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Comment by vijucat | Hacker News Reader

I feel nauseated when I use in-ear earphones that reach deep inside. This entire article is not relevant to me. The earphones that I can bear are these : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y4S55RC/. The design reaches inside a little bit, but not too much, and they sound quite decent. I suppose the AirPods (but not the Pro) are similar in design.

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Have you tried bose earphones? They are the most comfortable I've tried so far. Admittedly, I haven't tried many.

They look similar to the ones you linked, they stay very well in my ears thanks to the hook thingy.

https://www.amazon.com/Bose-QuietComfort-Acoustic-Cancelling...

+1 for Bose IEMs, the "tip" form factor is in his own tier for comfort, I can barely tolerate wearing other in ears now.

I have bose sound sport. They work and sound great, but the build quality is atrocious. Every glued on rubber bit came off.

Isn't Bose famously overpriced and poor quality? That's what I always hear from audio circles.

That’s the wrong crowd to listen to TBH. Bose products are far from perfect and are expensive, but I’ve also found them to be extremely comfortable and have certainly adequate sound quality for every day use. Im no audiophile but i mixed live music for ten years and do pay attention to details.

For example, I just compared Bose’s qc 35 ear buds to Sony’s new wf1000xm4 budd. The latter gets a lot of rave reviews, but i found them to be terrible. The high center of gravity with no support causes them to bounce loudly if you move around with them in, and the noise cancellation is constantly ringing with artifacts regardless of ambient sound level. The Bose have a pretty disappointing battery life, but beyond that are rocksolid compared to the Sonys.

If you want to really lose faith in those circles, try some Beats by Dr. Dre. They clown them but IMHO the Solo 3 was an excellent product for ~$100. Good sound, fantastic battery life and Bluetooth range.

My understanding is that Beats sound good right away through the way they boost the bass and such, but they have a wonky response curve that misses a lot and you can generally get better for the same money.

But nothing in the $100 range is going to be outstanding anyway. I recently finally decided to try spending some more, did some research, and landed at the MMX 300 for around $270. It's been amazing how much I was missing out on with all the cheaper stuff I'd previously had, from $20 to $90. Just all the stuff I'm hearing (hearing at all or more clearly) for the first time in very familiar tracks.

My perception of Bose, as a former regular audio forum reader, is that they are great for sport earphones (though this was before the Airpods were released, so this might be outdated). They also last a long time and are excellent for noise cancellation, which I learned when looking for ways to block noise during work (ultimately I stuck to Etymotic's ER4XR to block out noise via isolation, versus noise cancellation).

For audio quality, however, there are definitely better alternatives at the same/lower price (but not necessarily as good for exercise or noise cancellation). I also heard that the AirPods Pro are comparable to Bose's QC35s for noise cancellation, but not as good (though the AirPods are far more portable), and their batteries don't last as long in the long-term.

Well, of course, the muggles know about Bose, you can't be better than them wearing the same headphones.

There are a lot of things where I do think the "snobs" are full of hot air, like percolated coffee being bad and "burned" or vertical photos/videos being automatically wrong, but it's been night and day listening on some higher quality headphones compared to the bose or any of the other brands I used to have.

The poor quality of an audiophile can still be great quality compared to the average. But any headphones that fit or feel well are better than ones that fall out all the time, even if they're overpriced from some cost/sound quality equation.

I can tell you that you are not alone :)

However, most of newer in-ear headphones are like plugs nowadays (don't listen to the bose suggestion in sibling comment). What you're looking for are in-ears that Geizhals[1] calls earbuds (although brands themselves usually don't differentiate in names. Which makes it difficult to find). My personal favorite are Marshall Minor II (although the 12h bluetooth are exaggerated, more like 6h.). But still, I got to admit that sound comes through more easily/better when the headphone fits like a plug (that's why new in-ears are usually of the plug type) - but what is it worth if you don't feel comfortable? Not much.

[1]https://geizhals.de/?cat=sphd&xf=6546_Ohrh%F6rer+(Earbuds)

Haved you tried custom IEMs like UE or JH Audio? Had a similar problem with off-the-shelf ones but the custom ones both seal much better and yet seem to reach in differently.

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