diy earphones

I am getting pretty sick of earphones that keep breaking so I started looking for solutions, I started off with headphones with detachable wires because those are usually the first thing to break (pic related). they ended with broken connectors, broken cases and a lot of hot glue. After this I bought the KZ ES4 HiFi earphones because of the same reason as the last ones. These have soykafty quality and I keep losing the earphones because of the loose connectors. the point is that I want earphones that last a long time, are decent quality and are repairable. I think the only way to get earphones like this is by creating them myself. And I have been doing a bit of research. And I think I worked out roughly what I need to do this. I will need > A cable I will probably just use the one that came with the KZ ES4 HiFi earphones because these are easy and cheap to get, decent quality and have a standard connector. The only problem is that the connectors get loose over time so they fall out every so often making me loose my earphones. I will probably just solder them on allthough I would like to have an unpluggable connector. > the earphone driver unit I found these driver units https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/KZ-DIY-10mm-Dynamic-In-Ear-Earphone-Unit-Bass-Moving-coil-Earbud-Speaker-Monitor-Headset-Material/2675138_32763345354.html?spm=2114.12010608.0.0.35f37b94Mm5TSw but I think I could do better because these seem to be pretty expensive replacement parts for cheap earphones and I think I could find better stuff if I know exactly what to search for (probably part numbers). > the case this is probably the hardest part because I am not so sure if a 3d printed case would work because it would need to be pretty thin and need to feel good in your ears. Also one of the reasons why I wan't to make my own earphones is because earphone cases break too easily. I have tought about repurposing cases from existing headphones but they are usually hard to open and break easely. I am mostly afraid that if I repurpose a case I would probably end up with hot glue blob earphones again. > the ear bud tips these shouldn't be too hard to find because aliexpress seems to be full of these things.

Don't really need to make your own, can easily repair the old ones if you have soldering station or a cheapo soldering iron that you plug directly into the wall. And this is coming from a guy that keeps repairing the same pair of earbuds for about 2 years now. Most of them break down due to little speaker wires that are 4 strands each and fragile as all soykaf. Most of them break down on the audio jack end since there is where a lot of pulling is done. Or, if company is so really corrupt then they don't make a loopty loop in the earbuds so all tension is done on solder connection resulting in same problem with the jack. Just cut them open, use some pliers to take off the plastic from the jack and scissor off the cable off the jack. Put a small amount of solder on the wire, put a small amount of solder on the jack and be careful for wires not to touch they can touch after the solder connection and all that because they are laminated, when you put solder on them lamination is removed and they make solid connection, it is just that you don't want left audio out going to right audio out for your phone then put a little bit of superglue or hotglue, shrink tube the whole ordeal and you fixed them. You just need to be careful of the audio jack pinout and you will be A-okay. Good luck and have fun.

>>2172 I know about this and I have reapaired tons of earphones but you can't keep tearing open earphones, repairing them, gluing them back together and tearing them open the next time they break again and expect the case not to break, this is just not ideal. The thing I am looking for is good earphones that I can keep improving and that will last me a lifetime. Also it would be nice i I could actually buy some expensive earphones and know for 100% sure I can repair them when they fail. Otherwise I just don't feel comfortable spending more than €20 on earphones.

>>2175 Think about the time you will waste trying to create and maintain such top notch earbuds just for yourself mind you, not the market where you can sell them to wider public then compare the time it will take you to perfect them and minimum wage job salary in your country. Yes, most often than not, people just don't like wasting their time doing things that are not efficient.

>>2176 I don't mind wasting time on stuff I made myself. I put tons of time and money in my diy multicopter and in my diy keyboard. Making stuff myself is just a thing I like to do. It might not even be completely practical but I just want to do this.

>>2171 I though about this one day, but now that you have made this thread I will share how I would have done the case: >Try to 3d scan you ear hole. >Make 3d model with your random cad (suggest freecad, cause muh freedom). >Make it in 2 pieces so it can be open and closed (screw, glue, clip, magnet, 3rd piece for closing ??) >... >Try with 3d print it in ABS or PETG with 100% filling. >Build it :D

>>2189 I was thinking 3d printing would be too brittle but 100% infil and only leaving the neccisary parts open might be a proper solution allthough I am wondering what this would do to the sound. Also I could try one of those techniques where you chemically dissolve the abs to smoothen it. Also I hadn't heard of freecad before I might give it a try, I have been using blender until now because I already have a lot of experience with blender.

I am gonna probably going yo buy 4 different earphone drivers today to compare quality.

I share your pain. The only way I've had headphones last a long time is when I kept them in one place and never moved them (at my desk, for instance). Any time I'm taking them 'out and about,' they get worn out really quickly. Earbuds seem like the worst choice here, because it seems to me that the case you'd want would be jeweler-quality, like a watch case. I've never seen anything like that. Open-back headphones like Grado seem a good choice except for they leak sound in both directions and are totally not suited for wearing out in the world. I have looked for high-quality, 100% metal closed-back headphones and they seem to be really hard to locate, even upwards of $400. At this point, I'm at a loss and would just recommend cheap KOSS headphones as they have a lifetime warranty. Sidenote: Every electronic purchase these days seems to have a lifespan of only ~2yr which fcking is like kicking dead whales down the beach IMO and the amount of waste is just disgusting to me. Take the Apple Watch, for example. Used to be, you'd buy a high-quality watch and pass it to your grandchildren in your will. Now what are you gonna do? "Your granddad wore this watch for 18 months in 2018 until the battery inside puffed out and the screen broke. Cherish it!"

https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/acs-evoke-custom-iem.22875/reviews https://www.head-fi.org/threads/19-custom-iem-tf10-shure-ie8-cables-reviewed-effect-pearl-apollo-odin-added-3-20-13.564978/ get a strong spring loaded windy retractable case and take care of them buy cabling and OEM connectors and make your own sleeved replacement cables dont slam them in car doors or step on them or run them or run them over with chairs

I've done a little research and it looks like Shure S315s are a good possibility. The cables are replaceable, which is nothing special, but also the cases are replaceable. The cases are actually held together by a screw instead of glue or clips or anything. Case is also replaceable, you can get replacements for $15-30 and could probably 3d print them, too. I didn't look too hard but I'd imagine the other pieces could be repaired/replaced also. I think I will buy myself a pair this winter

>>2171 >>2191 Ok op here again, I ended up ordering 3 kinds of earphone driver and they arrived about a week ago (pic related). These were the speakers I ordered: https://m.aliexpress.com/item/32785113506.html?spm=a2g0n.orderlist-amp.item.32785113506 https://m.aliexpress.com/item/32841778891.html?spm=a2g0n.orderlist-amp.item.32841778891 https://m.aliexpress.com/item/32785113506.html?spm=a2g0n.orderlist-amp.item.32785113506 But it turned out I ordered 2 different kinds of speaker because I am pretty sure the 2 red speakers(one was blue according to the sellers image), are exactly the same. After soldering the 3 speakers to 2 pieces of wire and soldering those 2 wires to a earphone wire I could finally compare them. It turned out that the 2 red speakers sounded exactly the same and the blue one sounded a little different but it is still pretty hard to say which is better. The blue one sounded a bit better over most of the apectrum but also kinda not, but this could also be because of the way these all don't quite fit well in my ear without case. I think I overall liked the blue one a little better so I am going to design around that one.

>>2329 Nice. Any progress to report? seeing as it's been a month since your post

>>2444 Not really I am currently in a period with a lot of tests for school so I haven't really had time lately. I think I will be making a 3d model soon (when I am done with all this school stuff). I have a friend with a 3d printer who will print my first prototype after which I will probably order a proper version from a company who does sla printing.

This is kinda tangential to the thread but I have nowhere else to ask for. I have a couple of car speakers that I'd wish to use as speakers for my computer. What would be a good way of making them work with a standard 3.5mm plug? I have literally no idea what I'm doing but I'm willing to learn whatever it takes cause I'm bored and I need something to do.

Small update, I have been using the cables I mentioned when making the thread since roughly that moment. And today the connector at the side of the jack started having issues where I have to hold it a the right angle to get it to work well. I have been quite abusive too them though (wearing them something like 15 hours a day and crumbling them in my pocket when I am not using them). I think this is a reasonable lifespan for these cables. Especially if I can easily and cheaply replace them. I have also been working on the 3d model for printing but that has some delays because of school stuff.

>>2449 I'm no expert but I'm assuming you've just got the speakers (with just pos/neg wires). You'll need an amp. I'm not sure where to start because I'm not experienced with audio soykaf. Hope this helps (probably won't).

>>2544 >>2449 You could go all out and build your own amp, but I would just go to a second hand store and buy an amp in which you can plug a 3.5mm and where you can screw/clip 2 wires in the back.

>>2541 finished a 3d model for the first prototype, a friend is going to 3d print it for me over the weekend.

>>2556 I based my model on a 3d model of a human ear I found online somewhere, and I took some inspiration from the earphones I am currently using. I hope this will result in something that actually fits well

This seems to be most suitable place for it. Anyone else picky about earbud tips? I've been using $10 Sony earbuds before which ripped and ever since all other tips aren't nearly as comfortable as these. Lost medium sized pair and I prefer to use large over standard ones. There are two factors that have drastic impact on comfort, at least for me. The tip has to be made out of soft silicone that molds into ear easier. Most stock buds come with hard silicone and it disqualify them for me. Second thing is shape, which sony somehow got so much better than others who use standard shape. It has smaller hole and in my ears wide hole tips feel like they are bout to rip my ear before they sit deep enough. I'm not sure where to look for such specific type of earbuds other than buying another pair of sony beacuse surprisingly among larger amount of tips to choose from all of them are the same awful soykaf. ps: i didn't manage to get a picture uploaded unfortunately pps: i swear I'm not a sony wage slave

So after not having posted anything for a while I have finally continued to work further on this project, I finally got one of the earphones printed and it is in my right ear while an old earphone is in my left. The main problem I have currently is that earphone cables from aliexpress still break and are around 8 euros a piece. Therefore I have decided to buy some 3.5mm jacks and a couple of meters of earphone cable, this should make stuff a lot cheaper.

>>3249 Here is an image of the back, I am currently using some hot glue to hold everything together.

>>3249 How does the case you printed feel on the year? It looks sort of rough.

>>3255 I actually barely feel it, except for the pointy bit at the bottom that can be kinda annoying if I it is not in my ear correctly. I think I am going to make that part less pointy in a next version.

I think what usually ends up breaking with earbuds is theouter coating, it tends to crack and cause shorts and it can be a pain to remove and re-apply without ruining the insulation. You could make something like ear buds, or headphones that have no wire, and simply have a male to male aux cable of sorts plugging into it, and then into your music player. although, the cable would probably be sort of bulky, especially the connectior, it may be too heavy so i guess the trick would be to make the wire and connectors easy to replace, also stop buying expensive sets, they break more than cheap sets

>>4758 I actually used earbuds with connectors on both ends in the past (the pic from the first post here actually has replacable cables) but when the cables are more than half the price as the earbuds and take a few weeks to ship from china there is little point. Anyways, I haven't been working much on this project lately and I don't think I will finish it I had this idea that I could maybe get some really nice earphones on the cheap if I could get some speakers from a place like digikey for a fraction of the money of a complete set of earphones. But it turns out that it is really hard to judge the quality of earphone speakers you can buy online unless you go to like $100 plus speakers. I did definitely gain something from this project though. I have become relatively skilled in repairing earphones and I now have all of the parts from connectors to a lot of cable and speakers and even a few 3d printed housings. So whenever I break my earphones now I can easily repair them in a few minutes time which fixes a lot of the problems I was having. I kinda want some sort of solution for high quality audio at some point though. But earbuds break and big headphones tend to start really hurting my ears after a while for some reason (people say that more expensive headphones don't have this problem but I am not gonna risk buying like $300 headphones) I have considered going for Bluetooth earbuds but the ones I tried also started hurting after a while and I really need a low latency solution for some of the stuff I do though, and I can't use Bluetooth earbuds with my 20+ year old Roland electrical piano.

Hi, twenty years ago we had different wires in ours. Not these ultra thin ones. More like for small speakers, the cheapest cables for speakers or for a doorbell. Also, there was metal in the part that bend over the head (on-ear headphones), or it was only metal. They lasted for years, and it was easy to solder them.

>connectors get loose You need something with tightening gap like Yinyoo mmcx cables although it might still get loose from time to time. The permanent solution is 0.75mm 2pin type although it's hard to find the female pin and easier to just sacrifice a qkz vk4 which was my plan but then people said it sounded better than expensive ones they owned. >>4763 You can start becoming a tuner or earphone builder. Maybe upgrade to a uv resin 3d printer or even use balanced armatures.

>>4856 I thought about using a resin printer, but then it turned out that that stuff could cause skin irritation.

>>4860 You could use hypoallergenic paint/resin as finishing. I did plan on doing resins with clay mold but I'm more into metallic shells which makes driver sound better in my opinion and I'm lazy so I'll probably just get fake shure shells. There's also ceramic things or if you have the time maybe carve a semi precious stone.

not earphone but my hyper x cloud 2 i bought to tutor japanese teens totally furraked up sound is out on the one side and i am wondering should solder in new port to make them detachable and is putting thin layer of wool under the coating good idea as it seems to me that may improve the sound well it is not like i hear that well at all as my ears are also furraked i would just feel sorry about discarding them over what seems to be broken 3.5mm jack i could also paint something on the sides ig or slap a cunny sticker that red logo kinda sux yeah also should i even use that port thing that is virtually useless besides having that 7.1 WOAH effect i never really use cause it ruins sound is there any actual use for it ig no but yeah thanks and what about pushing leather like pad into softy pad and making it double the paddy ig that works too and adds comfy levels? yeah ty