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Campfire Comets are quality in ear headphones that are considered entry level audiophile grade by many reviewers. I decided to take a leap of faith and bought a pair at $240.
The quality of sound and construction are top notch apparently after hours of reading reviews and comparing with headphones I have had personal experience with. The headphones come with tips that can provide good isolation from ambient noise. I was originally looking for wireless noise cancelling headphones but the price, performance, and problems reported with wireless products made me think the technology is still in the entry phase so I went back to wires.
My previous headphone was the Original Monster Turbines which I imported from Amazon US for $90 AUD (rrp $250 ish from memory) and lasted for a good 4 years from daily use before the wire loosened on one earbud (a known issue).
After the 20% eBay discount from a quality and trusted local store addicted to audio, there was nothing else in my knowledge at $240 for in ear headphones that offered solid sound, isolation, construction, and consistent performance (vs wireless).
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If you want to know, here’s my 2019 journey navigating the complicated headphone space:
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The last time I looked for a pair of headphones was in 2014.
This time, I was looking for some quality ear phones with relatively good isolation for commuting on the train or airplane where ambient traffic noise is relatively loud (80db). Wireless options were a plus since they weren’t widely available in 2014. I first looked for wireless solutions with active noise cancelling but quickly found them to be limiting where they are not truely wireless (the best I have found was QuietControl 30 wireless headphones but I wasn’t pleased with the audio quality at the price point, good but not great).
To my surprise looking into the wireless range, there is a dedicated category of headphones actually named ‘true wireless’. What a funny name to further qualify ‘wireless’ I thought. Here I found two headphones to be decent- MASTER & DYNAMIC MW07 and Sennheiser Momentum True In-Ear Wireless. However, these were above my pay grade and people have still reported issues of sync, dropouts, etc, something you’d expect to work flawlessly at $500 mark. Back to the scratch board.
Having considered the drawbacks of active noise cancelling requiring a typically larger footprint or expect a shorter battery life, I then looked into passive noise cancelling where the design of the headphone takes into consideration of ambient noise reduction. Smart. Whilst sound quality is highly subjective (e.g. the nura headphone demonstrates this), isolation was an easier and more objective attribute to evaluate from a group of reviewers (a good sample size of different ears). With an additional preference to avoid mainstream brands that sell into retail stores with some exceptions where brands were from an audiophile pedigree (e.g. sennheiser), this drove me into looking for IEMs (in ear monitors). I’ve had listened to other kinds of high quality headphones before (Denon, Bower & Wilkins, Kef, Sennheiser) but nothing in ear.
After reviewing various IEMs, entry level IEMs were the only ones I would pay for for my purposes so I narrowed down to a handful based on reviews on prestigious headphone sites. These websites and YouTube compared the mid and high range of the entry level IEMs I was looking into and gave me an idea of price/performance. Whilst all IEMs were excellent in sound quality with minor differences to the typical ear, the brand Campfire stood out due to their solid construction quality (metal chassis, detachable cables).
Original PASSIONATE 20% off All Items at Selected Sellers on eBay Deal Post
+1 for the story in description.
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