Hearing damage is permanent but completely avoidable—if you have the right hearing protection, that is. Whether you’re going to a rock concert, working at a construction site, or dealing with your spouse’s snoring, we’ve picked the perfect earplugs for you.
You should wear hearing protection for any sound exposure over 80 decibels, especially when the exposure is sustained over time. What’s 80 decibels (dB) or more sound like? As a general rule, if you’re ~3 feet away from someone and you have to raise your voice for them to hear you it’s 80 dB or louder and you should be wearing protection.
That’s a great shortcut, but what’s a decibel specifically and why do loud sounds damage our ear in the first place? The short answer is that sound is pressure (which is why people describe and feel really loud deep sounds as “thumping”), decibels are a way of quantifying the amount of that pressure, and a lot of that pressure actually snaps the tiny hairs in your ear canal (causing irreversible damage in the process) that can result in hearing lose or ringing (tinnitus).
Whispering is about 30 dB and normal conversation is around 60 dB—and obviously neither will hurt your ears—but sounds from things lawnmowers (90+ dB) and loud concerts (110+ dB) can cause serious damage over time. Even very brief things, if sufficiently loud, (like the 130+ dB crack of a rifle shot) can cause instant and permanent damage. Anytime you’re exposed to any of these things, you need proper hearing protection.
So what makes for good protection? First and foremost it should have a Noise Reduction Rating (NRR), a number that describes how many decibels the hearing protection lowers a loud noise when worn properly. If a pair of earplugs has an NRR of 30, then wearing the earplugs while mowing the lawn can reduce the sound of the lawnmower engine from 90 dB to the level of casual conversation (60 dB). If you wore the same earplugs in a coffee shop, the background noise would be reduced to a whisper-like level.
In addition to the raw noise reduction, we also assessed out top picks based on factors like comfort, reusability, and the environment in which you’d use them (what makes for a great pair of earplugs while sleeping, makes for a less than great pair of earplugs for a concert).
Best Earplugs for Concerts: ETY-Plugs High Fidelity Earplugs ($14)
Concerts can get extremely loud and are notorious for causing hearing loss. Many avid concert goers, stage hands, and the rock stars that have been exposed to extreme noise for years report hearing loss and tinnitus—which is a particular shame when you consider how important good clear hearing is to people who love music that much.
Any old ear plugs would solve their problem, it’s true, but the problem with most earplugs is that they don’t reduce sound cleanly across the board (like turning the volume knob down on a stereo) but change the way you hear the music and muddy the sound. Etymotic earplugs, however, are not only low cost and ready-fit, but they’re specifically designed with an internal chamber reduces the sound pressure without muddying the sound. Your ears stay safe but the music sounds clear and crisp—in fact, musicians reported being able to hear their own music, including individual instruments, better while wearing the plugs.
Officially, they have a NRR of 12 when lab tested, but because of the variation across the frequency spectrum inherent with their sound-preserving design, Etymology says they actually block around 20 dB of sound in real world use—you can read the fine print on that statement here.
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