The music takes over your entire consciousness - you smile, and before long you're beaming from earbud to earbud and you can't stop. You want to stay in that moment forever.
Stuffing your ears full of ACS earphones for the first time is one of these magical musical experiences. I'll certainly never forget it.
I'm almost jumping from pure joy right now as I mainline CHVRCHES directly into my temporal lobe. Trust me, these things are incredible.
From the beginningSo we've established that these earphones are special, so let's take a couple of steps back and address the elephant in the room. Yeah - they cost £649 in the UK and $999 in the US. Bosh.
Yes, that's six hundred and forty-nine English pounds, nine hundred and ninety-nine US dollars.
The expense comes from the delicate, intricate, painstaking process of construction, the man hours spent making them and the high quality components used. Custom molded especially for your own ears and your ears alone, the price includes the cost of having ACS personally take a mold of your lugholes.
Here's TechRadar's ear model, Matt Bolton, having his ears molded:
The fitting process is like this: your ears are examined. You'll need to make sure they're not blocked with wax or the fitting cannot continue.
Tiny tampon-like objects are then inserted deep into your eardrums with string poking out the top for easy extracting. Liquid silicone is then piped in until it sets. This is your first taste of the noise isolation that glove-fit silicone can offer - it's a strange sensation and adds to the special experience of getting your own ACS earphones made.
The mold of your ear is then popped out and taken away. The ear tampons can now be discarded (or kept as fun souvenirs).
ACS will then go away and manufacture a pair of earpieces from transparent medical-grade silicone. Inside the buds sit a motherboard with three audio drivers each pumping out a different range of frequencies. Like a ship in a bottle, you'll wonder how it all got in there.
You can even have custom text printed onto them. I chose to have my
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