If you’ve listened to great recorded audio, you won’t have forgotten it. Hearing all the instruments, the vocals, the fingers sliding on the strings, the drum and bass lines the way they were meant to sound – I can’t describe it any better and I don’t need to, once you’ve heard it. If you have a lot of money to spend, you can have this experience whenever (but not wherever) you want. Just spend the money to buy large, well-engineered speakers and the also very large, expensive receivers that are needed to power them.
A more affordable way to get to the same place is to get a pair of high quality headphones. I’ve posted before about how much I like my Shure in-ear monitors (“IEMs”). The only drawback was that to get maximum bass, you have to stick them further into your ears than may be comfortable. Everyone’s ears are different, and your left one might even be different from your right one.
In 1990, Dr. Robert Oliveira, founder of Comply, came up with the answer: super-soft memory foam. You replace the tips on the headphones with the Comply ones, squish them with your fingers and push them in as far as you need. Within a few moments, your body heat expands them back to the ideal shape. You get the ideal combination: good sound and perfect comfort for the inside of your ear canals.
Lots of pros, but a con or two. What you gain in lightness, comfort and softness, you lose in durability. They will tear or break and need to be replaced eventually. They will not last forever, but the good news is that they come in packs of 3 pairs. You’ll have replacements, and they don’t seem quite so pricey divided by 3.
Spend the extra $5, and get the Tx. The Wax-Guard feature seems to be worth it. The music gets through just fine, the wax does not. Don’t bother agonizing about the fit, either: the medium fits almost everybody. If your ears are extra small or extra large, you probably know that already.
Available from Amazon or from the Comply Web site for about $20.
