I may be an edge case, but the comments here all seem to miss the mark of people for whom the earplugs aren't an option.
After 22 years in military aviation and a couple of autoimmune disorders, I literally cannot wear in-ear anything without pain, ruptured skin, and balance issues.
A pair of headphones like this is my only option. I'm sure I'm an edge case, but there are plenty of other people for whom a solution like this is more viable than anything in their ear canal.
Yes for working for example.
Between using noisy machinery I want to speak with my coworkers. It’s much easier with those kind of headphones. Earplugs do need time to be taken out and in and the hands are dirty as shit
Glancing at the article, this seems like a baroque approach to a problem with a much more elegant solution.
I’m a professional musician and audio engineer and for years I’ve been using custom earplugs that I acquired through a visit to an audiologist. They took an impression of my ear canals and within a week provided molded custom-fit plugs. These plugs provide passive attenuation spec’ed to my preference (-15dB, -20dB, -30dB, etc) and they do so in a way that attenuates evenly across the frequency spectrum, rather than over-attenuate the high frequencies like foam earplugs do, so that you don’t experience muffled sound. They’re comfy and work flawlessly. I’ve never taken them out due to discomfort.
This is what's used a lot in motorsport as race cars are insanely loud. Mine was pumping out north of 120db at one point at a 1m static noise test at 4500rpm (went to 7600rpm... and you sit less than 1m from the exhaust..)
I had full impressions done with custom in-ear monitors and I've never been happier. Makes plane flights absolutely tolerable too.
In-ear monitors vs sleeved (like eytomtic slip-ons) are much better practically day to day as the wires exit flush with the bottom of your earlobes (needed for getting helmets on and off) which means beanies, sleeping on a plane etc you can rest the side of your head on something without wires/end of the monitor.
For people who can't afford custom earplugs, you can find a lot of earplugs with good sound clarity if you google "musician earplugs" or "concert earplugs". You may have to try more than one brand before you find something that fits well, but it will still be cheaper than the custom option. I like the EarPeace plugs, though it's not because of sound quality but because they're discreet and I find them comfortable.
I've seen the custom ones (non-electronic) go for $25. So it might not be as expensive as some people think. It depends on where you go to get them. Independent people who do it on the side are the cheapest.
I've never had a problem with sound clarity at loud concerts with ordinary foam plugs. I wouldn't use anything else when cranking an amp.
Flat frequency response in plugs is nonsense, because due to factors like the Fletcher-Munson curves, there is no correct profile.
Foam plugs attenuating more of the high end means that you hear a lot of bass: and in one way that is subjectively pleasing, because due to Fletcher-Munson, the unattenuated loud sound sounds bass-heavy. Thus some of that aspect of the sound is preserved.
People who are cork sniffers about flat frequency responses should be going to Bach concerts, not rock concerts.
I heard Chick Corea's Electric Band (with Gambale on guitar at that time) via foam plugs. They sounded fine. I heard every note clearly from every instrument.
Most people don't give a shit about flat response. Just about every time I've ever rented a car, I had to correct the stereo from cranked treble and bass, reduced middle, back to all zero.
No two speaker systems sound alike in the first place.
Flat response in plugs is not nonsense simply because Fletcher-Munson curves already exist. Good plugs eliminate an additional layer of unwanted frequency distortion in the audio that you're hearing.
Yes, Fletcher-Munson effects can change our perception of frequency response. But that doesn't mean that we should tolerate additional negative effects. That's like saying that we shouldn't stop the cook from using too much salt in our dish because the chicken is already dry. Clearly it's preferable to have chicken that is ONLY dry, rather than chicken that is both dry AND over-salted.
Don't be so dismissive about people seeking a good audio experience. If you're at a concert there's a lot of factors that are out of the audience's control, but good earplugs are low hanging fruit if such things are important to them.
And if you're the musician on stage cranking an amp, using cheap ear plugs is going to create a disconnect between what you hear and what your audience will hear. If you have to dial in more top-end to compensate for the dulling effect of the plugs for your amp to sound "right", then your "right" sounding amp setting will be perceived as harsh for the people in the audience who aren't wearing plugs.
Finally, if you're at a rock concert (with a sound engineer mixing the band) the engineer will be hearing the concert at the same volume as you. They will already be balancing the band's sound in a way that compensates for the effects of the Fletcher Munson effect that you're concerned about.
> I've never had a problem with sound clarity at loud concerts with ordinary foam plugs. I wouldn't use anything else when cranking an amp.
Regardless of "flat response" talk, I have been very happy using the same pair of $30 Dubs ear plugs for almost 15 years. I have foam earplugs for when I need things to be as quiet as possible but I hate them so much for a few reasons:
1. With extended use, for whatever reason, cause my ear canals to feel raw and itchy.
2. They are a PITA to get in and have them stay in and sometimes to get them out
3. They are disposable which is a waste
Coincidentally, I literally just bought a pair of Loops ear plugs today as my Dubs are finally falling apart. I liked my Dubs for multiple reasons:
1. They are super comfortable - I forget I have them in
2. They are reusable
3. They look interesting in the ear which is a great conversation starter at concerts/clubs/festivals - "are you wearing earbuds?" "No they are musicians earplugs. They basically just lower the volume while preserving the sound" "Oh cool!" "Yea if you like music, don't forget to protect your ears!"
For live music, there is no reference for correctness. The raw thing is so loud, it hurts. Nobody is engineering it for listening at moderate volume in an ideal listening space!
Now speaking of recorded music, even though there is a "correct" approach to reproducing it so that you hear more or less what the recording guys (I don't want to use the term "engineer" because often they are not) intended.
However, what those guys intended is often arbitrary. They took captures from some sources and tweaked them. The whole hi fi paradigm is predicated on the idea that the recording/mastering guys are high priests who get to exercise their taste, and the lowly consumer must obligingly reproduce what they put out.
This isn't so at a concert. If it sounds to me like some guitar dickhead's amp stack is putting out too much crap above 6 kHz (because he's standing out of its way, hearing it from the side or whatever), and my foam plugs make it smooth like it should, that makes me the "engineer" of my own experience of the event.
> What those guys intended is often arbitrary. They took captures from some sources and tweaked them. The whole hi fi paradigm is predicated on the idea that the recording/mastering guys are high priests who get to exercise their taste, and the lowly consumer must obligingly reproduce what they put out.
Don't be dismissive of audio engineers and mixers making records. I don't think you realize how much care and consideration goes into crafting an album. These choices are far from arbitrary for those who are working at the top of their craft.
Additionally, don't make the mistake of conflating people who are "hi-fi" enthusiasts with the people actually making the records. They are not always aligned in their goals.
You also seem to have the mistaken idea that mastering engineers are trying to impose their taste onto a record. You know which mastering engineers try to shoehorn their taste into a record? The ones who don't get hired a second time.
I am a mastering engineer. By the time that a record reaches our studio the creative decisions have already been made by the artist, the producer, and the mixer. Our goal at this stage is to function as midwife to the artist and present their music in the best possible light, which sometimes means doing as little as possible, so as not the get in the way of what's been delivered to us. Our role is to hear the record as objectively as possible and then give it a final level of polish/balance so that the artist's intentions shine through and translate on as many different playback situations as possible.
Finally, if a guitarist's amp is putting out too much 6kHz at a rock show, then it is the live sound engineer's responsibility to fix it, either through EQ or through communicating with the guitarist to adjust their amp settings.
Expensive, time-consuming, and after multiple trips to different audiologists I never got a good impression of my right ear. If it works for you though (I'm probably a rare case) I'm sure it's great.
I have similar made here in the UK. Love them, wear them for gigs plus when I go to a club.
For anyone in the UK check out the musicians hearing health scheme. They provide the plugs at greatly reduced cost, and I can't speak highly enough of them.
Seconded, I play in several very loud metal bands and I went through this same process around 2016 and my earplugs are still going strong. I love the option of changing the filters at will. Well worth the time and money, for me.
Can I ask how much something like this is? Ive been considering getting something similar, partially for work, and partially for going to concerts without having to worry about damaging my ears.
They're not custom made, but I recently bought a couple pairs of "Vibes" and "Loop" earplugs and they are easily the best <$50 purchase I've made in the last year. I prefer them to Etymotics (one of the other commonly recommended earplugs). I carry them everywhere with me and even wear them at places like restaurants to mute the noise. I can't recommend them enough.
Carrying them everywhere has definitely been a pro move for me. The number of times I’ve been caught in a super loud bar or a restaurant with surprise loud live music makes the paltry burden of having them on my key ring worth it.
I'd even say making sure you have a well-constructed carrying case that allows you to keep them on your keys 24/7 is more important than any concerns about comfort or sound quality, which are still really important. Hearing protection that you don't have on you is useless against unexpected loud environments.
Eargasm earplugs come with a little metal screw together case that can go on your keyring. It feels indestructible and keeps the dirt and grime out. Absolute game changer to have them on your person by default.
I need either big thick closed cell foam earplugs, or earplugs with a silicone triple flange. Over the years, I've tried everything I can find, and nothing else seems to work.
Etymotic seems to have the best triple flange ear tips I've found, but the earphones themselves are fragile and easy to break. Shure has good in-ear monitors, but their triple flange ear tips are too hard, and hurt. But the Etymoic eartips will fit on the Shure IEMs.
But none of those are noise cancelling, and none of those are wireless. So, for the purpose of blocking out sound at night while trying to sleep, none of that helps.
I coincidentally JUST bought a pair of Loops today after my Dubs started falling apart after almost 15 years of use. Happy to hear another good review of the Loops. I like that the aesthetic is interesting which is a great conversation starter at shows - from which I take the opportunity to remind people to protect their ears!
I paid about $250 for mine (made by Starkey), this included both 10db and 17db plugs. They work a lot better than the high fidelity earplugs I've tried off of Amazon. Starkey apparently retains a 3d scan of your ear canal and can make new sets if/when you lose them.
Around 200-230€ in Germany. I have a model where the human voice frequencies have a bit less attenuation, absolutely perfect for noisy bars where you want to hear your buddy at the same table.
Less perfect for noisy restaurants as eating will make your ears to wiggle a bit, causing some shifting sounds if you are wearing plugs. But great again for noisy public transport and flights. I always keep them in a small pouch in my pocket.
I got some off-the-shelf ones, so they don't fit as well as custom molded ones, but I've still never had discomfort. I love them, I wear them everywhere, as they make sound levels much more comfortable.
This was addressed early in the article: "For years, I have been trying to improve my personal audio-monitoring situation without going to the expense of the systems used by professional touring bands, which include custom-molded earpieces."
According to some website I found, 30dB is a pretty quiet room and a rock concert is around 120+dB so you’d need -90dB to hear quiet at a rock concert. However even if you completely blocked all sound through the ear canal you’d probably get sound going through your skull so there’s just a limit to what’s going to really work.
There's no such thing as complete quietness for a human to experience. Not getting external signals brain immediately, and unavoidably starts to hallucinate noise
Someone needs to invent something similar for sleeping. I would pay good money to have a completely silent sleep environment. Right now ear plugs are the best way, and not at all comfortable to sleep with.
Traffic, neighbors, construction - there's always something going on in a big city. Even having a detached house in the suburbs is not guarantee of a quiet night. Sleep interruption due to noise can have disproportionate impact later in life [0].
I had some ideas about a 'room within a room' spanning just the bed, and I couldn't find a good source of materials. Best bet would be to fill the whole thing with concrete and hope it's acoustically isolated from the building itself.
There's some things you can do to quieten a bedroom passively at least. Closed windows, noise muffling vents (because fresh air is also important during sleep). Thick and heavy curtains will muffle a lot of sounds and prevent it from bouncing around, the bigger the better (wall to wall, floor to ceiling). You can have another layer of that around your bed, old style curtain beds. Carpet on the floors instead of laminate or something else.
Next level would be adding noise insulation to the walls and the like, but that's a bigger time/money/effort investment.
Moving to the suburbs or the countryside is an option, but won't be a panacea; you'll have different sounds, sound travels further, houses won't be built with city noise in mind, and they're likely to be older so less well insulated to begin with.
Anyway, passive noise insulation first, I wouldn't use earbuds or anything covering / plugging the ears, and things like white or pink noise generators are a last ditch effort (they will put constant sound pressure on your ears instead of silence, idk if that's harmful but it's something to keep in mind)
My biggest noise problem comes from inside the room, not outside. It takes a hell of a lot of layering to block out or mask the sound of my wife's snoring.
Yes, she has a CPAP, but she never uses it because she can't find masks that don't make her feel like she's trapped and choking.
There's probably going to be a growing market of active noise-cancelling earpods. QuietOn is pioneering this category (quieton.com - no affiliation), but I guess at some point we'll see it combined with a personally moulded solution.
You could look into mass-loaded vinyl for low frequencies and foam diffusers for high frequencies. MLV can be used on floors, walls and hung from frames, although then the frames tend to leak sound at intersections.
Mass-loaded vinyl and absorptive panels only correct frequency response in the room. It does very little to isolate you from outside noise. They will only make that noise more balanced across the frequency spectrum and do practically nothing to prevent noise from entering or leaving the room.
It's a common mistake to think that room treatment and room isolation are the same thing. But they're two different problems that require two different approaches to solve.
310-1101 - they are cylindrical. I used to get the similar 310-1008 but I can't find them anymore.
Other earplugs would want to expand too much and make my ears sore, or would have the wrong material and sort of adhere to my ear canal, or be comfortable but not quiet.
I've slept with foam earplugs nearly every night for at least a decade now, and I've never encountered any negative effects, ear wax-related or otherwise.
I've been using 3M plugs for 4/5 years and while it's not super confortable it's much better than not sleeping or be woken up 3 hours earlier than intended (the joy of appartments..).
Also most of the dirt in the ears comes from oils in the head that get on the pillow, so in my experience they get less dirty than before.
It definitely seems like an overengineered solution, but cool nonetheless.
I think hearing devices, mostly hearing aids, are due for some major innovation in the next <5 years. There is so much software related stuff for audio currently happening that can massively benefit hearing aid users. Its one of the markets Im most excited to see change, as my dad has profound hearing loss and relies on hearing aids.
If I ever have funding/support, its absolutely what I would love to work on
> This board [WM8960] was more suited for this project than my previous choice, the TPA2016D2. ... However, I now needed a microcontroller to initialize and control the WM8960. I chose the $10 ESP32 because it would allow me to operate the WM8960 and also accept audio via a Bluetooth connection from, say, my phone, and stream it to the WM8960.
Oops! What confused me is the switch to an analog microphone, which seemed like it would eliminate the need for a codec and the whole digital side. But I missed the Bluetooth requirement.
Drummer earphones exist. Very common use case, for example for recording. Many drummers nowadays use the metronome click when playing. And listen to the band, or, monitoring.
If you sing or play a brass instrument, the loud booming that comes from inside your head and reflects against plugs (or your fingers), called occlusion, makes traditional plugs unusable or actively harmful. The only solutions are to use custom molded plugs that go past the bend in your ear canal ($$$) or over-ear defenders which do not have a neutral reduction in sound across the spectrum.
In my experience this shape gets uncomfortable quickly because it’s jammed deep into people’s ear canals without accounting for the unique shape of each individual’s canal, so there can be a lot of uncomfortable pressure and friction. Ear buds tend to not go deep into the canal and rest closer to the entrance, making them sustain longer before discomfort arises in the ear.
Also this form factor doesn’t attenuate all frequencies evenly, which can make listening to music less enjoyable.
This may be a very person-specific quality because my Etymotics are very comfortable and have saved my ears through a lot of concerts. I just have the cheap ER20 version.
After 22 years in military aviation and a couple of autoimmune disorders, I literally cannot wear in-ear anything without pain, ruptured skin, and balance issues.
A pair of headphones like this is my only option. I'm sure I'm an edge case, but there are plenty of other people for whom a solution like this is more viable than anything in their ear canal.