Closer Examination

From the ear side the LiveWires look quite complex due to their shape which is made to follow the contours of your ear. The two balanced armatures are sitting at the end of two tunnels of roughly the same bore. The two holes you can see on the end of the stem are where the sound will be coming from. One of the tubes is for the bass driver and one for the mid / treble driver.


Each pair of earphones has a small label embedded with your name on it and what seems to be a serial number of some sort. The LiveWires are a pretty unique construction, because it is a dual driver custom in-ear with removable cable. The internal part of the solution is the round brass connector. Each of the drivers is hooked up to this connector via a really thin greenish cable. To identify which earphone goes where, there is a small red or blue dot next to the tag on each of the two earphones. Left is blue, right is red. This is not that important on custom in-ears because you can tell which is one goes where by its shape.


The face plate of the LiveWires is a bit textured and is only available in solid colors. I choose to have mine done with a black face plate, but LiveWires leaves you with plenty of other more colorful choices, however, you do not have the option to get custom graphics embedded or a two tone faceplate done.
I think they turned out great. The sleek black color held up against the brass connector looks nice, perhaps a bit on the shiny side because of the contrast.


The cable solution on the LiveWires is really quite brilliant. Not only is it removable it can also turn around 360 degrees which allows you to both run the cable over the ear or simply straight down. The jack on the cable is really well built and it is quite easy to install and remove.


With the body being clear you can see how much work the LiveWires team puts into each earphone. The internal construction is extremely complex and with loads of small details and features. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult the assembly of one of these things is which each object being so small.


Without the cable on the faceplate the in-ear can sit flush on the desk. The profile of my ear is normal with the ear canal going up and slightly forward. The canal portion of my ear is quite short and that could pose a problem because it leaves less room for mistakes. Even though the canal part was almost too short the end result was really good. I cannot break the seal even with my mouth all the way open and there is a good amount of suction with the IEMs fully inserted.


The internal wiring scheme of the LiveWires is pretty tidy. With two cables going to each of the two drives and hooking up to four soldering points on the internal connector. By the looks of it the internal connector doubles as a crossover filter allowing low frequency tones to be transmitted to the bass driver and the mid to high frequencies going to the medium to high frequency driver. Just like many other dual armature designs the LiveWires use a passive crossover to divide the frequencies between the two internal drivers.


The two armatures are mounted in different angles to the stem of the ear piece and one of them is a roughly three times the volume of the other. The way they are mounted is unique from set to set in order to fit inside the shape of your ear molds.


The connectors that hook up to each of the earphones are solid enough and seem to be extremely durable. They are both made of brass and can swivel around when connected to the female part of the jack inside the earphone.


The internal socket on the earphone looks just as solid a construction as the jack.


With both earphones laying there side by side you can see the subtle differences between the two. The right earphones stem is cut off in a steeper angle and the body of that in-ear is fuller. This is because no two ears are the same not even on the same person.


The finish of the LiveWires is definitely better than average. The plastic they are made from is extremely durable and the pieces seem to be bonded together nicely.


The mini-jack connector and the cable are really well made. It looks like a shiny version of the cables that Westone uses with a slightly altered Y-split reinforcement and split size adjuster. The cables have a soft rubber finish that reduces microphonic noise quite a lot.
One thing that worried me a bit is the fact that the cable has a metal part near the earphones which helps you to drape the cable over your ear. I find it quite annoying especially when you are inserting and removing the ear piece. In my opinion it would have been better if they had not turned it into a memory cord near the ear, both from a comfort and ease of use point of view.