Bone conducting earphones, my stupid tiny ear canals mean I can’t get any ear buds, to stay in my ears, the bone conducters have changed my life…
- my custom made silicon ear plugs are a close second, sweet sleep when I’m on night shifts
Warning for people like me. I have no way to define it clearly but these headphones make me want to die. My wife bought them for me so I didn’t know anything about them when I tried them. I’ve never been more nauseous in my entire life. I lost my balance and almost puked before I ripped them off my head. I still feel like a drama queen.
My wife loves them though lol (she’s not a cunt so she was really confused why I hated them so much). For those that want them for running so you are more aware, they make you deaf as fuck to the world. Just run with 1 Bluetooth headphone and stay safe.
They are real shokz open run headphones. I’m not trying to shit on people that use them they just seem to suck for me. The extra charge cable also pisses me off.
She has better hearing than I do but when listening to a podcast they are loud enough she can’t hear normal talking volume. Like I can stand next to her and say something and if she doesn’t see me she can’t hear me. It’s bad enough that she told me to buy her the cheap independent ear headphones I use as a gift in the future because she’s annoyed by it.
I never get vertigo and have crazy good balance. I haven’t fallen over in a decade and I ski and mountain bike a lot. I think the headphones vibrate some part of my ear that is part of how I balance.
Edit: thinking about it it’s not vertigo I feel. It’s that I can feel my skull vibrating and it is absolutely awful. I can feel it shaking behind my eyes. So maybe I’m weird and can feel something most people can’t?
Galaxy buds live are also great for people with tiny ear canals, because they just sit in your ear and don’t go into the canal at all. They’re super comfortable for a long time.
Which ones did you get? My mom has that issue so it might be worth getting her some for her birthday.
The only way she can get earbuds to stay in is to take the silicon tips off which I can imagine is really uncomfortable
I literally just bought Shokz (apparently the ones I bought are called OpenRun Pro- as I was looking up the model that I got, I learned that apparently I could have got some truly waterproof ones which I kind of regret not getting now, but these were already at the far edge of what I’m willing to spend) and have basically not taken them off in the 3 days I’ve had them. I couldn’t give you a recommendation one way or the other on the specific brand, but they seem serviceable enough. I’m really more enamored with the technology itself rather than the brand.
I originally bought them because I had a hearing test done long ago, and as part of it they use bone conduction headphones to test your inner ear separate from your middle ear and outer ear. After that part of the test, my tinnitus was completely gone. It crept back in over the course of a few hours, but only in one ear. It returned to stereo tinnitus about 3 days later. I wanted to figure out the specific frequencies I needed to play via bone conduction to make that happen again. it was one of the first times I’d experienced true silence in my life, and and I haven’t forgotten it.
One of the biggest annoyances I have with traditional headphones is how big of a deal it is when you get interrupted when you have them on. With the bone conduction stuff, your ear canals are never blocked so any interruption is handled just by hitting the play / pause button. This eliminates one of the main reasons I just straight up don’t wear headphones unless I’m in an office environment and trying to be antisocial.
I also have a huge problem with sweat management. I’m a sweaty guy. I haven’t done any kind of strenuous activity yet with these on, but they purportedly handle sweat like a champ, and I’m not running the risk of giving myself an ear infection by keeping them on for hours and hours at a time.
The only real complaints I have with these particular ones are that 1) they’re awkward to wear with glasses, 2) It’s basically impossible to get really nice-feeling bass with them, and 3) they put pressure in a weird spot on my head, so adjusting to them has been a weird sensory experience. I’m still not quite used to them.
(2) really isn’t that much of a complaint because I really shouldn’t be damaging my hearing that way, but (1) might end up being a deal breaker. I don’t know. I hope that’s not the case.
