Sony MDR EX1000 vs MDR 7550 Earphones

We’re actually going to be looking at two things two of my favorite in-ear
Earphones, the Sony MDR ex1000 vs Sony MDR 7550. You might be thinking that these 2 earphones look fairly similar and you’d be correct. They come from the same family of headsets. They share the same basic design. They share the equal 16 millimetres vertically mounted dynamic driver. And they both have these kinds of weird ear guides that kind of will get you strange looks when you wear them around on the street.

Differences

Now the differences between the 7550 and the ex1000 come down to their target market. The ex1000 is Sony’s flagship dynamic driver an audiophile earphone, so it’s made out of a magnesium
material. It’s build quality. It is absolutely fantastic.

It’s a beautiful really well put together a piece of kit you get this nice supply cable, and the length of the cable is detachable. But the length of the cable is suited for portable devices. The 7550 is less well known than the ex1000.

The ex1000 is really well regarded in a lot of our earphone enthusiast circles as one of the best dynamic driver effluences that money can buy.

The 7550 is the professional stage monitoring version of this earphone. And because it’s less widely available, it’s a little less well known. The 7550 is also known as the EX 800 ST in Japan. Now the 7550 is made out of plastic as opposed to magnesium. It’s still a well-built earphone but certainly not as premium feeling the ex1000. Though in terms of sound
you’d be surprised at the difference between the two.

The other difference is that the 7550 has the left and right channel markings in blue and red, which again is for their kind of studio use.
They have shorter ear guides, and they have a longer cable about 10 or 20 centimetres or longer. So they are really good for home use.

If you connect into a desktop amplifier because you have that much more room to move your head around and that’s really good now, they’re
actually also made in Japan. Because they are actually individually hand matched between the left and right channel so that you make sure you get the same volume in the same frequency response from both.

This is due to the fact that this is a professional use earphone
compared to the ex1000 which is still well made, but it’s made in Thailand, and it’s not individually hand-matched as far as I can tell from the frequency response graphs that have been posted online.

Fitting

They both fit the same way the same weird way they just go around the side of the year and looking like that, and this look is actually quite strange, and it’ll get you looks if you wear them outside. But it’s actually very comfortable because the ear guides are flexible and if you mould them the right way to your ear. It feels like you have nothing on at all as Ned Flanders would say.

The drawback is with this design they have quite they both have quite large ports, and that means that they’re quite open so they’re not very isolating at all and in fact, they’re pretty much useless for use on the street or on the go. The only times were up, and the other problem with these is wind noise because when the wind is blowing they kind of
flow around this weird sticky-outy shape from your ears, and they make a lot of wind noise. So they’re pretty much useless for wearing around on the street or on a train or anything like that.

They’re most ideally suited for home use or if you’re listening to music in a quiet area like a library or something like that. Having said that, they both have an amazing sound to them. The design with the large ports means that they feel actually much more open and spacious than any in-ear earphone really has the right to and you have this really wide kind of soundstage you have really excellent articulation from the low frequencies or the high frequencies.

Everything sounds incredibly natural and very clear, but they both share you know a neutral but slightly warm and slightly dry sound signature. The big difference between the 7550 and the ex1000 is that the 75 50 has an acoustic filter on the nozzle and that basically means that across the high frequencies so from female vocals the top range symbols and triangles and they have about a three to five decimal
cut.

So you know because they’re from a professional use just to make sure that the ears don’t get fatigued from high volumes. What that means in practice is that the ex1000 sounds more clear and you know a brilliant kind of high-frequency detail so you really get a sense in a lot of recordings of the space of the studio or the way our voices or instruments echo around a space. And it sounds more open and spacious and articulate that said though the ex1000 because it has that slightly high-frequency emphasis.

It basically sounds quite painful, and you know it sounds quite painful on any badly recorded or you know a lot of modern studio recordings. It basically makes a bad badly recorded studio recording sound like garbage. It sounds like a hot mess. Essentially, the 7550 is a lot more
forgiving in that regard. it has a sound that’s better suited for a wider variety of music and a wider range of recording quality that said though it doesn’t have as much kind of space or air to the sound as much sparkle to the highs as the ex1000.

When I compare the two I actually prefer the 7550 because it’s more suited to a wider variety of music, and because of the high frequencies being less emphasized on the 7550 you can increase the volume a little more on a 7550 and therefore you can hear a warmer time because the myths are the lower mids and the bass is a little more emphasized.

They share the same basic signature depending on what you want the
ex1000 is better if you have a lot of really nice acoustic or classical recordings. It’s really brilliant for that beautiful dry natural sound the 7550 is a bit more of a jack-of-all-trades you know it will have
a really excellent articulation for book manor of recordings though it doesn’t have the last word in spaciousness like PBX 1000.

They are both you know, especially this own 550 they are both one of my most loved in-ear earphones because of the way they combine almost like a big full-size headphone. Kind of soundstage they’re really comfortable and just about the only con of their design is that you know they’re pretty much useless for portable on-the-go use the 7550 s are actually what I use to do my audio monitoring for a lot of uses and also
it’s great for just music listening, and if you ever you know sit down anywhere you just pop these in, and you’re away, so the ex1000 is actually discontinued in America, but I believe it’s still available in Japan.

The 7550 can be ordered from all over the place if you can get you to know the kind of sony are professional earphones.

Favourite All Round

Sony MDR 7550

For Acoustic Music

Sony Stereo Headphones MDR-EX1000