IEM’s are sadly a no-go for me.
I already tried them out in the past and they are really hurting my ear canals no matter what type of tips I was using. Even with normal MP3 player earbuds from the past I had this problem.

Then a few weeks ago I saw a comment here on reddit that someone wasn’t able to pull their IEM out of their ears and had to visit a doctor in order to pull them out. That is pretty scary even though it won’t happen much often.

There was another guy a few days ago mentioning that he got a fungus because of IEM’s. But he also mentioned that he lives in a tropical country so that’s also more of an exception I guess.

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Problem is that I don’t have the option to test a lot of headphones. We don’t have big hifi stores here in Germany where I live (I’m not living in a big city) so the only thing I can do is to understand frequency responses and then buy a headphone that should be alright. But if they all don’t fit my needs I have to return them which is also frustrating and stressfull.

The Fostex Purpleheart was really a great headphone but I was never able to get one myself. I only know of them because a friend of mine had one in the past and he sometimes gave them to me over some weekends when he wasn’t at home. Sadly it’s discontinued for years and people want 700$ or even more for a used pair which is just ridicilous. And there is no other headphone that comes close to them in terms of sound. Or at least not that I’m aware of.