Good IEMs/buds for small ears?

[kingkyser]

Hi,

My wife has small ears. To give you an idea, she is about 5' tall and can wear kid clothes. She claims that earbuds tend to hurt her ears because they are too big. Would a pair of IEMs be more likely to fit comfortably? Any suggestions?

Thanks

[CrowdAds]

[dfkt]

The Jays q-Jays are extremely small IEMs, they should fit anyone. They also come with (IIRC) seven different sizes of silicon tips instead of the usual three, so they should fit even children. They're not cheap though, but they sound very nice.

[kingkyser]

dfkt:

You weren't kidding! I think I'm going to pass on those for now.

Thanks

[IDvsEGO]

IEMs in general come with a smaller tip that is more flexible than the traditional earbuds. My 12 year old has no problems with mid size tips on most.

[kingkyser]

Would Hippo 10 / Pearls be good ones? Where can I buy these? I live in the USA -- stores located in here would be preferred.

[IDvsEGO]

I ordered some Hippo VBs from http://jaben.net/shopping/ and got good responses from them. I would recommend.

[FreeZ5]

kingkyser:

There are some decent IEMs available from the eBay store 128headphones quite inexpensively (as low as $4). If you wanted to pick up a pair for your wife to try the IEM experience before investing in Hippos or others, these would be a good choice. I'll provide the ebay.ca links, and you can translate to ebay.com if interested.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...=STRK:MEWAX:IT
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Steve

[JxK]

The soundmagic pl50 are tiny little IEMs. I can't imagine anyone's ears being too small to accommodate them. They also have the advantage of being cheaper than the q-jays, costing only $52.50.

If your wife prefers a bassier sound vs the pl50s very light mid-centric sound, consider the meelectronics M11+. They typically cost $65, but thru Monday the company is having a sale, so they can be had for $35 (coupon code: $30_Off_M11). They are also tiny, and should be supremely comfortable for anyone's ears.

Besides sound, also consider fit. Does your wife want something that is designed to only be worn over the ear (pl50) or something she can wear straight down (M11+)?

Lastly, both sound quite good for the price, and are built well. Objectively, the pl50 are a little better, but the difference is close enough to make sound signature and fit the deciding factors. Meelectronics also happens to be an American company, so warranty support will be easier to work with. But both products are good enough that you shouldn't need it.

[Adub]

I have small ear holes and using the Klipsch S4 with the smallest tips were quite comfortable and fit well.

[FreeZ5]

Just thought I would mention that according to the Comply foam tips selector, the Soundmagic PL30 takes the T-400 tips, same as Sony, V-Moda, and many others. The PL50 was not listed.

The Klipsch S4 takes T-100 tips. I can't determine if these are actually smaller than other tips.

Steve

[JxK]

The pl50, besides having an absolutely tiny body, has a 3mm diameter nozzle. Not sure which comply tips it accepts, but it does fit the sony hybrid tips easily if that gives you a better indication of size.

[kingkyser]

Thanks for all the great suggestions everyone! I ended up ordering a pair a Hippo Pearls. If she doesn't like them (or they don't fit) I may keep them for myself and get her a different pair from those suggested above. I'll let you know in a couple weeks of what she thinks.

Thanks!

[kingkyser]

Well I received the Hippo Pearls yesterday. When I got them I decided that I should test them before I gave to my wife ... to make sure they were good ;-)

These were the second pair of IEMs I have ever used, so my opinion doesn't come from very much experience.

The first pair of IEMs that I have used were a cheapo pair that I bought at BestBuy on a whim. The Hippos blew them away, but that's not too hard since they pretty much stink.

The first thing I noticed were the materials. The body is made material that I couldn't identify. It feels cold like metal, but it sounds like stones hitting each other when the left and right IEM hit. Maybe they are ceramic? I don't know if this is good or not, but it feels better than cheap plastic. The other noticeable material were the tips. They felt like a nice soft rubber -- maybe it was silicon. I thought these tips were quite comfortable in my ears.

Since my Philips IEMs don't fit into my canals, these were an entirely new experience. It took me a few minutes playing around with them to realize that they sounded much better when the tips fully plugged my ears.

Isolation seems pretty good on these. I was so eager to try these out, I wore them while driving home from Fedex. I know, I know, I'm not supposed to do that. However, from that experience I can tell you the isolation is very good -- I could hardly hear my car, and it can be loud!

As far as the sound quality goes, I think they are decent. The bass is pretty good and the highs sound clear. I found that they sound better at louder volumes. Last night, I was using my Samsung Fascinate to play some music from Grooveshark and some other music I had stored on the phone. Some of the Grooveshark music sounded fantastic (Lady Gaga) and some sounded muddy. I think some of the music that I was listening to was low quality -- I wish there was a way to tell in the Grooveshark app what the Kbps is. I used an app called PowerAmp to play the music stored on my phone. I love this app because it has a great equalizer. I was able to adjust how the playback sounded to my liking for these IEMs.