Looking to splash out on some new in ear headphones. Any recommendations? Especially interested if anyone has gone down the custom ear piece route and then added the drivers?

Good discussion here on TheFretboard…..

http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/38692/#Comment_38692

I’ve got some from 1964 ears, bought through here. Very happy with them. I do recommend going somewhere you can listen to different models. The sound was quite different from one manufacturer to the next.

Another vote for the headphone company here.

I got some ACS pro 27 hearing protectors for riding the motorbike and they are really comfortable and a great fit.

At the same time I had my UE TF10 headphones reshelled by unique Melody, but the impressions were done by the headphone company. They no fit properly and sound great, although I chose not to add any extra drivers as part of the reshell.

For me it was all about getting good ear impressions done so they fit first time and are comfortable and great a suitable seal for them to work properly. I was very impressed by the service from the headphone company, they took the time to really check over the impression before sending them off and explained everything in great detail.

I’ve got ACS custom moulds for my Etymotic ER4’s. I nornally find in ear headphones uncomfortable for extended periods but the moulds are extremely comfy, almost to the point of forgetting you have them in. The noise isolation is a bonus too, and I sometimes wear the earphones without wires in noisy classrooms. I’d recommend the ER4’s too. Incredible clarity, and no extra fake super bass, just music as it was intended to be heard.

on the subject of the comfort. If they’re well-fitted they should be comfortable though you need to get used to the sensation of having something in your ear. Some companies use a softer material than others. I think the ACS ones guitarhero has use a soft material (silicon not acrylic?). Mine had the option of a softer material for the ear canal piece which I went for and I think it helps. I’ve worn them for hours on a long flight and they were great.

Unique melody miracles. I’ve tried a lot and these were the best by a noticeable margin. Fit should be perfect if you get a good audiologist to take the molds. Not everywhere does them right, I had a couple of hearing aid companies do them and neither were as good as proper ear phone molds. ACS can do them themselves if you like their sound or headphone company near Ware are good too.
Delivery is 8 weeks for UMs so if you are in a hurry ACS maybe a better choice.

I have a pair of Read Audio custom earplugs, very impressed, I wear them for 12 hours a time and despite being acrylic not silicon they are very comfortable, they do a 48 hour turnaround on everything if time is an issue, I am now saving for a pair of their in ear monitors as a treat for a very busy summer.

I eventually persuaded Mrs A to get some custom sleeves after years of having issues with various headphones not fitting or being comfortable.

The audiologist had to take two impressions as her ear canals were (are) so small.

I wouldn’t be able to get a subjective review out of her of the audio improvements but having a pro confirm that a custom solution was required was possibly money well spent?

BTW ACS’s custom sleeves only fit a selected number of IEMs. I had to track down some Klipsch X10s for the job.

I’ve got Etymotic ER6i’s, with custom tips, and they’re very comfy for long periods.Given the funds, I’d have my Shure SE215’s and UE SuperFi 3 Studio’s re-shelled with extra drivers, and my UE TripleFi 10’s re-shelled without, but I have to live with triple-flange eartips until the Lottery coughs up!
I didn’t use the Ety’s for ages, because I found they’re too bass light, but now I use an app called EQu, which lets me customise the sound curve, and they sound wonderful with a bit more bass added.

Klipsch X10I’s are now selling for under £100 on Amazon, fantastic canal phones for that price so i bought a pair a few weeks ago.

Ive had a set of the ACS Pros’s made for guitar playing – can literally leave them in all day without discomfort, and obviously depending on the ‘baffle’ you can still hear whats going on, I always wear them at gigs now too.

Just about to get another set made for my Shure in ear headphones tobe used as monitors

Cosmic Ears I think the prices are very good!

There are plenty of good options as can be seen at http://theheadphonelist.com/

A price/performance leader is the Perfect Seal Sportbuds Silver, but that is far from the only choice. What is your price range and why are you entertaining customs?

I have 3 different sets at the moment (comes with the job).

Shure SCL2 are my basic, non molded ones that get lent to people, used when out and about, every day type. Not massively expensive but for non molded they are a decent sounding IEM.

Westone custom ES50’s are my work IEM, molded. These are comfortable and due to the 5 drivers have great range and dynamics to them. The detachable cable is also a plus as I have now gone through 3 cables (all my fault) and it also means I can wear them as plugs when needed. Overall review would be: expensive but worth the money if the quality of audio and comfort for long periods are deciding factors

My third set are a set of 1964’s V6 Stage. I’ve only had these a week so cant say much but they are a joy to listen through. not sure if they’ll replace my Westones for work but I did a long flight with them a couple of days ago and they were in and comfortable for a good 4 hours.

I think the Key is budget. There are good ones available at a range of prices and most serious IEM’s can be built into molds if you want to. Definetly worth getting good molds done if you are going for it and i’d strongly recommend trying as many sets as you can before you spend

TF10’s With ACS custom molds hear very comfortable and very detailed slightly warm sound. but the custom molds are only as good as the impressions so you need to choose the audiologist carefully. would looks for a small specialist rather than the well known high street brands.

The Headphone List is fascinating, and dangerous. Reading about the Kozee re-shell of the UE TF10 was very interesting, and $250 isn’t insanely expensive.
Why entertain customs? Well, if the OP is like me, a better fit, much improved seal, and long-term comfort would be primary, which includes a lot less phaff getting the things properly in place; universals, even with triple-flange eartips, can be a bit of a PITA to get properly seated, and can get itchy or just irritate after a while, while customs, even just custom eartips, are long-term comfy.

I’ve gone the ‘cheapskate’ route on my sennheisers with comply memory foam tips:

http://www.complyfoam.com/

Nice and comfy once warmed up – worn for days on end and never notice them (or the people trying to talk to me at work!)

Thanks for all the input so far and keep it coming 🙂

<averagejoe>

I have tried various albeit not that expensive in ear phones (currently have some Soundmagic E10’s with Comply tips) but tend to find they get uncomfortable after a while.

Budget wise, I was probably thinking of up to about £200

Shure 425’s here. With the iPhone lead on, I usually wear them at work for hours at a time, comfortable, decent sound isolation, excellent sound quality.

Quite dear but worth it.

Have you read this thread already?

Sennheiser MM70i. Great for bass.

I have some Goldring ones which are ok, come with different size pads also

I’m currently on Shure SE315s having spent a blissful hour in Mingo’s trying loads of different iems last year.

Mrs A was delighted that having gone all the way to HK, we spent time in a real geeks shop 😀 🙄

@CountZero: Thanks, and yes, there could be a slippery slope as price generally does indicate better performance.

There are other options for reshelling, and I would recommend In Earz over Kozee as I don’t like they way Kozee resolved some of their CS issues. There are more expensive reshellers such as 1964, Unique Melody, and The Custom Art. The Custom Art is another interesting company since they offer lower cost silicone CIEMs that sound quite good for the price from the 1 I have heard, and from talking with others I know that have some of the other models. However, I do find the Perfect Seal Sportbud Silver to have an amazing price/performance ratio ($225 with a THL discount).

CIEMs will take care of the issues you mentioned (which I experience to varying extents depending in the IEM), but as has been already mentioned, impressions and ultimately the fit of the CIEMs are critical to achieve that comfort level. I have some CIEMs that fit OK and are fine for 2-3 hours at a time, which is OK for my use, but after that they irritate my ears while most of mine can be worn all day every day with no issues. The difference is not in the impressions (that I know of) since I take my own and always do it the same, and know what they should look like.

Bottom line is, if you do get CIEMs to make sure you try them early to catch any fit issues. There may be a “break-in” period for the first week or so as your ears adjust to CIEMs, but after that you will want to make sure you get a proper fit before the refit period is up, which is typically 30 days.

@priceyboy
As mentioned above, either a reshell or something like the Perfect Seal Sportbuds Silver would be a good choice. There are many options for the PS SS, and you can get it with a full shell for better isolation. I would mention your specific needs and it can be custom made. Another CIEM option, although priced a bit higher, is the In Earz P250, which is a bit better overall, but priced at $295. And figuring you are across the pond, the possible shipping charges could be a deal breaker, plus the VAT upon import.

But, compared with something like the Minerva Mi-Performer Pro, the PS SS is a great value IMO even though the Minerva PP is better.

From a sound signature perspective, these CIEMs are based on balanced armature drivers, which do sound quite different than dynamic drivers, especially something like the E10. Better balance, more detail, but also the overall sound is just different, which is due to a bit different drive mechanism. It may take a bit of time to get used to, but most people don’t want to go back to dynamics (at least lower cost ones) once the brain adjusts. Back to the PS SS: it is a good transition between dynamic driver and BA driver due to the sound signature and ample bass for a dual BA.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Brilliant reply, A_joe, thank you! (I love the huge range of knowledge that presents itself on this site).
I do have a question, actually, which I hadn’t really thought about before; what’s the difference between balanced and dynamic drivers? Generally, the attention seems to be focused more on how many drivers an IEM has, the reviews in The Headphone List I think are the first I’ve really noticed that mention the two sorts.
Given limited funds, I’d re-shell my UE TF 10’s, but I’d be interested in knowing whether there’d be any advantage sound-quality wise in adding an extra driver.
Given lots of money, I’d re-shell all my canalphones, purely because of the comfort factor; my Etymotics are all-day comfy with the custom tips I had made up, but at around £112/pair, it’s prohibitively expensive for me to get four pairs of custom tips made up for my collection of ‘phones.

I’ve gone the ‘cheapskate’ route on my sennheisers with comply memory foam tips:

http://www.complyfoam.com/

Nice and comfy once warmed up – worn for days on end and never notice them (or the people trying to talk to me at work!)
I ‘only’ have Ety hf5s here, having had, and broken, various pairs of Shures in the past. I may be lucky, but Shure’s soft silicone (the dark grey) buds work best for me. Excellent comfort, good isolation, and so on. Foam would be my fallback, as I can’t get on with the triple-flanges.

And although I liked the Shure sound and at first found the Etymotic sound to be thin, I’ve become accustomed to it and actually prefer it now.

I like the essentially neutral sound of the Ety ER6i’s, but I listen to a very wide range of music, from full-on metal, heavy rock, indy, alt-country, folk, etc, and even some of the folk has surprising amounts of bass, Eddi Reader’s Old Soul from Driftwood has some very deep bass from an acoustic drum, probably a bodrain.
The Ety’s never seemed to get the real depth I wanted, but using EQu to tweak the sound has made an enormous difference, so I’ve been using them a lot more.
However, I’ve become used to ‘phones with replaceable cables, and the rather flimsy wires on the Ety’s worry me a little.
Given the money, a re-shell of the Ety’s with possibly an extra bass driver, and replaceable cables would give me the best of both worlds.
I do love the comfort factor with custom tips fitted, I find that I can only wear canalphones with triple-flange tips fitted; no matter what I do, nothing else gives me a decent seal and allows the ‘phones to give their full range, but some varieties can irritate after a bit, although the white ones I have on my Shure SE215’s are very comfy, and have actually formed into the shape of my inner ear!
I’d be very interested to know just how much difference it makes having up to six drivers, compared to say the three on my TF10’s.

@ CountZero: Thanks!

I will get to my old write-up comparing dynamic and balanced armature drivers, but a quick summary is as follows:
– BA’s are machine made, dynamics are typically hand made
– BA’s articulate or accentuate detail more (allow more detail to come across, not necessarily recreate more detail). BA’s were created for hearing aids!
– BA’s are easy to put in a custom shell and are typically smaller than dynamic drivers
– BA’s typically cost more
– Design is as important as driver count. I have higher driver CIEMs that don’t sound as good as a CIEM with half the drivers.

Here is my old write-up on balanced armatures vs. dynamic drivers: “There are two types of drivers that are used for IEM manufacture, dynamic drivers which work the same way a speaker in your car, home, TV, or just about everything else and balanced armature drivers which are used in hearing aids. They both reproduce sound via different methods with different types of forces (Maxwell force for BAs vs. Lorentz force for dynamic drivers), which makes BAs more efficient in general. Size wise, BAs are smaller than dynamic drivers and are more specialized in frequency response and are inherently non-linear, meaning they usually don’t cover the entire frequency spectrum well, and therefore often many BA drivers are utilized with a passive crossover. Dynamic drivers can reproduce a much wider frequency response in a linear fashion and are typically much larger than their BA counterparts.

A BA driver has a coil attached to an armature that is suspended within a magnetic field. This armature is balanced so that when there is no force, it is in the neutral position. The movement of the armature is translated to a membrane from the drive pin which is attached to both the armature and membrane. So, there is a sort of lever action taking place. A dynamic driver uses a coil suspended in a magnetic field, and the movements of the coil (voice coil) directly translate to movement of the membrane. This is illustrated quite well here.

While there is a wide range of performance and sound tuning available with both, they both do have different types of sound thanks to their different motion and sizes. I am going to generalize, so this isn’t the case with all the IEMs I have heard, but general trends. Tuning plays a huge role in the final sound of any IEM, and a BA driver IEM can sound like it has a dynamic driver, and vice versa. Balanced armatures in general are more precise, with a quicker possible attack and decay and less time to stop moving after a signal is applied. Dynamic drivers in general have more capability to reproduce deep bass reverberations and have a note decay that in general sounds a little more realistic for whatever reason. While I haven’t heard all the dynamic driver custom IEMs, I have heard a large sampling of balanced armature driver custom IEMs and can say as the tuning gets better the gap between the two driver types decreases as the BAs have more bass and the dynamics have better control and speed.

As with most multi-driver speaker arrangement, multi-BA custom IEMs usually utilize crossovers. Crossovers usually introduce phase issues, but there are ways to minimize this including more complex crossovers and specific design of the balanced armature drivers. JHA has the JH-3A, which has been designed to eliminate the phase issues inherent with crossovers.

Essentially, it comes down to your sound preference. If you like one sort of driver in a universal IEM, chances are you will like the same driver type in a custom IEM, however due to tuning and a potentially fairly significant increase in sound quality, crossing over shouldn’t be a large issue.”

Reshelling a TF10 is a good cost/benefit ratio. Adding a driver is a questionable effort, as you will be spending more, but who knows if you will like the following sound. There are so few out there, and so many variables, I haven’t figured out the true sound and if the extra driver is integrated very well.

I think it would be better to spend money on the best CIEM you could get vs. reshelling all of your canal phones because that one CIEM will sound significantly better than any of the canalphones.

Brilliant! Thank you so much for that, you’ve summed things up in such a clear, concise fashion, I can understand it properly now.
I have a reasonable layman’s understanding of sound and acoustics, I used to sell audio gear back in the early eighties, just when CD and digital audio was coming in, and I used to read HiFi News and Record Reviews from cover to cover every month, to try to get a handle on what was going on, and I’ve kept some of the knowledge, and all of the interest.
I really appreciate your help. 😀

Happy to help! Ah, selling audio gear, very cool. With the amount of time I spent in equipment stores earlier in life I should have worked at them. Let me know if you have any more questions. Also, ljokerl and I are happy to answer questions on THL, and appreciate sharing it if the opportunity arises. 🙂

Thanks again, I’ve copied your write-up about the different driver types, and put it into my Notes app, for future easy reference, I think it’ll come in handy, down the line…
Your point does make perfect sense, spend money on a CIEM using the best possible internals available, (and my TF10’s came from eBay, around $160, IIRC), and either live with the triple-flange tips, or get custom tips made when funds allow, to improve comfort levels on the other, cheaper ‘phones.
Now to start saving… 😀