Etymotic ER4 Replacement cable

So, so glad to have replaceable cables.

While Etymotic makes fantastic earphones, the value of this replacement cable is abhorrent. In my experience (having gone through a number of them), these cables will inevitably stop working at some point during regular daily use (typically sound starts cutting out at times and gets progressively more frequent until it cuts out permanently). For me, that duration was measured in months, not years. That in and of itself is not a problem; headphone cables always go bad eventually. However, just look at what they are asking for this replacement. (I will note that at the time of this review the price has even increased substantially from when I last purchased.)There are comparable cables from other manufacturers which are vastly better value, with the relatively marginal inconvenience of allowing some rotation at the ends where the earphone units connect (which is not actually an issue for me during daily use). After experiencing a number of failures of these first party cables, I have since switched to these lower cost third party options and am much more satisfied. They fail at the same rate in my experience but are multiple orders of magnitude less expensive and the sound quality is the exact same.

This is an OEM cable, and feels and works great. I really like the thin twisted pair of wires going to each IEM. However, I have experienced an intermittent short on the right channel (IIRC), and so stopped using it. FWIW, I actually like the replacement cable for the ER3 compared to this cable. But, I lost that ER3 cable. What I am using now is a general MMCX cable, which electrically mates with the Ety's just fine, but doesn't lock in place, due to the lack of the notch. But, this is fixed by taping the two sides together. I actually used shrink wrap to hold the MMCX connector to the Ety IEM, which is even more stable. This solution has been working great, so I probably won't buy expensive Ety replacement cables going forward. Still, this is a nice cable, albeit expensive and (at least for me) fragile.

Works just as good as the packed cable.

very good replacement

Etymotic er4s are some of the finest sounding headphones available, but these cables SUCK. I have gone through like 2 a year consistently. And they are not cheap. Anyway this last one I bought broke in almost exactly 31 days, putting me RIGHT past the return window, and now I don't know what to do. I contacted the company and at first it seemed like we were getting somewhere but they just stopped replying after one exchange. I don't want to pay another 80 bucks for yet another terrible cable that will break immediately, but I want to be able to use my damn headphones! They're just sitting in a box collecting dust while I use terrible sounding convenience store ones. At least the convenience store ones last longer than a month.

I like clean sound.But price is very, very high.

Bought this to replace my ER2XR cable. It works and it's basically the same as the original cable in every way except the braided part. No problems straightening out and coiling it up. The microphonics are terrible. It is highly overpriced for what it is.