I guess the jury is still out on the long-term verdict for me and my custom molds. But I really like them compared to all the different types of domes I tried because the molds fit my ear canals just right and the domes didn’t. I think a lot depends on the shape of your ear canal and how it’s shape changes if at all when you talk and chew, etc. On sensitive skin, it’s hard to be more sensitive than mine - I’m psoriatic so any degree of rubbing leads to psoriatic inflammation-an autoimmune-like problem and I have had no noticeable problem with my ear canals on that score. A lot, as noted by other posters in other threads, depends on who makes your molds and the skill of the person taking the impression. Don’t know about soft silicone - I’d say mine are hard silicone because they don’t deform very much at all when squeezed - but they’re still comfy-made by ReSound. They don’t move at all - perhaps because of the shape of my ear canals. I think with any mold or dome you want to be gentle inserting or removing them because seriously scraping the skin of your ear canal can lead to an ear infection.
Too bad molds are so relatively expensive (except at Costco). I think everyone should try them to see how they work out. I did because I didn’t want to wear HA’s the rest of my life not knowing what I might be missing and for me, they did turn out to be a big plus. I find them easier to clean than domes and perhaps just because of my mold design, hardly any wax ever gets into the receiver openings whereas with domes, which were probably inserted a bit further into my ear canals, every day was a cleaning chore on that score.
So I’d say if you can afford it, just give custom molds a try to prove to yourself that they’re not going to do anything more for you that you can’t get from domes. And get the molds made with Select-A-Vent so you can play around with venting and discover yourself the vent size that works best for you.
BTW, I have good low frequency hearing and I am not bothered by any chewing noises. I’ve always liked to eat crunchy foods, e.g., granola, walnuts, almonds, etc. So maybe I’ve just habituated to crunch sounds I’ve heard most of my adult life even without hearing aid molds. Eating while conversing is a small part of the day and I’d say most foods are not sufficiently crunchy to be an impediment to listening while eating. ReSound also has a quick setting called Speech Clarity that significantly increases the amplification of the midtone and treble range of external sounds, decreases bass input, so if your HA’s are similar you could boost those components of speech to fight any probably mostly bass tones coming through via bone conduction, I would think. Just occurred to me and I’ll have to give it a try.
Edit_Update: Just tried eating a fresh bowl of Cheerios (very crunchy!) while watching the following YouTube lecture on the Markov Decision Process: YouTube David Silver’s 2nd course lecture in the University College-London course on reinforcement learning: Teaching. To see who this mild-mannered professor really is, it’s interesting to look him and his associate(boss?) Demis Hassabis up in Wikipedia. But switching to Speech Clarity and also synchronizing my chewing with the pauses between syllables in the Silver’s voice worked out well - I was wearing over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphones, too, which greatly increases the perception of bone-conducted noise, at least for me. I wouldn’t normally want to listen to anyone talking with this setup but I could still hear pretty clearly everything Silver said.