shotgunshane’s IEM (custom and universal) recommendations, favorites and classics

Humidity really does damage the acoustic filters used in most iems. Wet ear canals after a shower or tropical climates, etc. It's all bad for iems. You should consider using cheap desiccant packs with your iems in a sealed container between listening as an alternative to dry boxes.

 

I'm in tropical Asia (Singapore), and haven't used dry boxes for my CIEMs (dynamic drivers though) and hearing aids, no issue even after multiple years.

 

How about keeping iem inside Campfire audio faux lamb wool interior case? would it help? Not sure if faux lamb wool keeps iem dry..

 

While I'm sure faux lamb wool has powerful audio properties (oh, yeah ), I would use a sealed container with desiccant...

 

Great to know. i will source PVC hard carry case with Desiccant.

 

Desiccants are available cheaply in camera stores. Hearing aid desiccants however.......

 

FLC8S vs Ibasso IT03 for jazz, dub and rock

 

By the way, since we're on this topic, a heads-up to @Grahad--Future Sonics CIEMS are engineered and tuned WITHOUT acoustic dampers for the very reason we're discussing. As Marty Garcia (head of Future Sonics) told me, "you would have sound degradation over time due to acoustic dampers being affected by humidity and you might not even be aware it was happening if it occured over time". So, they did without. Those are really stage monitors for pro-musicians so a ton of thought went into making them into super reliable for stage use.

Regarding sound quality degradation, I have a case in point! A great example would be Jude himself. A few years back Westone moved from the W5 to the W50 CIEM (something like that, iirc). Jude had the original and then received one of the new model, which he said with perfect certainly sounded better in his Head-fi holiday guide for that year. It turns out that Westone confirmed there was no audio change at all between the two models, same drivers and crossovers exactly. A good guess as to why Jude would claim an audio improvement is that his old set was at least a year old and had some humidity based degredation on the dampers versus the new version of the same CIEM with fresh dampers.

 

Interesting, which dynamics would you recommend? I live in Australia, and I feel it can get quite humid here (although I have Air conditioning running indoors) The most popular ones seem to be the Future sonics G10 and the Vsonic GR07 range.

 

Just saw it is possible to still buy the Aurisonic Rockets, how would you rate them compared to the GR07 Classics and the Noble X (Which I am waiting for from Massdrop), in sound and build quality.

 

The Vsonics has an incredible accessory package last time though (10+ tips? I think? I believe they pruned it down now though) but the swivelly nozzle itself contains copper (and can form green copper oxide gunk) and the cable is rather prone to failure. Anecdotal, but one side of my GR07 is dead after about 1.5 years of light use.

 

Now the only version I can find is with the in line mic, would the mic degrade sound quality in any way?

 

Had to have my K10 customs reworked once due to moisture somehow getting in. The risk is real to most BA IEMs, so be careful. Cheers

 

that sucks. how did it manifest itself? was it progressive or sudden?