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> The buds themselves have a design flaw wherein earwax will accumulate in its inner grille severely enough to significantly compromise bass response Not to be
by throwanem 5y ago
> The buds themselves have a design flaw wherein earwax will accumulate in its inner grille severely enough to significantly compromise bass response
Not to be glib, but maybe clean your ears more often? You can also take the tips off (invert, then pull) and blow them out from the back with canned air to clear the outer grilles which are integral with the eartip. As fine as those outer grilles are, you'd really have to have wax packed in there for it to extrude through to the inner grille.
I do this with mine, but only very occasionally, because my ear hygiene is such that wax very rarely even appears on the outer part of the tip, and almost never in the sound channel. I listen to a lot of podcasts and often run down one or the other bud by 60-80% in a single go, so it seems very reasonable to suggest that if serious wax problems were really that hard to avoid, I would run into them too.
(Of course, if you're using third-party tips without integral grilles - well, I suppose now we know why the original engineers saw fit to include them, you know?)
- renewiltord 5y agoAFAIK canonical ear advice today is to just not fuck with your ears. Just leaving them be will usually ensure not having to deal with impacted ear wax. It’s not unhygienic to just let it be.
- oblio 5y agoYeah, I remember something like: "don't stick anything smaller than an elbow in your years".
- throwanem 5y agoAn AirPod is smaller than even a newborn's elbow. By the standard you cite, we should never use those! But if we're going to anyway, it behooves us to consider what problems that may cause, and figure out how to deal with them before they ramify.
- oblio 5y agoIt depends on how far you're pushing it. An AirPod probably doesn't go anywhere near the actual eardrum.
- throwanem 5y agoCertainly not; the AirPod is designed to be impossible to push that far. But it does, like anything that occludes the meatus, go far enough to stop wax draining. In general, all our holes are there for a reason, and blocking them up for long periods is rarely if ever well advised. But in this age we also suffer the siren song of podcasts, and it is therefore incumbent upon us to either deal with the problems we thus make ourselves, or go to urgent care and get our ears hosed out with warm saline.
- oblio 5y agoI think some ORL specialists can "vacuum" your ears. From what I hear it's far less intrusive than other options.
- throwanem 5y agoI'd be nervous about negative pressure and its effect on the eardrum, but I suppose a professional knows how to avoid any problem that could cause. That said, far preferable to avoid the need for professional intervention in the first place, I'd argue. (And have!)
- ValentineC 5y agoFrom personal experience with multiple cases of impacted earwax, dripping a bit of olive oil to soften the earwax is probably the least intrusive. One can follow up with a bit of 3% hydrogen peroxide one day after. The bubbling causes the impacted earwax to break up mechanically.
- isatty 5y agoI did some searching and also asked a doctor (though not an ENT) about it and the overall response was that you should not be be overzealous about cleaning out ear wax unless it’s a medical condition.
- throwanem 5y agoThere's nothing wrong with a little Debrox once a month or so. The point is just to keep the wax from building up enough to get impacted, or close enough to affect balance and hearing. I had impacted earwax once, years and years ago. They fix that with Debrox followed by irrigation, which was while not painful still perhaps the most weirdly unpleasant sensation I've ever experienced, and also made my head spin a little. Since then I've taken some care to avoid a repeat, and I suppose a nice side effect is that earbuds hold up a lot better.
- oblio 5y ago> The point is just to keep the wax from building up enough to get impacted, or close enough to affect balance and hearing. What if he isn't impacted in any way? What point is there in zealously cleaning something that's meant to be there? Just washing your ears in a regular fashion during a shower/bath, with your fingers (but not with long nails!) and warm water and soap is enough for most people.
- lm28469 5y ago> but not with long nails! Why would you clip your nails, they're meant to be there /s There are many things that the body does that aren't useful in any ways, if you have so much earwax that it gunks your audio equipment it probably is time to think about removing a bit more of it
- oblio 5y ago> Why would you clip your nails, they're meant to be there /s Nope, they're not. If we'd still be living a hunter gatherer lifestyle our nails would naturally be filed down to a manageable length without much extra fuss.