Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a review of Sony’s (then) new Walkman NWZ-A815, a very impressive-sounding mp3 player and a worthy rival to Apple’s omnipresent iPod. I said at the time that “writing a short review for 10,000 Birds on the Walkman…might seem a bit like someone from a hi-fi magazine writing about warblers, but…I think this is something many travelling birders will want to read about - I don’t know about you but I spend far too much of my life on planes, in buses, and sat alone in hotel rooms trying to get to sleep not to want to listen to some music from home occasionally…”.

I’ve taken the Walkman with me all over the world since that review and I feel exactly the same way now as I did then: I love the sound it produces, and I still think that sound is more accurate and clearer than the iPods I’ve been made to listen to by colleagues who can’t understand why I’d deviate from the “Apple Way”. However, last month I was forced to make an unplanned upgrade - not to the player, but to the bundled earphones and having spent a good few hours trolling the net for recommendations for a replacement I thought readers may be interested in the pair I finally bought: the Denon AH-C551 (which as names go is about as instantly memorable as the Walkman NWZ-A815).

Looking back (again) at the original Walkman review I said at the time that, “No matter how good the processor, though, if the headphones feeding the sound to your brain are rubbish then so will be what you hear. The i-Pods little white buds on their white wires are iconic, but they reproduce sound badly and fall out all too easily: the Walkman’s earphones employ a twin driver design in which the smaller treble driver is inserted inside the ear canal and the larger bass driver sits in the outside of your ear, like standard headphones. They’re comfortable, go loud enough for anyone not looking to go deaf, and stay put. Can’t ask for much more than that really.” I thought the Sony’s earphones were excellent - so why replace them?

I hate to admit it, but I lost them. Jet-lag, carelessness, stupidity - take your pick: but I left them somewhere and I had to replace them. The earphones that came with the Sony would probably retail at around 40GBP (about 40% of the cost of the player in other words). I would have been quite happy to go for a straight like-for-like replacement, but it turns out that doing that (at least here in the UK) isn’t as easy as I’d been hoping. Besides which I tend to be the sort of person that thinks “upgrade” where possible - and having upgraded my hi-fi many times over the years I know what a difference a well-chosen upgrade can make to sound equipment. So I thought I’d go online and check out a few reviews.

I ended up being convinced that the pictured Denon AH-C551s - priced at around 70GBP - would be what I was looking for. A review on CNET.co.uk for example, said the Denon’s were “Stunning all-rounders with terrific bass, but at the cost of very high-end detail”, whilst TrustedReviews.com said that they were “Very good. If you mainly listen to jazz, classical and acoustic music, they’re the best you can get for this sort of money. They’re well made, come with a decent selection of accessories for the money, and sound fantastic (most of the time) with other music too.”

I won’t go into all the physical specifications of the Denon earphones or the supplied accessories here (the review on CNET does that) but will concentrate on what they sound like instead. As I pointed out both reviews mentioned that there was a loss of detail in the very top-end (eg in the highest trebles), but - to be frank - I don’t expect a 70GBP earphone to reproduce music from a 100GBP mp3 player perfectly. High-end audiophile sound costs a heck of a lot more, comes from very specialist and carefully-matched equipment, and doesn’t involve compressed soundfiles. I listen to music mostly when I’m on the move (tracks from eg Foo Fighters, Morrissey, Goldfrapp etc) or at night to help me sleep (eg Slowdive, Jose Gonzalez, Adele, Kate Bush, Sigur Ros and the like) and all I really want is a clear, well-separated sound, bass-lines I can follow, and vocals I can hear properly. As a listener I’d say I’m someone who really likes music but doesn’t expect the earth from a combo that comes in under 200GBP.

So, I went for the Denons not expecting too much, but confident they’d sound better than the supplied (but good) Sony earphones. I have to say, though, I am remarkably impressed with them. Tracks I’ve heard a hundred times have apparently been re-recorded with a few more background musicians, the soundstage has expanded hugely (ie the bass player is no longer standing on the drummer’s head but appear to be standing in a different part of the studio), and the timing is improved (not that it wasn’t good before, but it’s definitely better now). I have to admit that at first I thought the sound was a little less exciting - but that was a false impression: it’s more neutral (less bright), more controlled, and more accurate. Music is slightly easier to listen to for long periods in fact, and there is more detail held in an mp3 file than I’d ever realised.

Have I noticed that I’ve lost some “very high-end detail” though? No, because I wasn’t getting that sort of detail through the Sony earphones anyway. If I’d lost a 200GBP pair of earphones and “downgraded” to the Denons I probably would notice the loss - but not going the other way. In fact, I’m so amazed by the difference in sound that comes with going from a 40GBP to a 70GBP pair of earphones that (almost inevitably) I’d now love to hear what a 150GBP pair sounds like. I won’t be doing that anytime soon unless someone lends me a pair, but I can confidently say that if you’ve only ever used the cheap earphones that come with most mp3 players or iPods you’d be absolutely stunned by what you’d hear - and what you’d been missing - if you popped the Denons into your ears and put on a favourite track.

70GBP is a lot of money to pay for earphones that will be paired up with a player that costs almost the same amount, but there are two ways of looking at that: firstly, why spend 100GBP on a player and not hear what it can do properly; and secondly earphones can be used in any equipment with a audio jack - if you sometimes listen to eg the radio or TV late at night through earphones then they make them sound much more involving too. And the Denons are built to last (providing you’re not jet-lagged, careless, or stupid you’ll be using them for a long time to come).

Like many other people in late-2008 I’m not awash with cash and my job isn’t as secure as I thought it was, but I’m going to think of these excellent ‘phones as a Christmas present to myself for all the hard work I’ve done this year and not regret the expenditure in any way at all. Why should I when they make my year-old Walkman sound so amazingly good..?

So what do I think of the Denon AH-C551 earphones? Sonically superior to a cheaper pair of earphones? Without the slightest doubt. Expensive? Relatively. Good value? Definitely…