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There are four common types of seal (five if we count "no seal").
* no seal is a non-starter
* rubber or neoprene seals
* "yellow foam" (though the Ultimate Ears foam seals are gray)
* Westone custom molds for non-custom earbuds
* Full custom earbuds
Sounds like you have some buds with the rubber/neoprene seals. My experience with those is they work at a desk, or on an airplane, but they suck for gigs, because I get sweaty and occasionally tug the cable accidentally. The seal tends to go bad halfway thru each song, and that's a royal pain. And the rubber seals wear out pretty quick. Next!
The "yellow foam" seals work well. The big catch is you need lots of spares onhand, because they don't last very long. Once they're worn out, they're as bad or worse than the rubber ones.
I've used all the options, settling on the foam until I had westone molds for my Shure E1 earphones (that model is discontinued, but westone makes molds for the current models too). I'll call this the semi-custom approach. These are a great option, and better than either of the non-custom seal options. These things last a year or two, but not forever (they harden over time and don't seal as well).
Full custom molded earphones are best, and have major advantages over the semi-custom approach. The main difference is that the full custom earphones fill up your entire ear, whereas the semi-custom only fill as much of the ear as the foam molds would fill. That means that the full custom earphones are the only ones that won't need to be adjusted at all. Interestingly, the full custom earphones are not rubbery, but more like acrylic. It turns out that the "fill the whole ear" approach does not require a tight "interference" fit. All of the full custom earphones have replaceable cables, and should last until you lose them or blow the drivers with a cell phone.
The first couple of times I had custom molds made, I had an audiologist make the molds. That'll probably cost you $50 plus the fabrication cost. With my latest pair from Hearyourself.com, I made my own molds, and it worked perfectly (you inject this epoxy-like stuff [provided by the vendor, made for ears] into your ear with a syringe, and spend 5 minutes wondering if it will be stuck in there permanently... ;-)
Having said all that, I still recommend starting with non-custom earphones and FOAM SEALS.
John
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