All these 4 star earbuds drive me nuts

[User 180565 is taking donation]

You know it's really hard for me to find a good pair of ear buds, I see all these companies making them and they only get a decent 4/5 granted nothing in the electronic world can be perfect it's so rare to see anything highly rated these days that make me feel comfortable with a good purchase, you can't really go into a store and try them in your ears for obvious reasons. Each time I buy them I always suffer the same issue the feel perfect in my left but my right always give me like a sort of slight pain.

Maybe I have deformed ear canals that's just aren't even I have no severe pain so it's not really a good enough excuse to just see an ear doctor and I can't really justify spending $100 on a set. I've really been into soundcore products lately. Their headphones sound amazing for the price but I always have a thing with earbuds.

Theirs always some dumb app and tweaking you gotta do, the bass is almost their for me to call them perfect. I really dislike people down talking companies they haven't even tried such as beats and what not. I just wish I could find a painless set with a good thump and clearity to them.

[Derek‽]

Earbuds are always a pain in the butt. I prefer some over-the-ear cans to in-ear buds, but earbuds are far more versatile.

Many/most people have two different-size ear canal openings. That's why many earbuds come with tips of different sizes: so you can mix and match. Skullcandy is good about that, and in the past I've been rather pleased with their wired products. In fact, my chrome Skullcandy FMJs are probably my favorite set of earbuds I've ever owned. Unfortunately, they appear to be discontinued now (probably due to a known manufacturing defect that killed my first pair) and I don't know what the company might presently offer with comparable quality.

Currently, I use AirPods. I absolutely would not recommend them unless you have an Apple device. Their quality is OK, and the details really shine through at sufficient volume, but they don't have great bass (maybe Pros do, I dunno) and they can only pause music as opposed to skipping and changing the volume unless you have an Apple device to first change their settings. Anyone with an Android phone would honestly be better off with a pair of $20 J-Lab buds; longer battery life, more compatible controls, and the sound quality is probably similar.

"Thump" is hard for itty-bitty earbuds. They have to be programmed to either be bass-heavy or to be treble-leaning so you get the minute details of the music. The drivers aren't big enough to deliver real bass, and what they can deliver is hampered by their need to deliver tweeter frequencies at the same time. This is why Beats are so widely criticized: they're designed to prioritize low frequencies over high frequencies, which does not make them suitable for all types of audio, yet they're priced as if they are.