Do Premium Headphone Cables Make an Audible Difference? Norne Audio Cable Review (video)

[charleski]

Regarding not sticking cotton buds in your ears, it's a risk I have to take as I haven't found any other way to get my ear canals to dry. The problem is that they tighten slightly at the, uh, mouth (for lack of a better term), meaning I need to use it pretty much daily. My right ear canal actually seems to occasionally function as a helmholtz resonator, I get a physical sensation in my ear canal from the sound a 991 GT3 makes near redline. I got a squeezy bulb that blows a bunch of air through them, but that left my ears ringing making me think that its damaging my hearing over time, all the little ear focused hair dryers are just ceramic resistors and don't really work, and that alcohol based stuff for swimmers feels like its trying to eat away the skin in there. So for me, the price of dry ears is eternal vigilance.

Yeah, I'd stay away from preparations with alcohol. Those work by dehydrating the skin, which isn't really a good idea. Have you tried olive oil? A couple of drops in the ear a few times a day for a week or so will usually soften the wax sufficiently to allow the natural movement of the hairs in the canal to start working again. The skin of your ear canal produces wax to catch debris that gets into the canal, and then the fine hairs in the canal move slowly to shift that wax and debris down the canal and out of the external meatus. This mechanism will fail if the wax hardens or gets impacted (and the most common cause of impacted wax is earbuds). Severe cases of impacted wax might need syringing out (by someone with a microscope who knows what they're doing), but a little olive oil and some patience usually does the trick.

 

[Phos]

The issue isn't with wax, it's that water that gets into my ears doesn't naturally get out quickly enough to avoid side effects.

 

[charleski]

That generally happens because the water gets trapped behind waxy buildups.

 

[Phos]

I'm pretty confident that in my case it isn't because of the aforementioned regular use of cotton buds within my ears.

 

[charleski]

Cotton buds just make wax buildups worse by pushing it deeper in. But suit yourself.