The magic with the E500PTH earphones is the Triple Hi-Definition drivers which amazingly pack two woofers and a tweeter into earphone and hardly effect the size of the overall package in comparison to the rest of the E series units.

The in ear design does take some getting used too and anyone who hasn't used isolating earphones before will feel rather strange when you first fit them. The idea is to get a very tight seal around the earphone unit as it slides into your ear, this naturally blocks a large percentage of spurious noise so much so that we perform our tests on the London tube network.

With the deeply sexy black Shure earphones attached to our newly won 5G video iPod we set off for the local tube station in fact on the way to a conference on streaming media to the web. As usual the train was packed solid (great) but at least we had some testing to do. In with the earphones a bit of a gulp as they seated properly and straight away you notice the isolation and lack of noise even the shriek of a central line tube door is absent. The Shure E500 PTH's come with a range of sleeves designed to help you get the best fit, we found the medium size worked well and after the initial discomfort (as with any in ear earphones) you soon forget they are plugged in.

Now the normal problem with in ear units is the isolation that is so good for audio quality also makes you a bit of a walking hazard as you can't hear nowt, no train announcements, no traffic, no attractive girls wolf whistling at us (yeah right). But the E500's are different, Shure have included a push to hear microphone in a pluggable module which can be put in circuit. The cable from the earphones is quite short (about waist height) but this is intended to be the location of the PTH module which is quite simple and yet ever so effective. Just push the button and the microphone adds the outside world back into your ears, great when a work colleague taps you on the shoulder or when you want to hear the station announcement.

We love the way the unit can be removed and the extension cable used to act as a normal set of earphones and save on having the little unit attached, which while it isn't too bulky adds weight if you are not going to use it. The PTH module is battery powered and easy enough to use with the exception of the microphone gain control which is very fiddly especially if you are fumbling around inside a jacket, you really need to be able to see where the control is in order to operate it. The whole package is incredibly well built, the cabling is thick and well terminated, the units themselves maybe small and surprisingly light but again they are bombproof.

So to the meat of the review, what do they sound like? Starting with the traditional Fatboy Slim they made our 192kbits MP3 track sound great in fact so good we could hear the compression clipping the extreme bass and showing the flaws of the encoding. Bass was rich and yet perfectly balanced, while the mid range managed to continue unaffected by even the most bass heavy sections, top end is there in spades making our current favourite Sondre Lerche sound fresh and clear.

Trying to compare the Shure E500PTH earphones to any other units we have reviewed is like test driving a Ford Mondeo against a Porsche, both in terms of performance and price. Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is that the last time a set of headphones (let alone earphones) sounded this good, LP was on work experience with the BBC and was given access to some R&D units that BBC radio were evaluating. These required their own amps, cables as thick as mains leads and 2 sound engineers to set them up before he was allowed to listen.

It speaks volumes that every track we tried was as good as the last and we just couldn't find any tracks which upset the rich yet balanced sounds of the Shure's. The passive crossover technology clearly helps keep the various frequencies separate but given that the three (yes three) drivers sit millimetres apart you wouldn't have thought they made that much difference. Well you'd be wrong the combination of the crossovers and the triple driver system and the quality of the components used make for an experience that is really magical.

We spent the rest of the Tube journey working our way through track after track in splendid isolation of the great unwashed who travel the central line on a daily basis. Not only could we not hear them the Shure's adhere to the British rule of not being able to hear someone else's MP3 player, our tests showed even at full iPod volume (which is painful) someone sat in the next seat cannot hear anything.

Such performance is rare in high end Bo Selecta style headphones let alone a set of walkman style in ear earphones, so Shure deserve every bit of credit we can give them. Clearly their professional range has contributed greatly to the design of the E500's but sadly Shure have also had to bring a professional price tag too. That is really our only beef with Shure who have decided that the E500PTH units should cost over £400, which when paired with our iPod add 200% to the cost of the kit we are carrying about. No need to worry about being mugged for your Pod you want to hold onto your earphones.

Clearly justifying spending £400 plus on a set of earphones is not a conversation you want to have with your other half, far better to buy them and either hide them or use them when she's out!  Don't worry we won't tell your dirty secret is safe with us......

Published - 21/10/2006

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