etymotic 4P earphones

I have a pair of ER6's and can only say that they are the best "headphones" I've heard for listening on airplanes. As a number of people have said, the trick is to make sure they are inserted far enough and you have a proper seal. If you do, ambient noise is greatly reduced and you can actually hear music. I've tried both the Sennheiser and Bose noise cancelling headphones, both of which seem to deaden the sound.

Having said that, they are a bit inconvenient when you have to remove to talk to the flight attendant and they would not be my choice for home listening.

I have a pair of these, and I have two thoughts about your experiences. First, as has been mentioned, it is crucial to have them pushed deep enough into the ear canal to get a good seal. The headroom info that came with mine said that this tinny sound is what will happen otherwise, and my experiences confirmed it.

Second, they do need a good bit of break in. I played mine for about 20 hours straight connected to my iTunes library. This was crucial, as the sound became much fuller and natural sounding after they became fully broken in. Try this overnight twice, and then try them out again. Make sure you experiment with placing them in your ear canal, too.

When you first start using them, it is very unconfortable, IMO. It just doesn't feel right to push them so far into the ear, but it is required for good sound with the ER 4P.

Hope that helps.

I haven't owned them nor have I heard them but I can say that Mead Killion is one of the foremost authorities on hearing perception and in-the-ear and in-the-canal hearing aids in the country. Many of the binaural recordings were made based on much of his research. Try talking to his company maybe those of you getting tinny sound are having sealing problems.