHearSafe earbuds for kids (currently 3 for $49.99 on the Ingemi Corp. site).
More photos:
Related:
- My Ultimate headphone experience (Gadgetress, June 6, 2006)
- Ultimate Ears making its Earmark (OC Register, June 2006)
