Best sound isolating earphones yet!

I have tried using many different flavors of off the shelf sound isolation type earphones and always been dissatisfied with how little they attenuate road noise. In the past I had tried kludging together some foam earplugs onto the earbuds but never got anything that was reliably workable. Until today.

I have a set of JVC ear speakers that I bought on Buy.com a while back that I like the sound of. They have the larger type of output port, same as the Skullcandy's I also have. I took a pair of Howard Leight Max earplugs and punched holes through them using an oversized electrical connector pin punch. But when I tried to use them the center hole would just collapse, muffling the sound.

So I slipped a short piece of clear shrink tubing over the output port of the JVCs and heat shrunk it on. Then I slid the earplug over the now stiffened shrink tube, trimmed them to length and, voila!! I finally may have an earspeaker set that I can live with.

I can tell you that you get almost as good noise reduction as when using them as earplugs, but obviously there has to be some reduction in attenuation from punching the big holes through the middle. Anyway, I just wanted to share the shrink tubing idea for anyone trying to do something similar.

That's a great idea. I might try that if my Chatterbox ever bite the dust.

Fred you are a mind reader. I want to do that with my Starcom1. Something to think about for sure. Keep up the good work.

Tom

Sounds like a good DIY version of these Koss headphones I've been using at work for years.

From the Koss website:

The Pathfinder features a dynamic element (read "foam") that is positioned just outside the ear and connected to a tubular port structure (read "small plastic tube") that is inserted on a soft expandable cushion into the ear canal. The soft foam cushion expands for a custom fit to improve... blah blah blah

Click to expand...

They have several different models with the same foam type design, bodies. The "plug" model works best with helmets. They can be had fairly cheap, and I've used the lifetime replacement warranty like 5 times. If something breaks (cord gets worn or broken) you only have to pay the shipping for a new pair.

but what if ya a hot blooded Italian Irishman German Canadian American and ya make the heat shrink shrink on a summer ride ??? :blink:

you'd probably think ta goin' deef... :glare:

slapnpop said:

Sounds like a good DIY version of these Koss headphones I've been using at work for years.
From the Koss website:

The Pathfinder features a dynamic element (read "foam") that is positioned just outside the ear and connected to a tubular port structure (read "small plastic tube") that is inserted on a soft expandable cushion into the ear canal. The soft foam cushion expands for a custom fit to improve... blah blah blah

Click to expand...

They have several different models with the same foam type design, bodies. The "plug" model works best with helmets. They can be had fairly cheap, and I've used the lifetime replacement warranty like 5 times. If something breaks (cord gets worn or broken) you only have to pay the shipping for a new pair.

Click to expand...

Slappy, you caught me. I actually have a set of the Koss "Spark plugs", which is where I came up with the idea for using the shrink tubing.

The Spark Plugs look a lot like the Pathfinders that you linked to. The sound attenuation wasn't good enough for me for two reasons. 1) because of that ring of little holes in the back side of the speaker body, and 2) because the black foam tips aren't quite big enough to get a good seal in my "man sized" ear canals.

That's why I used the JVC ear speakers, which have a solid metal body, and the Howard Leight Max earplugs for the foam, as they have a larger flared diameter that will seal even the biggest of ear holes.

Patriot said:

but what if ya a hot blooded Italian Irishman German Canadian American and ya make the heat shrink shrink on a summer ride ??? :blink:

Click to expand...

Nah, not even a hot headed American with a raging fever could heat the shrink tubing enough to make any difference. It has to get a lot hotter than ~105° F before it gets softer.