Xtreme Mac FS1 In earphones

Its been said before and I will say it again: the bundled earphones available with iPods suck. The sound of your iPod is WAY better than that. Even if you are not an audio enthusiast, it's a sin to not experience your music in its entirety. Thus the market for replacements is growing at a quick steady pace, and we try and review many good in earphones as we can. Today we have a product by a brand called Xtreme Mac. These are no ordinary earphones - they've received some serious praise in the community, and seems to be the one solution for introducing a MP3 player owner to the actual sound of his/her player, which is entirely different from the response of most bundled earphones. These are called the FS1 and here is our review.

Features and Bundle
The bundle comes with the earphones, a round carry case, packet filled with assorted sleeves and foam, and the literature. Form wise the earphones have a straight up look, no metallic parts, just a glossy black plastic casing for the buds, attached to a gray stalk. This then extends out into regular black cords, which join up and extend till about 1 m. Let's get back to the sleeves for a sec, as these are very important in getting a nice wholesome sound. How? It's actually due to the fit the earbud sleeves create in your ear canal. If i'ts not snug, then you're losing the bass. Thus for the FS1s we have flanged sleeves, foambuds (that take the exact shape of your canal), and also bullet style ones.

For me personally the Flanged ones fit nicely. The foam ones do too but the issue with the latter is that they can get seriously dirty, and retain the dirt. The transducers are proprietary products by Future Sonics, namely the MG5 model. Input sensitivity is 112 dB @30Hz/mW, while the impedance is 32 ohms. The rated frequency response is 20 Hz-20 KHz.

Performance
The first thing we noticed is the comfort one feels when slipping the buds in, of course that is given you choose the right sleeve. These earphones can be used for long hours on a commute, without fatigue. The next important thing is that they are quite sensitive, which means they are very loud at high volume levels in your player. Once a sweet spot on the volume dial is attained, the sound quality is really impressive. The bass is low reaching and wholesome. Timing wise too it's right up there, with good punch.

This punch extends to lower mids and mid frequencies too, thus tight drum kits sound great due to the crispness of the sound. The higher end of the audible spectrum, the zone known as treble normally, was very pleasant here, and a tad laid back in the overall scheme of things, but never dull. It's an immersive, powerful sound with rigid bass supporting beneath a breeze of subtly flowing highs. The fidelity is good enough to make one tell the difference between bad recordings, highly compressed MP3s and full fledged Flac files.

Conclusion
At Rs. 2490, the product is worth it.  The drivers are seriously good quality; emanating a well timed, quite accurate frequency response. The wide assortment of sleeves are very useful in getting that perfect fit. Looks wise they are simple, but not boring. All in all these are superb earphones, and highly recommended for someone who commutes a lot and loves his music. It's available at Access Infoworld, in Palladium and Atria Mall, Mumbai.