Fintan said:
@Carson
Can you listen to a podcast and understand it?
Yes, though you definitely need earplugs, and you may want the volume up louder than for music (I do).
Fintan said:
@Carson
Can you listen to a podcast and understand it?
Yes sir! Actually, there is an EQ Mode Setup specifically for “vocal.”
My wife got her Shockz for running (she doesn’t like swimming), and she uses this setup to hear audiobooks and loves it, saying it’s much better than the music option.
Fintan said:
@Carson
Can you listen to a podcast and understand it?
Yes. I don’t wear earplugs and listen to podcasts while swimming laps. Sound quality is good enough for this purpose, but not amazing. The podcast app I use lets you download MP3 files from it, so I just grab a few that are not time-sensitive and generally longer form. They resume from where you left off last time, even after a long break and using the headphones for other stuff.
Welcome to the club. I recommend you use ear plugs; it improves the sound quality. I never used earplugs until last month (minor ear infection), and now I really can’t do without. Absolutely love swimming with music.
Don’t care much for the ones included with Shokz; the most comfortable for me are the Arena ear plugs.
@Cael
I used my Shockz for swimming 3 weeks ago, but I’ve used the ear plugs just once, and I noticed an improvement. I thought it was my imagination, but I’ve read some comments, and now I realize it’s not just my head, hahaha.
That’s the only thing that keeps me swimming for an hour… my tunes. Sometimes I do 10 extra laps just to listen to a song that comes on that slaps! 
They are so cool. They have improved my swimming so much. And be sure to use them with ear plugs.
I’ve been using them for about a year now and love them. My only complaint is that it’s hard to load it up with content.
If you’re “renting” your music, then those files aren’t usable for uploading to the Shokz or these kinds of MP3 players. If you’ve ripped your music from CDs, it’s easier, but if you bought your music, then it better be DRM-free.
Same with podcasts. It’s hard to find the files, and some are encrypted. Some won’t play if they can’t access the Internet to splice in some ads.
All in all, it’s tedious enough that I found myself uploading a few hundred songs and then just sticking with those for months at a time. I somewhat maximized my number of songs by downsampling my songs to lower bitrates to make the files smaller. What with the sound of water, I can’t tell that they’ve been down-sampled.
If any of you have found good solutions to this, please share!
@Caelan
Download iTunes on a laptop/desktop.
Open the program.
Go from Music to Podcasts.
Subscribe to some shows you like.
Download the podcast show.
Once it’s saved on the iTunes Player, you can drag the specific podcast show to your Shockz music folder.
WALLAH. You can now listen to podcasts while swimming.
You’re welcome.
@Ziv
Not trying to be a dick. I’m only typing this as a fellow human to save you from future embarrassment: it’s ‘voilà,’ a French word—‘wallah’ is not a word.
@Caelan
Google ‘vid to mp3.’ There are many free online converters that will strip the MP3 data from a YouTube video link. A lot of these sites seem janky and want you to download a program to open the file… don’t do that - after inputting the YouTube link and converting, always look for the link that’s less graphical, if that makes sense, and you’ll get the MP3 file download.
I just got some off-brand ones for Xmas (I didn’t want family to spring for Shokz in case I didn’t like it or they fell off too easily or something). Can’t wait to try them tomorrow!
West said:
I just got some off-brand ones for Xmas (I didn’t want family to spring for Shokz in case I didn’t like it or they fell off too easily or something). Can’t wait to try them tomorrow!
Are they the H2O audio ones?
@Noah
No, they’re some weird brand off of Amazon, “Bxswtu,” I can’t even pronounce it lol.
West said:
@Noah
No, they’re some weird brand off of Amazon, “Bxswtu,” I can’t even pronounce it lol.
Let us know how they hold up! Might consider a pair.
I bought mine last spring and it was a game changer! Love mine and can’t imagine swimming without them now.
I got a brand I couldn’t pronounce from Amazon during a Black Friday sale for $30. They have 32GB storage. I absolutely love them, loaded 206 MP3 songs on the first couple of times. Currently have an audiobook and just finished that. Very quick and easy to add and remove songs via USB to a computer. Sound quality is actually good, even better in the water. This cheap pair is a great intro; I will go nicer if I need to replace these at some point.
Very happy for you! I tried listening to audiobooks at full volume with ear plugs on but can’t hear it due to the air bubbles and near-constant passive exhaling habit I have. I suppose music would be fine.
Do the modern ones stay in your ears?
When I was swimming competitively, over a decade ago now, the technology just wasn’t there. They’d constantly pop out of my ears while swimming, especially pushing off from a flip turn.
My assumption, at the time, was that they would work for non-competitive exercise swimmers… but not for me at the paces I swam at.
@Amari
Shokz are bone conduction, so there’s nothing in the ear. I have freakishly small ear canals, so the in-ear earbuds were a disaster for me, but the Shokz were a complete game changer. I put them on under my cap and it holds them in place when I flip turn, but honestly I don’t think they’d come off even without a cap.