Comply Foam TZ-500 Ear Tips

After reading many reviews I decided to give these a try. Not sorry I did. They are for Sennheiser IEM CX400bt and not the exact fit recommended for these earbud tips. I have found that these are slightly too long for these earbuds. I am experimenting with shaving a little bit off the back until the fit is right. For others it may be just fine. The isolation has doubled from the original silicone tips. They do take a little bit of patience to get the installation into the ear right. Squeeze too much and there is no grip while the memory foam expands into the ear canal. Don't squeeze enough and the earbuds wont go in and there is no grip. I have experienced no issue so far with the tips falling off the buds and staying in my ears as some have reported. Sound quality has improved in some ways and stayed the same in others. Bass is tighter and more solid than before do to tighter seal. The high end is slightly recessed due to the longer length of the tips and the wax guards which I am going to take out. Once I get them trimmed to correct length and remove the wax guards and listen for a while I will get a better idea and update the review. So far I have seen no evidence of any deterioration or disintegration of the foam. These are used 8-10 hours a day so they see some heavy use. Update 1: Before I hit submit I trimmed the tips to the same length as the original silicone tips and what an immediate difference. That made these sound almost as good as the hifiman planar headphones direct off the DAC. I have never these buds sound this good. I have tried several of my test tracks that I know almost as good as the artist and I cannot believe that tips can make that much difference in the sound of IEM's. That bass is even more tight than I ever heard before. the high end opened right up and what I am still trying to figure out is the huge increase in imaging and soundstage. It's like the buds are not there as the soundstage is several feet around my head. This is by far the absolute biggest improvement I have heard in all my years of tweaking and upgrading audio equipment. All for $20 for 3 simple little pieces of memory foam. It is hard to believe that it is streaming over Bluetooth Aptx and can sound this good. These are well worth the price and if you are a tweaker and spend a little time experimenting the results will be well worth the time. I think I have gotten them as good as I can but I have two more sets to play with so maybe there is a further improvement to be had. Just for kicks I put the silicone tips back on and all the above comments completely collapsed to good sound, but nothing like I had gotten to with the modified tips. It's like the difference between a great pair of dynamic speakers and a tuned set of Acustat electrostatics. Get a set of these and play around with them. I'm sure similar results can be had with other brands of earbuds. Update 2: I believe difference in sound quality is the result of how the soft silicone tips can easily compress and distort the shape of the canal between the earbuds and the outlet into the ear canal. Also these tips have a straight shot(except for the wax shields which I removed) into the ear canal. When I trimmed the tips to the original length I noticed that the tips no longer were bottoming out in the ear canal and there was some distance between the tips and the eardrum. There was also an immediate marked improvement in comfort. There was a cross support at the end of the original tips that was there to prevent the silicone tips from collapsing but also reduced the clear cross sectional area to be reduced by my guess 40% without any compression of the silicone tips. If the tips compressed when inserted it would reduce the cross section even more. This could be causing all sorts of reflected sound waves to be created internally in the barrel, smearing the timing and phase relationships before exiting. Just a theory, but the results speak for themselves. There really is that much of a difference. I'm sure the same types of result will be had with other brands and some experimentation.