First off, I have to address something that the more conservative members of my readership will surely decry: yes, I ride my bike with headphones on. No, it isn't the safest thing to do. And of course, I do NOT endorse it. But in fifteen years of riding, I've never had a close call. In my opinion, riding smart is the most important thing to do. I'd never ride in a high-traffic area with headphones, nor would I ever ride (at all) in areas with lots of intersections. The urbanites among you should definitely keep your ears open. But I'm a suburban guy, and I only ride in places where headphones don't matter. Most of my riding occurs on bike trails, because I'm lucky enough to live in an area where there are literally hundreds of miles of continuous trails.

With THAT out of the way, I'm going to tell you about my favorite headphones in the world. They began life as in-ear headphones from Shure. Specifically, I'm talking about the 500-series headphones, which have been around for more than a decade. They're simply awesome. They're a triple-driver monitor, meaning there are three individual speakers PER EAR that put the most sublime sound waves directly into your head. I have never had a single complaint with these earphones, save one. Wearing them for several hours on end, either doing a long ride, or sitting on a long flight, or just working … that would eventually be uncomfortable. My ears would hurt from the little foam tips on the earphones.

I had long known about custom IEMs (that stands for 'In Ear Monitor'), and that custom IEMs were supposed to be much more comfortable, and also deliver even better sound than standard earphones were capable of. The idea is that the manufacturer takes a mold of your inner ear, and uses that mold to create custom earphones perfectly suited to YOU. That means you get a perfect seal, and a perfect conduit through which to channel immaculate sound, without exerting any pressure on the ear canal in the way that standard foam or rubber tips do.

The problem, of course, is cost. Typically, the cheapest IEMs cost about $700 for a pair. And there was no guarantee that they would work properly. You might get a bad mold, or bad manufacturing, or some other problem. So you might have to pay even more for remolding, repairs, etc. So for 15 years, I continued to use my trusty Shure earphones, despite the fact that they would make my ears hurt after a few hours, due to the foam tips.

Enter inearcustom.com

Finally, the perfect solution arrived. The website inearcustom.com promised to make ANY pair of earphones into a custom IEM for just over a hundred bucks. That's a LOT cheaper than anything else on the market, and I couldn't resist giving it a try. The first step is getting a mold of your ear and ear canal. The company gives you two options to do this: you can go get your own impressions from an audiologist (which will cost you about $50), or they'll send you a kit to do it yourself (for which they charge you $15). In order to be thorough, I tried both. And honestly, they turned about the same. So I sent inearcustom.com the impressions that I had taken myself, with their kit. And about six weeks later, I got my custom IEMs back in the mail.

The custom IEMs were absolutely beautiful. They looked exactly like my original molds, but were made of translucent plastic, with the custom colors I had designated, and through the translucent plastic I could see the internal electronics of the original headphones I had sent to them. The idea is that they take your original headphones, and very carefully dismantle them. Then, they take the molds of your ear, and create a plastic shell that will contain the earphone electronics you sent to them. They very carefully insert the electronic components into your ear molds, and create holes in those molds to channel the sound from the electronics right into your ear canal. As I said above, the result was absolutely beautiful.

The problem was, it sounded WRONG. I was getting some kind of weird, asymmetric sound from the two different sides. It just sounded weird. So I emailed the company, and told them what was going on. It's also important to note that at this point, I was merely a customer. I hadn't told them anything about this review, or even the fact that I published this website. And that's why it should mean a whole lot when I say that the customer service at inearcustom.com is absolutely AMAZING. They have a policy of doing at least TWO completely new refits absolutely for FREE. They even offered to pay the shipping costs to send the custom IEMs back. I refused that refund, because they were obviously working very hard to make me a satisfied customer, and for a custom product like this, a few extra bucks in shipping costs is well worth the service they gave to me. After a little back-and-forth, I had my revised IEMs back. And this time, they were PERFECT.

Sound Quality

Compared to the original headphones I sent in for customization, the sound I got from my custom earphones was t the very least equivalent to the source headphones, and if I'm honest, probably quite a bit better. I just don't want to oversell the product, although I think it's absolutely amazing. Moreover, beyond the sound quality, the comfort is just PERFECT. These things fit in my ear perfectly, because they were made just for me! I have worn these puppies for over 5 hours at a time without any fatigue or discomfort in my ears. It's incredible, and absolutely worth the price of admission. Moreover, the customer service of inearcustom.com is simply AMAZING. I could not have asked for better service, a better product, or a better overall experience. In fact, I went ahead and ordered myself a second pair because of how much I loved the first.

For triathletes, the advantages of a good set of phones are many. First off, they'll serve you for both your athletic life as well as your personal life. The Shure headphones I use are compatible with special cables that work with iPods and iPhones (which controls volume, calls, and music playback), and there's also a separate cable for Android devices. The Android cable doesn't work quite as well, because it doesn't have a separate volume control, just a single button that works to control answer/end/play/pause. But the larger point is that these headphones will serve you basically forever. You can take them from one device to another, and the replaceable cables mean you can keep them for as long as a headphone drivers last, which is probably longer than your own lifetime.

I have no trouble recommending inearcustom.com wholeheartedly and without reservation.