I recently sent my ER4 earphones to Etymotic Research for repair of the same issue. Cracking of the transducer tubes is a known issue according to Etymotic Research but no attempt has been made to directly correct the issue. I have questioned the design and may consider pursuing other earphones because I firmly believe that "if it dosn't work, it wasn't designed" (hence my feeling that this will be an ongoing problem).
Originally Posted by SptsNaz Maybe it costs them less to replace the tube for someone rather then begin implementing a whole new design
although the drivers are somewhat expensive, this is probably the case.
there are a lot of "comon parts" in the headphone, if you look at it. using a thicker tube would require diferent parts. perhaps fiewer "comon parts" are available for the thicker stems...
immagine how much less senn headphone pads would cost if they all used the same pad (or the same 4 pads rather than having unique pads for each set op phones.) you save big money by doing this. immagine how happy i would be if i could jsut swap senn 414 pads onto my hd 595's and be done with it at $3 a pair... i have not listened to my grado's in a weeek. the grado lords will now drop lightning bolts to crush my ears.
This same thing is EXACTLY how wood (usually grenadilla) clarinets become cracked. Rapid temperature changes are very bad for your clarinet, and if you heat or cool the inside or outside too fast, you're going to get cracking, and your clarinet will need a ton of expensive work.
This is indeed a design flaw and Ety needs to come up with a better material. There are enough out there - no excuses. Heck, the new Shure E4's have a metal sound tube - a fine role model.
i've sent mine back to discountheadphones because of tube cracking twice in a span of less then 2 months of babied care...no filter changes...handling them with great care. I lucked into a great online dealer discountheadphones.com which when i phoned and told Dave of having my 2nd cracked tube and that i was disappointed with the quality of the plastic lexan tubes...and yes they are too fragile i feel. he told me then send them back for a full refund thats after owning them for just over two months i thoght that was pretty good customer service. i have been totally turned off by etymotic with this junky design..plastic even if its (LEXAN) tubes will not hold up...at least etymotic could change the design with stronger material like say ...TITANIUM.
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