Yesterday I headed to e-Earphone's brand-new CIEM shop. I reserved an impressions spot for 16:00 in the grotto, and arrived at 16:02. I paid 5.400- ¥, or about 54$. I sat down with a no-nonsense gentleman by the name of Naoto Hattori. He runs Hattori Hearing Aids in Saitama. Mr. Hattori squirted silicon in my ears.

I went because I need to refit one of my custom earphones.



Above the impressions grotto is the brand-new CIEM shop. The outside of the shop is smeared with an image of Kurt Cobain modelling a UE woody; there is no mistaking what goes on inside. But dear me, I didn't expect it to be so well-organised.

If you've been to e-Earphone before, you know it as an organised chaos of headphones and related equipment. Racks and racks of stuff. Nerds spraying the air with geeky pheromones. Ear wax flitting in the air conditioning.

Breaking the custom section away is brilliant. (Who needs the riffraff?) The first floor of the CIEM shop boasts several listening stations. They are in the middle of the room. On the left is a large glass display case carrying demos from pretty much everywhere. On the right are two separate sitting booths displaying demos from a number of companies.

The main sitting booth comprises a computer, a pair of UE earphones, and a big ol' machine whose job it is to kick out the sound you'd hear from any of UE's custom earphones. The trick is that you just keep one earphone in your ears. Click on a different earphone icon from the MacBook Air and the sound changes to correspond to the selection.