Let's begin by describing the appearance of the ear sleeves as it is the most striking feature of the set at first glace.

The ear sleeves’ design is based on background noise isolation in order to reach a better quality of sound and also reduce or avoid the need of raising disproportionately the earphone sound volume in those places where the background noise is high.  

Inspired by earplug design, these silicon ear sleeves are extremely soft, comfortable and at the same time, isolate adequately from the background noise to the extent of perceiving a pleasant silent feeling if they are not emitting any sound.

Both the end which is inserted in the ear canal and the back end where the cable comes out are flexible.

Any similarity to ear plugs in not purely coincidental J. When compared with two earplugs of similar design, it’s easy to understand Icemat's goal when creating these ear sleeves. Anyone who has worn ear plugs before knows that these type of plugs are truly efficient in isolating background noise. Now, let’s imagine we’ve got an ear plug with a speaker inside: the result of this brilliant idea is a higher performance to what we're really used to.

When we are in noisy places, we instinctively tend to raise the volume of the headset to continue listening without missing any detail. But if we stopped playing what we were listening to for any reason and later we played it again but this time in a silent room, it would be possible to notice the extremely high volume we were tolerating and, probably, without being aware of this.

Well, it is only necessary to put the Icemat Siberia In:Ear Headset into your ears to notice immediately how efficiently it reduces the background noise. For example, a noisy PC with high RPM fans becomes practically imperceptible and as a result, there is no need of raising the sound volume excessively to keep on listening as usual. I’m sure our ears will be greatly thankful for that.

As regards wearing comfort -and from a personal point of view-, I’m quite reluctant to wear headphones, to the extent that I seldom wear them since I find the big ones uncomfortable and the earphones end up causing me pain. But in this particular case that problem disappeared completely. Even after having worn this headset for a long time there was no pain at all. The softness and the adaptability this headset presents were so good that there were moments that it didn’t feel like a headset but a speaker instead J. Furthermore, the set includes two different types of silicon sleeves (there are three pairs altogether, one of which is extra), and therefore the customizing level is even higher, so…’to each his own’.

Sound quality

It could be possible just to base on the product’s technical characteristics such as the frequency response to try to give you an idea of the result. However, there’s nothing better than to experience something on our own, isn't it? I decided then to take a pile of well known CDs to appreciate any possible sound difference. The excellent sound quality was noticed immediately and, to my surprise, I could even listen to sounds that I've never heard before.

The background noise isolation, the incredibly good sound quality and the lack of sound distortion even at high volume make the Icemat Siberia In:Ear a great choice even for the most demanding ears.  

After that, I played some on-line games with friends. The difference wasn’t that noticeable, though. Of course, here we’re talking about rougher sounds than those found in a musical piece; so giving an opinion about how good or bad an explosion or a minigun shot in UT2004 sound is quite subjective. It is obviously different to listen to those sounds from an audio system, either for better or worse, but that’s a matter of personal taste. What it can be said is that the headset sounded very well and that I found the experience quite pleasant.

Personally, the tests with music turned out to be the clearest ones, since it is much easier to appreciate with music any difference that may arise.