Creative Zen Aurvana in-ear earphones

With the help of Creative, David Field gets in touch with his inner ear. It's worrying that he can't hear the traffic.

If you’ve ever struggled to hear your music above the outside world, then you should be considering a pair of in-ear earphones. They act like earplugs with a small speaker in the middle, stopping most ambient noise dead in its tracks, and then inject music into the freshly created silence of your ear canal.

The second you put them in (you put normal headphones on, but these slide into your ear canals) the world around you melts away. Cars become hard to hear and busses are reduced to whirring battery-powered toy cars. This is just part of the design of in-ear earphones, and when you use them for the first time it’s a little spooky and can throw you. But then you start to focus on the sound.

Unfortunately, the Creative Zen Aurvana set we’re looking at here wasn’t as good as we were expecting. It was still leagues ahead of the cheap earbuds that you get bundled with MP3 players and better than many headphones that retail at around the same price, but we were hoping for more.

Detailed treble-heavy instruments felt flat, making things like splash cymbals bury themselves in the mix. The upper midrange was a bit scratchy, making both hi-hats and snares slightly more obvious than they should have been. Midrange was clean and direct, which gave guitars and vocals presence. Bass was detailed, but the kick-drum lacked punch in almost all our test tracks.

Nonetheless, once you relax and stop analysing the sound the Aurvanas sound quite pleasing. Most aspects of the sound blended together nicely, and although they weren’t up to the standards of professional monitors, they make a great alternative to bud headphones. They sound more composed at lower than higher volumes, but thanks to the surrounding silence, you’ll find yourself listening at lower volumes anyway.

In-ear monitors have a few strange quirks to them. For instance, you’ll hear a lot more noise from your jaw than you’re used to. If you’re eating and listening, everything will sound magnified, almost like Godzilla is sitting behind you, chewing on the world’s biggest prawn cracker.

It also means that any time the Aurvana cables rub against anything you will hear little thumping noises as the pressure in your ears changes. This can get quite distracting and most noticeable when you’re walking or running. You can almost completely stop this by sliding the cable holder around a bit of your shirt though.

Although the sound quality is reasonably good, they’re not for everybody, mostly because they only come with rubber tips, not the foam ends that seem to fit people with more success. Head to your local pharmacy and buy a pair of cheap rubber ear plugs, the ones in the yellow case. If you’re comfortable wearing them for long sessions, the Creative Aurvanas are worth your time.