There are a couple of benchmarks that are near universal when it comes to getting to the top tier. If you can’t shoot free throws, you don’t belong in the NBA; if you can’t make a V8, you shouldn’t be making full-size trucks; if you can’t make a pair of $100 earphones; you aren’t there. We have written three reviews (here, here and here) about headphones from Empire Brands, all from Wicked. The game has changed a bit and now we examine the flagship line’s top offering: Pure Sounds Pur-1000. We cannot mention how important a good $100 headphone is. Companies can define their legitimacy by one headphone that performs exceedingly at that price; others can earn themselves labels of excuses explaining why their earphone failed. There is no place in the world of headphones more crowded then this segment, there is no place more competitive and there is no place more important. Unless the $100 price point is your lowest offering, chances are if you can’t make it there – you probably aren’t considered anything above third-tier when it comes to portable sound.
Out of the Box
There are a couple of companies that really know how to package a headphone. Monster – yes; Grado – no. When you pull the Pur-1000s out of the brown shipping box you will begin to hope that the earphones sound like they are packaged – incredible. The rectangular box is split in two with the bottom featuring thick high-end packaging and the top is made of almost glass-like plastic that shows off of the earphones for all to see. The attention to detail on the beauty that is the packaging as absolutely incredible. Gone our the thoughts of attempts to compete with Skullcandy and present is the idea that these aren’t made to compete – they were made to speak for themselves. Inside you’ll find the earphones, three different sleeves for your liking, a carrying case, a cord clip and what we perceive to be some sort of cord wrap.
Design
The earphones feature a 10mm titanium driver featuring a range of 20-20,000 hz with an impedance of 16 ohms. (Random fact: the frequency range is not only the same as Monster’s popular Beats by Dre Studio, but also of one of our favorite earphones of all-time (if not ever), Shure’s e5c.) The exterior design is a combination of gray, black and chrome plastic. The tips are the same as the rest of the Empire Brands line allowing for users to have a handful of choices possible when it comes to sleeves. The back of the buds feature a left/right identifier and a small hole. The rubber cord measures 1.2 meters and features a gold 1/8th tip at the end. The included tips are just of the standard round silicone variety and are offered in three standard sizes.
Overall the earphones feel solid, yet light. We would have appreciated a tad bit heavier design just for the feel of the earphones, but you can tell that these are significantly better made then the other products we got from Empire Brands. Still, when you pick these up you definitely feel like you should be holding more. While we are a fan of basic design, we think to some extent perhaps these are overboard. One particular oddity has to do with the lack of logos found on the buds themselves – just a simple identifier that distinguishes each earbud. We do admit that the transition between the silicone sleeve and the bud is quite incredible. The two come together to form a unified shape that particularly looks good when stared at via a distance. We don’t normally judge products on looks largely because we rarely dislike anything that doesn’t have bright pink fur. Yet, for some reason – we just don’t like how these look. We know it’s a personal choice, but – for reasons unknown to us, we just wish they looked different. Perhaps it’s the contrast with the incredible box, perhaps it’s the two-tone design in the face of the name “Pure Sounds” or perhaps it’s just that we are crazy?
Comfort
We never used anything besides the medium size sleeves, and that was by choice. Never once did we find these uncomfortable – the size of the sleeve fit perfect to our ears. We normally aren’t a fan of the round style sleeves, but these made us happy. The longest we had these in our ears was for just under three hours taking them out a few times during our listening session. Particularly when sitting down, we found almost instantly that these had disappeared within our ears and our body has lost feeling of them. When moving around we took advantage of the included clip which helped prevent the cord from ripping the music out of our ears. The lightweight nature was very much appreciated in the area of comfort.
Our one problem related to comfort had to do with these falling out and we determined the culprit to be a variety of things. First, silicone allows for the earphones to easily slide around in our ears without any loss in comfort or isolation. Second is the nature in which the cord connects to the bud. The final part of the equation was a combination of gravity and various physical forces on the cord. A little pull down on the cord would slide the bud around our ear. Than the slight piece of plastic that forms the bud to the wire would hit the side of ear and pull out the bud ever so slightly. We slowly learned to use the clip more often, but the first couple days were a slight bit troubling. Note, this wasn’t a discomfort – more an annoyance.
Isolation
If you missed the part about how these fit perfectly in our ears than the following might be foreign to you. If you caught that, you’d have to imagine the isolation is going to be fairly impressive. That simple equation turned out to be true. When sound is playing the outside world wasn’t present. When sound wasn’t going through the wire we could hear some of the outside world, but even when we turned the earphone down to pretty low volumes – we were once again isolated from most noise. (If you haven’t read on our thoughts of sound isolation versus noise-canceling, you can find it in our review of the Shure SE530. For the record, these are clearly the former.)
Sound
Before you even get the Pur-1000s out of the box (which is a nice process in itself) – the sound gets confusing. The back of the box that displays the “Speak Performance Rating.” There are three levels (Typical, Exceptional and Ultimate) and four areas measured (Treble Response, Mid-Range Response, Bass Response and Comfort Level) – we know, that sounds oddly familiar to what we do in terms of our reviews. If you can’t make it out above the Pur-1000s are rated (by Empire Brands) at just under “Ultimate” in every category except Bass Response, in which the receive a full “Ultimate” rating.
The word “Pure” just lost us. Somewhere in the mix of: Pure Sounds, Pure Performance and Pur-1000; we got “ultimate bass experience?” Perhaps it’s just us, but ‘pure’ and ‘bass’ seem to be in some sort of contradiction. Initially we believed this to be a result of our purists views and a marketing department clashing over a couple of words. Then we pondered a serious thought: could Empire Brands actually create a pure headphone with an ultimate bass?
Highs
Given the confusion mentioned above, we had no expectations before putting on the headphones. What we found in the highs was a nice vibrant sound. There was never a harshness in the sound and we couldn’t find any noticeable flaws during any of the initial listening sessions. We do wish that there was some added depth to the highs because we do feel that well being vibrant, the range is rather limited; but more on that later.
Mids
Empire Brands definitely got the mids right in their level. Much like the highs we didn’t see anything that was a “red flag” during the initial testing sessions. When we ratchet up the scrutiny a tad bit we noticed that there was a sense of depth that wasn’t being reached. We normally say that we like the mids to help in blending the sound spectrum together, we definitely don’t think that was achieved. We felt that the cohesion of the sound good have been improved, but the sound you are getting is good, particularly from the mids.
The independence that three sound spectrums took still managed to result in a relatively impressive soundstage, particularly for an earphone. Most earphones have a dullness when it comes to soundstage and those that possess a decent one are often regarded as the top choices. While not being on the level of the higher-end IEMs, we still felt like the field that was created was beyond most of the market and gave our ears a treat.
Lows
Our confusion on the box was the lows. We quickly realized a couple of things first, these are bass heavy; second, these are not the “ultimate bass experience” and finally that idea about creating a pure headphone with an ultimate bass is just as large of an illusion as we mentioned above. The bass is oddly the only part where we really noticed any muddiness. However, along with the muddiness you do get a powerful and accurate bass that is rarely seen on a pair of earphones, especially one that has highs and mids that are respectable. At times, we wish the bass was turned down; but for the most part we loved it.
On nearly every song we played you got about as close as you can get with an earphone of feeling the bass and occasionally were graced with some incredible mixtures. The somewhat muddy bass of Coldplay’s “Lost+” gets broken by the sound of Jay-Z’s voice two-thirds of the way though the song. Lil Wayne’s “Tie My Hands” saw an incredibly powerful bass line gradually pick-up as two artists deliver our personal favorite performances on one song. A perfect bass level is accompanied by the crisp vocals of Lupe Fiasco on his newest track “Resurrection” – we could go on and on – but the point remains: sometimes you do get magic.
High-Definition Sound
Some of our favorite headphones get labeled with this term – but we are still lost as to what it means. To describe the Pur-1000 as this would be to mock it’s one flaw: detail. After much listening we came to the conclusion that the one thing this headphone needed to really separate itself within the parking lot that is the rest of the price range was better detail. We know where the bar is when it comes to the playlist we use for testing and while the Pur-1000s performed better than most that were within its relative price range, it wasn’t on the next level. Without a doubt, you are going to hear plenty of new things if you switch from most headphones, but for us this was no revolutionary listening experience.
Hidden Gems
Before we give you our final conclusion there are two things we’d like to praise about Pure Sounds. First is the lifetime warranty that is found on all the headphones that Empire Brands offers. To give you some comparison Monster tends to offer one to three years; Sennehiser and Shure each offer two, Bose gives you one and most everybody else falls in that range. What does that tell you about Empire Brands? They believe in their products and they are here to stay. We feel that if you are ready to flip a coin between these and another headphone – you should put the quarter back in your pocket and chose the one with the better warranty. Something that we noticed first on the Pur-1000s was found inside: some safety information. Blatantly stated were what volumes are safe for specific periods of time. There is not a single headphone we have tested yet that is worth losing your hearing over and we compliment Empire for taking the lead when it comes to safety.
Judgement Day
We mentioned before how important this was. We don’t have a complete verdict on these earphones, but part of it is the nature of the game. We will tell you what we found. First is that we really didn’t expect these to sound as good as the did. Second is that they were extremely comfortable. Most importantly, we enjoyed the music. If you are sick of your Apple buds and are looking for something that is conservative with a serious punch on the low-end – you’ve your earphones. The real verdict is this: if we were in the market for a pair of headphones at the $100 range, we’d put the Pur-1000s in serious consideration and we think you should too. While we didn’t know what to expect, we in some sense got what was to be expected. It was anything mind-blowing, but it wasn’t anything to complain about. Ever after our harsh scrutiny is done we have no problem recommending these to you at $100 (they MSRP for $119.99) Here’s the thing though – you can get them (currently) for under $60 off Amazon and at that price, we need to write a whole other review.
(Note, we literally didn’t look up the Amazon price until the last sentence was in mid form. The entire review was written with an imagined price somewhere between $90 and the MSRP of $119.99; i.e. the $100 price range. It’s a completely different earphone at half the price, but we aren’t sure how long they stay half off.)
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