JVC HAFX1X Xtreme Xplosives

[TP1]

Me
I like to think of myself as an audiophile. I can detect the minor tweaks in equalizer settings; can replicate an equalizer to an almost identical degree only by use of sound and am able to create a near perfect equalizer setting to take advantage of a speakers' strengths.
Some of my more noteworthy audio delights include the Z-5500, Astro A30 and most recently JVC HA FX1X or as they are more commonly known: Xtreme Xplosives.

Packaging
The packaging is horrible! No can opener, scissor, knife or cutter would cut into the plastic everything is contain it. It took a solid 5 minutes of fiddling and using the equivalent of Mike Tyson’s punching strength to close down the scissors and make an incision. I seriously recommend garden pliers.

The headphones themselves are held in the packaging by their cables and nearly pulled apart when trying to take them out. It’s an unbelievably strong hold and the dents in the plastic make it very difficult to bend the packaging so the headphones come out safely; caution advised.
Could this a sign that the headphones are meant to be kept for display rather than used for music?

Extras
Apart for the headphones themselves, there is a box containing the regular 3 sizes of silicon ear pieces and an instruction manual. T box has a noticeable hole, allowing for the headphones cable to pass which possibly means that the box could be used to house a music player, but with nothing to hold anything in place, it would probably do more bad than good; so lets just use it to store the headphones in.

First Time
Pressing play for the first time on my regular IEM equalizer made me reconsider ever buying them, wanting to return them or better yet, burn them and leave no evidence of ever coming into contact with such headphones.
Sometime later I was able to put the problem into words: the headphones are louder; think of it as a rising the dB by several increments. Where other headphones would not be so loud that they would distort at max volume on my preferred portable music player (C5 mobile phone) these would sound painfully loud. To overcome this flaw (IMO) I was forced to either remind myself to not go to full volume or lower the equalizer to the lowest point and start from there.
Unsurprisingly when connecting the XX’s to an iDevice, hip hop EQ fits best, with others randing from ‘okay’ to ‘fatality’ depending on the genre.

Sound
The bass is good and deep and reaches significantly lower levels than counterparts of the same price point. Unfortunately this is where the advantages of these headphones stop. Middle range is washed out as if the singers are saying their lyrics behind a mattress. It doesn’t get any better with the Highs, which are that cheap overpowered TSSS sound that stabs you deep down your skull.

I’ve tried an array of genres: dubstep, hip hop, R&B, house, dance, heavy metal, rock. The kicks and the bass, as mentioned previously, sound very good. Mids are tolerable but washed out and Highs are only okay if there is nothing too high pitched or doesn’t last for too long.

In use
As with my other headphones, the small ear pieces fit me the best. So I put them on and started my weight lifting session: controlled movements, nothing that would cause the earbuds to fall out under normal circumstances. The drivers are enormous! They are slightly wider than my pinkie, and it’s literally like having two tiny barrels sitting in your ears. There is nothing else holding them inside your ear apart from the ear pieces as the drivers just lay there taking space.
Multiple times my left earbud would fall out, during simple stretching from side to side and also during slow descending pull-ups; basically anything involving tilting my head ever-so-slightly to the side or back.
Also another interesting fact I found was that there is a narrow angle (5-10 degrees) in the jack where the audio would discontinue to the left earbud. I have to point out that if the jack was only partially connected, the right side would stop playing, which indicates the culprit being somewhere along the line on the left output or source (jack or female jack connector inside the phone).This only occurs with these headphones on this phone, as individually neither encounters this problem with other headphones or audio sources.

Other
Their “Extreme Deep Bass Port” is another way of saying pre-amplified Bass & Treble, which as of yet has not come in handy but actually ruined the experience of many songs.

I am not a believer of burn-in, but I’ll give it a shot. Almost all reviews I’ve encountered are positive, so naturally I was expecting to love these headphones and I still want to, but if a slight boost in bass kills everything else in a song, the price isn’t worth it.

Conclusion
More of the budget should have gone into making these a pair of audio equipment rather than a fashion accessory.