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Comply Foam Tips and Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers Review
Jason Tsay
For your average user, the silicone tips included with each headphone purchase are good enough. However, to many audiophiles, these are simply not acceptable for listening to music. Hearing Components is a company that manufactures foam tips for a ton of headphone brands, including Monster Cable, Ultimate Ears, Denon, and Skullcandy (just to name a few). We recently got a chance to test out their T-200 tips.
Comply T-200 Foam Tips and Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers
Features
- Provides Supreme Comfort
- Enhances Audio Performance
- Provides Secure, Stay In-Ear Fit
- Blocks Outside Noise
Review
Both the T200 Foam Tips and Whoomp! Enhancers come in clear plastic bubbles sandwiched by two pieces of cardboard. Ripping those apart will reveal some usage instructions and safety warnings. Each T-200 package includes 3 pairs of tips while you’ll only get 1 pair of Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers (sold separately).
Comply T-200 Foam Tips
Installation of the Foam Tips was simple. We yanked off the silicone nubs that shipped with our headphones and jammed our new foam ones on until they were secured. Following the given instructions, we rolled the tips into thin cylinders and held them in our ears until the “viscoelastic polyurethane foam” completely expanded outwards. (Since the soft tips have a semi-rigid core, you won’t have to worry about destroying them by pinching them too hard.) As you can imagine, this custom fit felt much more comfortable than our original silicone tips. But rather than just comfort, the foam also allowed the headphone drivers to inject sound more directly through our ear canals, improving sound. The Comply Foam Tips do also reduce the need to crank up your music as they significantly boost sound isolation.
Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers
Given our wonderful experience with the T-200 Tips, we had high hopes for the Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers. Intended for hardcore Apple fanboys who refuse to give up their dinky white earbuds, these “enhancers” are essentially bits of foam mounted on a circular plastic cap. They click right on to your standard Apple earbuds and supposedly provide a similar experience as using in-ear headphones. In our testing, they had much less of a profound effect and didn’t do much to enhance audio quality. In theory, the tips should direct audio through the ear canal, enhancing bass and overall sound, but we didn’t find to work all that well. In fact, the added bulk felt unnatural in the ear and the foam tips didn’t add much as far as comfort goes.
Overall
Comply Foam Tips are a great addition to your existing in-ear headphones. Considering the price, they are also represent great value. However, we wouldn’t recommend just slapping these on any cheap headphones you’ve got. From what we can tell, Hearing Components intended for their products to be used with higher end headphones. So if you’ve already $100+ on some nice headphones and are looking for that bit of extra boost, look no further than the Comply Foam Tips. On the other hand, the Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers are a great concept but simply don’t work in actual use. We’d recommend putting that money towards a pair of slightly nicer headphones, which will definitely make your audio sound much better.
T-200 Foam Tips
Pro’s
- Greatly enhances sound
- Comes with 3 pairs
- Reasonably priced
Con’s
- Not very durable
- Not universal (specific tips for specific headphones)
Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers
Pro’s
- Good concept
Con’s
- Don’t work
- Only 1 pair
- Costly
Price: $14.95 (3 T-200 Tips), $19.95 (5 T-200 Tips), $9.95 (1 Whoomp! Enhancer)
Where to buy them: Comply Amazon
Photos
This review was done by Jason Tsay, who was provided the Comply Foam Tips and Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers by Hearing Components.
