Buy This: Custom Earphones
By: Sakari Cajanus
Tags: Consumerism, Headphones, Custom, Hifi

Buy This: Custom Earphones

At the end of 2019, I was compelled to buy new earphones. At the time I owned Sennheiser Momentum closed headphones and AKG N60NC noise cancelling headphones, and fondly remembered Hifiman RE-ZERO in-ear-monitors that might have lacked bass but had glorious vocals. Sakari Cajanus May 2, 2020·9 min read

I am not a hi-fi oriented person by nature: I like good sound, good headphones and good speakers, but also value other aspects like convenience. During my studies in Biomedical Engineering I have built a pair of speakers with Audiopoli, and I think having some insight into filter design and electrical engineering means I would have hard time justifying most expensive aspects of high fidelity or being an audiophile.

That said, I was not truly happy with the headphones I owned: Sennheiser Momentums were quite inconvenient due to their size, and I never really warmed to the sound signature of it. The AKG N60NC; small, active noise cancelling over-the-ear headphones that fold to a reasonable size; were good for what they were, but did not sound very exciting at all. It didn’t hurt it could be had for cheap on occasion.

Newer version of the AKG N60NC headphones — with Bluetooth.

So I was looking for earphones again: I wanted something I could use at the gym, was small, and sounded good. There would have been plenty off-the-shelf (universal) options as well, but I had hard time justifying the cost of the more expensive ones and on the other hand, the cheaper ones (~100 euro ones, for the sake of the argument) often left something to be desired. If I had gone with an universal option, I most likely would have picked Shure SE215 — an easy choice for their ubiquity and long history.

Shure SE215: Now also available wireless.

Going Custom

At the same time as I was looking at the Shures on Ebay, a kinda-new-but-already-established Polish custom in-ear-monitor manufacturer Custom Art had come out with a new product — and a marketing scheme: The had sent out a purposefully obfuscated version of FIBAE Blacks to reviewers around the world, and let them review the product without knowing the design behind it.

In-ear-monitors of this kind can have up to 8 or 10 (some might go even further than that, but that’s more of a marketing ploy) speakers or drivers producing the sound — in these multi-driver earphones, each driver or a pair of drivers is dedicated to only a certain part of frequency range.

It is somewhat simpler to design a driver that needs to only handle a certain part of frequency range, a choice that is often seen on 2-way or 3-way speakers as well. With in-ear-monitors you have a full control of the whole system, meaning designing the overlap and interplay between the drivers is simple to accommodate: With speaker systems, the room and installation of the speakers plays a role, and the user might add a subwoofer.

For the sake of this article, two different kinds of drivers exist (differing in the way magnetic fields are ultimately used to move a diaphragm to produce a sound): Dynamic drivers and balanced armature drivers. The former are preferred for their better bass reproduction, while the latter can be made a lot smaller in size, facilitating the multi-driver designs.

Long story short, the Custom Art FIBAE Blacks I ended up buying are based on a single driver balanced armature design, and are subsequently the cheapest option in the Custom Art lineup.

Options, Options

I was lucky ordering the earphones as part of the campaign: There were less options for customizing them, so I went full black. Normally, you can pick the color/texture for the canal, the body of the earphone (shell) and the outward facing surface (faceplate) separately.

In addition to different color options, Custom Art does also do various custom textures that are really good looking, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Finally, you can choose the connection type and cable. Two major types for earphone connections on the earphone-side exist: MMCX and 2-pin. MMCX might give you more options for cables and allows for the connection to rotate around 360 degrees, but 2-pin might be considered more secure: the convenience of the rotation of the MMCX also means it might wear out and become loose over time.

A recessed option for the 2-pin is available for presumably more durability, but at the cost of possibly worse compability with aftermarket cables. I went with the normal 2-pin option, but you are likely to be happy with any one of them. A cable with a microphone built in is also an option for those who need it.

Ear Impressions?

Some custom earphone manufacturers are moving to at-home kits for ear impressions: Either using hardening plastics to fit the shell of an earphone to your ear (as seen on Kickstarter), or using a kit to get an ear impression to send to the manufacturer for the final earphones.

The most common way (and the state-of-art, for foreseeable future), however, is to get ear impressions made by a professional: Used for hearing aids and earplugs as well as earphones, these can be quite readily found in bigger cities. I was living in Berlin at the time, so I used a chain called Amplifon. They had a convenient location close to my work, and an easy online booking system for appointments.

Getting the ear impressions made is not a bad experience: A piece of foam is inserted in the ear canal to protect the eardrum, and silicone is injected to fill up the ear canal.

My ear canals as seen from the inside.

An important note on the fit: Open your mouth, you ear canals get bigger. This relates to the fit of custom IEMS (or earplugs, for that matter) quite naturally: if you get the impressions made with your mouth closed, they will be more comfortable but you lose the seal more easily, when moving or opening your mouth. For this reason, using a bite block is recommended: it keeps your jaw in a fixed position, meaning a balance between a tighter seal and comfort can be achieved.

Getting a good seal is especially important for stage musicians who might be moving around a lot, and singers who can’t afford to lose the seal while singing. If you want to prioritize the comfort you might get away with not using a bite block, but it can somewhat risky strategy.

Losing the seal means air getting past the earphone: this degrades the sound quality greatly, and lets in outside noise. Some mild popping as the seal is lost & regained can also be heard.

After getting the impressions, I emailed pictures of them to Custom Art for their OK before mailing them over — they check at least that they are visually good quality, and include enough of the ear.

Impressions have to be made past the second bend and shall include: full concha, helix, crus helix, tragus and antitragus. - Custom Art FAQ

Waiting for the Earphones

As I ordered the earphones as a part of a pre-order campaign, I had to wait for them for roughly two months — normally the turnaround time can be expected to be from couple of weeks to a month or so.

Somewhat surprisingly, I didn’t mind the process, or having to wait for the earphones to be made: At the age of next-day delivery and cheap, mass-produced items it can actually be a nice experience to get something custom made for you, and waiting for it is a natural part of the process. The wait and the anticipation highlight the fact that the product is made for you, and accepting the wait feels quite normal.

So, How Are They??

Several reviews for the earphones be found online (1, 2, 3, 4 etc.), and I was more interested in describing the process of getting something custom in 2020, but a brief description might be in order.

The earphones come with a small carry pouch and a solid, waterproof Pelican case, a tiny brush/wire loop for cleaning the earphones, and a small brochure. I was not expecting anything more, and was quite happy with the minimal packaging: the earphones are the main item, and I don’t feel it is necessary to convey extra luxury through fancy packaging, as long as what is provided is good quality.

The headphones themselves are extremely well-made: Now 3D-printed, no artefacts from the printing process are visible and the finish is flawless.

As for the way they sound, the biggest difference to other headphones I’ve heard is transparency — perhaps to be expected when they are the first headphones of this quality that I’ve heard. Rather than sounding a certain way, the first impression was that they don’t sound like anything: You are aware you are listening to headphones, but it feels as if the sound is coming from outside, as if listening to the real thing.

This has nothing to do with soundstage, and of course the headphones still have their own sound signature: It is just that they sound so good (or, ‘real’), that at first they don’t feel like listening to any specific pair of headphones at all. For better description of the sound signature and the like, refer to other reviews.

As for the isolation, they do a better job than active noise cancellation, which can also be a disadvantage at work or in traffic. YMMV.

If you like riding to a soundtrack then by all means wear headphones and turn it up as loud as you choose to. Unless, of course, the presence of music makes you ride stupidly. If music prevents you from practicing aware, attentive and assertive riding then you shouldn’t listen while you ride. If music does not negatively affect your competent cycling behavior then crank it. Car drivers are listening to music, talking on the phone and texting. They are operating deadly weapons. If one of them is going to smoke me I’m going down to a death metal soundtrack. And if I am beating the shit out of — excuse me, educating — an ignorant driver I want that same soundtrack. - Mark Twight

What Is Next For Custom Headphones

Every brand seems to be releasing their True Wireless earbuds. Apple has had a version of AirPods for a while now, as well as the AirPod Pro; Google just released theirs a few days ago and Microsoft’s Surface branded ones will be out any day now. That seems to be the direction, the version of wireless-but-connected-to-each-other earphones perhaps fading into history even though the wire does offer some benefits.

Ultimate Ears offer connecting-wire style custom earphones, as well as the true wireless type using quite unfortunate looking over-the-ear unit. It seems they are shipping their earphones with both a 3.5 mm wire as well as the one containing the Bluetooth unit.

There do exist third-party Bluetooth cables, like the one Shure ships with the above-mentioned SE215: Warranty of which will be in principle void if used with other brands than Shure. Still, it has the standard MMCX connector, so you could use the cable with e.g. the Custom Art earphones if you picked that option for the cable. As for the 2-pin cable options, those do exist, but not from any major brands and subsequently the quality of the Bluetooth unit, digital-to-analog conversion and amplifiers is suspect.

What about true wireless, AirPod-style then? It seems that, size-wise, a custom earphone housing should be able to hold the necessarily electronics. I imagine at this point in time it comes down to price: To build and house the necessary electronics for charging, Bluetooth connection and DAC conversion at the tiny scale demands custom-designed electronics, that might not yet be feasible at a smaller scale that is the custom headphone market.

The other, obvious point is that when sound quality is of importance (as it is for most customers of custom earphones), the ability to choose and switch sound sources, DACs and amplifiers is more important than the convenience of Bluetooth. As technology matures, we should be able to address both of these points at a reasonable price point: When, that remains to be seen.