Acoustibuds Earphone Adapters

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The Skinny

Burton Technologies’ Acoustibuds are a tiny pair of elastic, rubberized adapters designed to fit over most any standard set of earphones. They aim to provide richer, deeper sound, as well as a more secure in-ear fit.

According to the official website, here are the specs for their patented (and patent pending) earphone adapters:

• Earphones stay in better, even with extreme activity. Sweat is “no sweat”. Closely spaced fins help prevent your earphones from slipping out.
• Completely flexible design better conforms to the unique shape of your ear and is offered in TWO sizes.
• The Flexible Fins have an oval perimeter and are angled from the earphone to more closely match the natural contours of the ear.
• Superior sound insulation
• Big bass
• Volume boost

The Details

Construction

The Acoustibuds adapters essentially convert standard earphones into “in-ear/plug-style” ear buds. Rather than resting on the outside of your ear, they securely plug in to your outer ear canal. This is great to prevent them from slipping out and for conveying much stronger, richer bass.

As you can imagine, they’re also extremely tiny and lightweight – essential to any flashpacker.

Compatibility

They’re touted as being compatible with a wide variety of the most popular headphone/earphones and designed to fit most ears. While we only tested them with the stock iPhone 3G headphones, the flexible/elastic design would appear to fit just about any flat-ended headphone/earphone. Check out their complete compatibility list.

What About the Sound

Yeah, yeah, yeah … but what about the sound?

I’m no audiophile and I won’t pretend that I can bore you with a lengthy discussion of hertz and other technical geekspeak. But in my own experience, these things are killer. They provide an amazing difference in the audio quality of my stock iPhone 3G earphones: the advertised big bass and volume boost is spot-on, bolstering their notorious weak, tinny sound to a level I’ve only heard in much more expensive headsets.

My only quibble is that the “big bass” is much, much heavier. Depending on the genres of music you’re into, this may or may not be a good thing. On balance, I’m partial to richer, bass-heavy audio than the tinny, singing-in-an-aluminum can sound so prevalent with stock Apple (and many other) headphones.

Bottom Line

Acoustibuds adapters are the best, inexpensive investment you can make to any pair of stock headphones/earphones. Even with a slightly overwrought low end (bass), these babies are like the difference between black-and-white and color television. And, at less than $15, we couldn’t recommend them more highly.

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