When we were pondering our direction for iTalk Magazine in 2009 we decided one area we really wanted to explore was having “theme” months. Now this doesn’t mean the entire sites content is based around that theme, what it does mean is that there will be a series of posts in a given month based around a theme.

We wondered how to kick this off & thought, you know what? Most of us love listening to music & most of us are dissatisfied with the sound & feel of the iPhone earbuds (yeah, we couldn’t get our hands on a set of Apple’s new in ear earphones sorry)

So we embarked on a journey to track down some of the best earphones we could find, these are earphones that the industry deems to be some of the best. Generally speaking these are earphones that are what the market calls “high end” and most sit around the US$200 price mark. Some a little higher, some a little lower.

It’s been an interesting task this, given that both CES and MacWorld meant that many companies where struggling to keep up with the demand for review samples, however we are happy to report we’ve pulled together a group of what we think really are some of the best in the industry.

Now, before you are thinking names like Bose, Shure and Sennheiser – we did talk to these companies, as they all have iPhone capable earphones. Unfortunately – for them – we got sick of being bounced around from Marketer, to PR to …. and gave up talking to them.

What that meant was we went beyond the “name”, we hunted around the audiophile spots & listened to what real users were saying. Names started to filter out like, JAYS, v-MODA, Ultimate Ears, COMPLY and Sleek-Audio as having some of the best sounding earphones out there.

So .. we’ve been putting our ears to work over the past few weeks & will continue to do so through Feb as we look to find the best of the best earphones for you to jam out to your music with.

The first of these reviews will be live on the site soon & don’t forget, you can win yourself a set of JAYS – q-JAYS in our valentines promotion.