No Stupid Questions

I détest the silicone ones. They're uncomfortable and I always lose the tip. I only use the hard plastic ones

The memory foam silicon tip replacements are the only ones that have worked for me. I use complyfoam earbud tips now because the cheap foam eartips broke when the inner silicone sleeve separated from the foam.

I have Anker Space A40 wireless earbuds which has silicon tips. They came with 3 sizes and none of them fit and didn't fall out. I bough a set of 6 different sizes of silicone tips and they still fell out. only the foam version worked for me so they might be worth a try if you already have a silicone tipped earbuds.

I did a diy cast of my ear canal using diy silicone... Which I fo not recommend, but look for sugru. It's silicone type I mixed with talcum powder to expose the water trapped in talcum to the silicone over a large volume in a controlled way... Then I scanned the casts and I used a DSLR to take photos of the parts at various angles and used an open source app to get 3D models from the images. Then I used freecad to cut the models with areas to mount the tiny speakers and such. Finally printed them in SLA resin. I made earplugs, IEMS and headphone adapters using the same geometry. They are very comfortable. The plugs are great for swimming.

Thank you for asking this, you just reminded me of an adjacent question I have.

As for silicone ones vs. plastic: I can never get the plastic ones to stay in, and they also have just about 0 bass since they don't seal, so in that sense I prefer silicone ones.

However I don't get how people can do any movement with them in and not get annoyed by the very loud rumbling noise they make since they seal up the ears. Walking, and even touching the wires... any slight movement of the earbuds against the ear is very loud.

My ideal solution are not fully sealing silicone buds so they stay in but don't do that very loud rumbling. Unfortunately that's nigh impossible to get.

Anyone else have trouble with that?

I'm a FAM of silicone eartips for sure. Better seal, better fit, more comfortable.

I can't stand the hard plastic earbuds man. Hurts my ears and they dont fit as well.

I have the opposite problem. I have a little fold in my ear that pops up like a cartridge eject, rubber molds to it while hard just pops out. Literally unusable

While I'm lucky that the Apple earpods fit my ears so well that I'd say it's the best earphones for me to sleep on my side (don't sleep with wired earphones it's a choking hazard), it's only Apple's.

I prefer in ear silicone tips. There are plenty of shapes and brands to find one that fits

Yes... Obviously, although I do prefer the foam ones over silicone

When they fit, they're excellent. I have the ones that I can keep in while sleeping. I am still occasionally surprised by how comfortable they feel to me.

I have swapped from inear to clip style buds and don't look back, the soundcore aeroclips are amazing

I feel like I get a better, more comfortable fit with the silicone tipped earbuds I have compared to the hard plastic ones I have

I guess I’m in the minority. The in ear buds hurt my ear. Idk how the hell y’all are jamming that shit in your ear for longer than 5 minutes. The plastic ones feel great. They stay in the ear much better than the silicon tips.

I have a very strong preference to the silicone triple-flange ear tips. They help block outside noise and fit comfortably. Unfortunately, they also don't work with many ear buds. Shure is one of the few brands that they work with for certain.

I don't like silicone tips but prefer them over outside noise sometimes, so I still use them.

I love wearing IEMs, but I know people struggle with them. Some people's ears are interestingly shaped which makes iems difficult to use unless you find more specialized eartips. Some people also react almost allergically (or actually allergically, with swelling and all) to silicone eartips, though some also react poorly to hard plastic buds. There are different grades and types of silicone that might cause less of a reaction in your ears, it depends on the kind of aftermarket eartips you get. For me the first few weeks with IEMs caused some amount of pain as my ears adjusted to having something inside, and I don't think there's a way to tell when pain is no good and when pain means you can still adjust, but I adjusted and now they're perfectly comfy. I also got wireless earbuds with silicone eartips late last year, and those still cause some amount of pressure regardless of how they're inserted into my ears. The plastic housing just doesn't fit my ears very well, and the nozzle is very shallow compared to wired IEMs. I had a similar thing going on with the airpods pro 2 and another set of chinese wireless buds, so I think that's a curse that applies to me with a wide variety of wireless earbuds. Just my 2 cents.

They both belong in the trash. Actual headphones all the way.

Neither, really. I much prefer the open ear headphones that sit on your ear (not the ones like Sennheiser has with the mesh).

They stay in place and are light enough that after a minute you don't even notice them.