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There are some things which, at first glance, seem to have no real business existing. Any film starring - and I use the word in its loosest possible definition - Ashton Kutcher for instance, or as cars go, the Porsche Panamera. Even Marmite, which I'm 90 per cent sure I don't enjoy eating, yet I still find myself compelled to.

At a glance, Radiopaq's Custom Tuned Earphones look very much like they should be grouped into that same category. There's no faulting the thinking behind their creation; different genres of music do indeed have different sound signatures and as such should be listened to with equipment tuned to suit. The issue is that, with four choices of earphone - Pop, Rock, Classic and Jazz - available, at £55 a go, Radiopaq is running into dangerous waters.

The market for decent earphones at £55 is getting crowded anyway, with the likes of the Shure SE102 and Klipsch Image S4 earphones both available for that price and offering brilliant audio quality for such relatively little money. Unless you, like I, really do only listen to Rihanna's Umbrella and Outkast's Hey Ya on repeat all day, you'll want 'phones able to do justice to more than one genre and if you're going with Radiopaq you could, therefore, be paying up to £220 to do so if your tastes are eclectic enough.

Okay, that's probably a little melodramatic. Radiopaq assures that despite being tweaked for a particular type of music, none of its earphones will offer a terrible experience with others. And while, yes, most of us do have multi-genre collections, it's probably not that often Louis Armstrong, Wagner, Girls Aloud and Nirvana appear on the same playlist.

In other words, despite first appearances, there is scope to believe that Radiopaq could be onto something. At the very least we can hope that its four Custom Tuned Earphones are competent enough that should anyone be tempted to indulge, they won't be disappointed with the purchase.

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