Does anyone actually like those silicone tips vs a solid body?
I personally cannot wear the silicone ones. they either fallout, or don’t fit/hurt my ears.
it’s just a royal pain finding the non silicone ones for cheap. it’s just for dog walking. I also don’t do wireless because well… they fall out.
photo examples.
For those who don’t want to go through this, you can get an audiologist to make the molds and there are companies that will do the rest for you.
It’s pricey, though. For me it was $200 for the molds and $200 for the plugs, but the $200 for the plugs includes a one time charge for processing the molds, so subsequent orders are much cheaper.
They were worth every penny for the music festival I had them made for. They offered great noise reduction while not impacting the audio clarity, and I could wear them for 12+ hours with absolutely no discomfort.
I totally second that. You don’t want silicone not curing over your eardrum and then having a nurse pull it off carefully. Sometimes I do stupid things. But don’t do what I did. Once you got your molds you are golden. Meshlab.net, and blender.org for mesh manipulation and modeling. Alicevision.org for meshroom, the 3D reconstruction from photos software “photogrammetry”. Finally freecad.org for the cad software. You can just buy IEMs by sending them the model from meshroom or the actual silicon impressions. Those can be pricey. My goal was to just print various versions as I needed. So I got a low profile for swimming, I got one that you just insert a plastic headphone into. I got one with armatures and a set without anything just for ear protection. I SLA print these and then polish them before use. Super comfortable and if you’re not a demanding audiophile, these are like all your music was a musical monalisa.
Yeah, I think what you did was a pretty cool project. I appreciate you acknowledging the risks associated with it.
I just love recommending custom molded ear plugs any chance I get. They let me stand in front of the speaker stack at a Tech9 set with absolutely no discomfort from the volume. I actually had to take them out to make sure the volume wasn’t just low and the difference was staggering. Immediately my ears started hurting, so I quickly put them back in.