What it’s like to get custom earbuds made
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
Also, for those interested in IEMs in general: crinacle.com has a 1000+ item database including measurements and his subjective rankings.
https://shenzhenaudio.com/products/moondrop-x-crinacle-bless...
I used a pair of these for years https://www.amazon.com/ETY-Plugs-Fidelity-Earplugs-Standard-...
But I actually have weirdly shaped ear canals. I got tired of fighting the plugs, so I got my custom ones: https://www.sensaphonics.com/products/erseriesplugs
I've worn mine to see the Flaming Lips and to perform with several different professional symphonies. Highly recommended.
Curious on your take about sleeping nightly in these custom sensaphonic earplugs?
Nothing beats some 3M E-A-Rsoft FX.
With soft earplugs like hearos, you can adapt their comfort quite a lot with a pair of sharp scissors. Try shortening them a small amount, which is the easiest modification and might fix pressure when lying on your ears (sharper the scissors, the less they'll distort while trying to do something more precise)
For sleep they weren‘t quite as good as they were too hard for situations when I was laying on that ear. I got new ones from the same molds with the softest silicone they had and these are better.
All in all, it was worth it for me. They clocked in at a third of my Airpods Max and while they don‘t make a big difference in sound to soft silicone, they are much less of a mess to remove and clean. I can pull them our in order to listen to someone and put them right back in.
If you want to make sure you get custom moulds done right, a local audiologist can do it for you.
Walking out of a concert (or for me a gig - I used to play the drums professionally) popping out your plugs and having your head feel totally normal is such an amazing feeling! Highly recommend them even if you only go to a handful of loud venues in a year.
Also worth pointing out that if you’re doing really loud stuff, you need to refer to NRR rating, not db. It’s a more precise way of measuring hearing protection against loud noises.
Same here, and for more than one reason. Yeah, damaging the hearing of your audience is bad. But I could almost forgive it if it made the sound better. Like, "okay yeah I just lost 2% of my hearing for this one show, but it was amazing."
But that has never been my experience. When I was younger and going to shows (with no earplugs), not only was it painfully loud, but the sound was worse because of it. The frequencies muddled together. It was like my ears were clipping the sound or something. The bass was overwhelmed by the mid and treble ranges. There was this weird "swirling" sound like you'd hear from a low bitrate MP3. It just sounded like shit. Loud shit.
I will never go to a concert again without earplugs. The one time I did forget them, I went to the bar, grabbed some cocktail napkins, twisted those up and stuffed those into my ear canals. Anything to avoid that assault on my hearing. Or what's left of it.
And, at least in most of the major European country, there are noise level ceilings which are checked. You’ll still need to wear hear plugs if you want to be comfy for anything bigger than a bar.
I thought it was due to the crowd making noise.
I got mine a couple of years ago, and they sound amazing - possibly because all the audio engineers are wearing them too, so you're hearing what they're hearing
A good windscreen and helmet are even more important. My current setup is quieter with no plugs and the visor up than my old setup with plugs and the visor down.
Screen and helmet definitely make a big difference to buffeting though; funnily enough not always a bigger screen, just a different shape I found.
I just bought $45 QZ ZS10 Pro and they might be the best sounding and noise blocking headphones I’ve ever had. Perfect for drumming along to tracks. Haven’t gotten to try them plugged in on stage yet.
Are these leagues better in some respect?
There is a danger with headphones that you will turn them up too loud (esp. in a loud environment) so you can hear the signal clearly. As a musical professional your hearing is vital to the quality of your performance so you should protect it.
The plug allows the sound to be more natural while providing good protection
I upgraded to the slightly more expensive Loop earplugs which were more comfortable.
Both give something like 12-15 db noise reduction.
A friend put together a group buy of these at least a decade ago and mine are still doing great. They’ve gotten completely disgusting but some isopropyl followed by a warm water wash cleaned them right up. It’s kind of weird that such a relatively niche product is so cheap… I am so happy with them that I would be a repeat customer but the best I can do is promote them a bit since I’ve got no reason to send them another $20 yet.
They're relatively inexpensive ($16-25 USD) and work like a charm. They're amazing at reducing the volume very evenly across the frequency range without distorting the sound quality or balance, useful for everyone not just professional performers. You can hold a normal conversation in a really loud environment without screaming, they're great.
You can go to an audiologist or look into ACS[0] (who will take your molds for free if you're in NYC).
I'm skeptical of anyone who claims they have zero effect on the music, but the reality is they are quite unobtrusive and the manipulation is minimal. I find they reduce the fuzziness and reverb of shows, whether that sound is intentional by the artist or not, leading to a crisper sound (again, sometimes maybe to the slight detriment of the experience). If a concert is very loud they will greatly improve your enjoyment of the music. If you see concerts regularly, do it yesterday.
[0] https://1of1custom.com/collections/acs-pro-series-custom-ear...
They usually have options regarding the level of attenuation you need, the ones with the highest attenuation tend to have the highest level of distorsion, but in all cases, it is way better than standard earplugs.
I also tried standard sized filtered earplugs (about $20) but without much success. Maybe my ear canals are weird but I couldn't get them to fit properly, so the sound mostly went around the filter, not through it, making them essentially useless in addition to being uncomfortable and not holding well. So if you are like me, save your $20 and get custom molded ones.
If you were to consider $300 CIEMs to foam-tipped earbuds: the discussion is much different. Passive isolation is more than 20 dB higher, seal is guaranteed so bass response is much better, etc.
As for why you'd buy CIEMs, its mostly about better isolation and comfort. Your average customs will have a quality on par with universals a bit below their price but will be more ergonomic and isolating. The benefits are generally more in line with professional musician rather than audiophile.
In the last five years the bottom end of the market went from 2s and 3s for $50 to 7s and 8s. That doesn't mean the 2s and 3s aren't still around...
I imagine that a ton has changed since then with respect to quality of consumer-grade earphones and I don't have a great frame of reference for that anymore. But I do know many live audio folks, drummers, and other touring professionals still using IEMs, that could be as much habit as utility though.
They fit your ear perfectly and block everything out. That's why most of the really popular touring musicians go custom-molded, usually with UE, Westone, or Jerry Harvey.
They are also VERY comfortable when molded properly. It's like a glove for your ears. You won't feel anything like it with silicone or foam. I can wear my custom plugs all night or for an entire concert, easy. Foam itches after 30 minutes.
Also, foam muddies audio by sacrificing some high end and bloating mids/low-end. If you care about audio reproduction, foam is usually a sacrifice for IEMs, and you usually have to EQ your gear to get the losses back.
The impressions have to be really good, though, and the turnaround time from the vendor needs to be fast. Custom molds are terrible when they don't fit right. I hate the turnaround time; waiting is the worst part. Ear impressioning is still kind-of stone age, IMO. The audiologist stuffs your ear with a curing paste, and you can't move for the five minutes it takes to cure. However, some people have really flexible ear canals that cause earplugs to lose their seal when you chew or smile, so you might need to do a block-bite impression to account for that. Moving your head at all can invalidate the entire impression. It's annoying. I wish audiologists did an impression panel so that manufacturers could send a sample of buds and have you trial them all within a return period (or charge you if you really want to keep them all). Oh well; a man can dream.
For most people, custom mold earbuds for music listening is way unnecessary, especially with IEMs getting incredibly good at noise cancelling. If you hate foam plugs or just want a set of buds that are really yours, custom is your only route though.
However, I will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS recommend custom earplugs for sleep and for loud environments, like hunting or concerts. They last forever, are super comfortable, and can make a loud environment tolerable (i.e. if your partner snores) and actually better-sounding, all while preserving your hearing (which from what I've heard SUCKS to lose).
As for custom IEMs: I'd definitely get me a pair when a truly wireless option from a known player in this space (Campfire Audio, JV Harvey, UE, etc) that sounds great and has a great mic comes on the scene.
I tried Bragi's offering years ago. (Bragi was the first manufacturer to try at truly wireless headphones. They released before Apple launched the AirPods. The AirPods are now a billion-dollar business, whereas Bragi is defunct.) They partnered with Starkey, a very popular hearing aids manufacturer, to make the (still only) waterproof custom true wireless earbuds. The idea of using earbuds that fit me perfectly that I could shower with was awesome. My right ear canal has a weird kink that makes it difficult to use regular IEMs and impossible to use the truly wireless options at the time, thus making the Bragi's even more lucrative. They also partnered with Mimi Audio to offer an EQ that was tuned to your hearing...on iOS. Impossible to beat feature set.
Unfortunately, the earbuds were a disaster. Worst $600 I ever spent. ($600 is cheap in the world of custom IEMs; another reason why I got them.) They didn't sound very good, the audio balance would shift right after an hour of listening, the mic was AWFUL (i made many, many excuses for it, but it was just plain bad), and, worst of all, because the base of the earbud was large (stuffed with ICs) and Bragi chose to use the same case that they used for their universal offering, the nozzle didn't go deep enough to provide a truly locked-in seal. This is, like, THE reason to get custom IEMs, so them failing here was especially painful. The local audiologist (you had to go to a Starkey "dealer" to get your impressions) got tired of me coming in for refits, and I got tired of waiting three weeks to have earbuds I'd use for three days.
I was done with them when Samsung released Galaxy Buds that were compatible with iOS and had noise cancelling. Threw them in the trash. The case even had my name on it. One of the few things I ever engraved with my actual name...and I threw them out because they frustrated me so much.
ADV-Sound has an offering here, but apparently their mic is not very good, and info on these headphones is lacking, Sounds very Bragi 2.0-ish to me, so I'm passing on those.
Did you actually look at the items? All three essentially have you completely remove the wire and attach directly via 2-pin or MMCX, so it ends up just being two ear pieces. Of course it’s no longer hot swappable to 1/8 in physical plug afterwards.
I don't think such as thing exists sadly. I had high hopes fir UE fits, but while the fit is great, they stick out too much for side sleeping.
They also had an annoying firmware issue where tapping didn't work until they quietly rolled out a fix and I happened to see it months later when I googled the issue again.
We're not in the sleep earbuds space, but at https://soundmind.co we're making an eeg headband with bone conduction sound to improve sleep performance via auditory stimulation.
Auditory stim doesn't help you fall asleep, so we let you listen to whatever you want as you fall asleep, when we detect you've fallen asleep, we stop whatever you were listening to, and switch on our stim.
I don't really care about stim, but pausing my book after I fall asleep is HUGE. Right now i use a sleep timer which is okay, but if the book is good and stops before I fall asleep, I need to really wake up and set a new timer. If I set a longer timer, there is a chance I will fall asleep early and have a hard time finding my spot later
You can get standard in ear monitors that come with a variety of interchangeable earplugs of different sizes, and different materials, like foam.
I believe it's possible, and fairly standard, for musicians to use these with custom fitted plugs.
But this seems to be talking about the whole device being custom made which sends the price rocketing and it's not clear what benefit that adds. Is it custom fitted to your outer ear too?
I'm also somewhat surprised that the state of the art is still to take molds rather than some digital scan of your ear, surely someone is working on that?
Are there open standards for earplugs?
It seems like the reason to do it would not really be for sound quality, but for comfort, so you can wear them all day. Whether you need it depends on the shape of your ears, so a review won't tell you whether you need them; the reviewer likely has differently-shaped ears than you.
The audio was much clearer on the high end compared to any IEMs I used before. Maybe it is for the rigid and direct sound canals compared to foam or silicone tips.
The fit was not very good but that is fixable with some modelling putty.
And a few months later I decided to fix the bad fit for once and all. I bought ear impression supplies and took one myself. Tried to go fancy with 3D printing the shell but I never got the 3D scanning part to work out.
End up losing one side of the CIEM to the depths of my workshop, and now I am back to using my old Shure.
It used to be a model they would put in your ears, but now it’s an image scanning device.
I haven’t purchased the in ear monitors, but have the ear plugs.
You have to be careful to not get ear wax inside them. That means cleaning them a lot more frequently than any regular in-ear headphone.
Eventually I bought the hearing aid vacuum (it uses a needle, and pumps through a filter to suck out the wax) for $100 to be able to reasonably maintain my IEMs after a $300 cleaning from the manufacturer.
That said I’ve had my same IEM for around a decade and they still sound amazing.
I booked a bunch of dates running sound for country bands in a noisy dive bar. I don't see why they wanna play that loud, but it's their show. Personally, I want the mains to be louder than the monitors, if just out of consideration for intelligibility with the crowd.
The mold process was painless. I am curious how they will sound; ostensibly they are acoustically "flat", but given that our hearing response changes based on volume level I am skeptical. Hopefully they will be better than the cheap stuff I've been using.
I have used a set of Shure se215 for the last 5 years and they're freekin' great for, like mowing the lawn. Less good for playing in bar bands where I may have to interact with the audience.
All that said, I can see spending the 5-800 that custom IEMs run... but I can't see doing that if I didn't have to wear them on stage in a professional environment regularly enough for them to outpace the cost of a powered speaker.
Hell, I had a hard time dropping the $200 on hearing protection-- I usually just won't play with folks who play that loud. But I don't have a lot of choice when I am engineering other folks' shows.
Note that you can now get custom sleeves which slip over commercial earbuds like the Apple AirPods, so you can get a perfect fit and they're less likely to fall out. You get to choose your color. I went with different colors for the right & left ears, to make telling them apart easier.
They are noise isolating, so you will have to pay attention to your surroundings (traffic, people approaching you from behind, a coworker trying to get your attention). But they don't block enough sound to make them effective at loud concerts or at a shooting range. Wear proper hearing protection for those events.
Speaking of which - watch your volume levels. It's super easy to play them too loud and damage your hearing. Take breaks every 30-40 minutes.
[0] Many thanks to RK Audiology in Austin. https://rkaudiology.com/custom-fit/
you can now get custom sleeves which slip over commercial earbuds like the Apple AirPods
The fit on mine from custom insert to the Shures was pretty tight (good for air sealing). I could have drilled the holes a little larger, but it was easier to just warm them up with a hairdryer.
https://hearing-balance.natus.com/en-us/products-services/ot...
Between the superior isolation, lack of need for batteries, longevity, and excellent audio quality, there’s really no contest.
I’ve had a pair of Alclair Audio Quad-driver studio reference CIEMs for nearly 7 years, and other than needing to replace the cable once, they’re as good as new.
If you can afford them, I highly recommend giving a pair a try.
Note: if you live in Minneapolis or Nashville (where Alciair’s offices are), you can go in and they’ll do your impressions for free - no need to visit an audiologist.
My issue with all these new ear buds which have a rubber membrane which prevents sound from escaping is that it feels like there is no fresh air reaching my ear which would be able to carry out built up humidity. Couldn't this cause infections?
I can only wear them for so long, while the older ones, the small ones which have foam ear pads are wearable all day long.
Can they double as concert earplugs or do I need a second set only for that?
2. Some custom IEMs have an option to replace the driver with a passive frequency-neutral filter; I didn't see one on campfire's website. I'd ask customer service before getting the molds made.
The commute case didn’t work out because they didn’t seal fully. There was too much noise leakage to hear podcasts. Music wasn’t isolated enough and I didn’t want to turn it up too high and damage my hearing. The audiologist who made the molds had me chew while the mold material was curing in my ear canals and this resulted in a poor seal. A poor seal also means poor bass response. I think the audiologist had me chew to make the molds more comfortable for long hours of use and for snacking at the desk. Hearing aids were his main business and he seemed inexperienced with musician monitors.
I’ve recently discovered that I can apply clear finger nail polish to the inserted portion to “fine tune” the fit. I’m getting a good seal and they’er still comfortable. I mainly use them when working with power tools at home.
For office use there are a couple of caveats: 1) If you have a tight fit, they will be more difficult to insert and remove. This can be a nusiance in a highly-collaborative work environment. Also, people tend to ignore the earpieces and expect you to hear what they’re saying. 2) Chewing is very loud and borderline uncomfortable. This was the case with the original, narrower width as well.
> Can they double as concert earplugs or do I need a second set only for that?
My Westones have removeable cables, so they could be used that way, but there’s a better alternative: you can use the same molds to get relatively inexpensive silicone molds with tuned attenuation "filters". Mine use Etymotic 9, 15, 25 and solid 30 dB filters. The filters reduce frequencies more evenly, allowing more high end through than foam earplugs (except for the solid filters). I have Sensaphonics ER "Custom Musican”[2] plugs and Westone ES49[3], both made from silicone. The Sensaphonics are softer, but I prefer the Westones because they are lower profile, they have little handles for removal, and the firmer silicone is easier to insert/remove.
* Westone seems to have discontinued products for musicians and HiFi
[1] https://www.etymotic.com/hearing-protection-accessories/
[2] https://www.sensaphonics.com/products/erseriesplugs
[3] https://www.westone.com/hearing_health_care/recreational-ear...
I don't need that much flexibility. A thicker cable would be preferred.
If I don’t want to pay $1500, but want a custom earbud set for the office including a mic, are there any options?
Are these 3D printed or do they made a single mold for your set?
What if there was a way to get the perfect fit (ie just a piece of rugged rubber) and then be able to attach any old headphones to that?
It would be the best of both worlds, much cheaper, more resilient.
Something is off with earplugs as a product