Best wishes to Zaliathan, speedy recovery too!
On topic of UM3X - I have used large Shure gray soft silicon tips for the first time last night... I am usually a "medium size sleeve person" (use medium size Shure olives, medium complies, medium foams) and tried medium size gray soft silicone tips at some point too- wasnt at all impressed with the sound at the time. With mediums the bass was tighter then with foam based sleeves, but everything was really congested, forced.
But with LARGE soft grey silicone/rubber sleeves - I was simply gobsmacked with the UM3x sound's definition, extension, texture, speed, attack! Sound stage has appeared all of a sudden... To sum it up in one word, the sound RESOLUTION has seemingly doubled with these sleeves. Especially so when compared to foam based tips.
The negatives are that although the bass is tight now (kind of like on PK1s), but lean, maybe a touch too much so. And, the worst of all, dark gray silicones have worst isolation of all tips.
BUT!.. I start to understand the rationale behind custom sleeves- they are always made of rigid silicone like material which means the sound should be opposite to "boomy"(er) signature associated foam based sleeves.
Bottom line: To get a glimpse of what your IEMs are capable of, one needs to listen to them with soft silicone tips!!!! (Based on my experience- get them size larger than your usual sleeves)
