ear plugs for and against

[MICKTLS]

Speed (Mph) Noise Level (db) Safe Riding Time Safe Riding Time
15db protection50912 hours64 hours64941 hour32 hours7497 30 mins.16 hours8610015 mins.8 hours 981037.5 mins.4 hours1101063.75 mins.2 hours All of the noise levels indicated above have been proved as correct.i saw this on another site and thought some of you would be surprised .........

[MICKTLS]

http://www.hearingprotection.co.uk/motorcycling-info.htm

[winjaninja]

When you look at the figures, if you were in a workplace, you'd be in big trouble.

[harriebird]

i always wear earplugs, when i stopped riding a few years ago it took a couple of years for the ringing in my ears to die down...

but hey ho it's back again. i use decent ear plugs, but might try some of the custom fit/moulded ones as i do so many miles... and for racing too.

[DoodleBug]

eh! What?

[harriebird]

that's only gonna get worse now you have a pair of twins

[kasandrich]

Must admit, I agree I ought to use them but I don't get on with them, I also shot shotguns (which is why I don't get out on many sunday morning rides fyi, 'cos that is the time clay shoots run.) but I don't wear them when shooting either, again I just don't feel comfortable and I cannot perform at my best with them in. The only time I wear them shooting is if it really hurts, with certain atmospherics and stuff it can really hurt your ears, when I feel that I put plugs in.

I guess I am really funny about my sense of hearing, I hate it when my wife snores, and its not the snoring that bothers me its that I can't hear what is going on, I always have my ear open for cars pulling up or leaving, gates opening, etc etc, I like to be able to hear life going on.

My Son has 3 400W amps (yes you read right 3 of them, one for the sub, one for the rear speakers and one for the front speakers) in his Corsa...........I worry about his hearing more than mine :)

[harriebird]

kasandrich, i used to absolutely hate them, the foam cheap ones made me cry they were so uncomfortable.

bonnett/juvenilerider switched me on to Alpine ones, they are £15 a pair and you can get them from Gerickes. THey are SO comfortable you really can forget they are in, i have worn them for 150 miles at a time and felt no bother at all. i was really sceptical but honestly i am a convert, a few ducatisti people use them too and rave about them.

they are like a really soft plastic, really really soft. just make sure you put them in their little case as soon as you take them out, because at £15 a go you will be upset if you lose one!

my mum wears them when she is teaching her little kids recorders in a group....you can still hear voices (some of us hear those anyway :laughboun ) and your engine note, but wind noise is drastically reduced...as are high pitched recorder squeaks!

http://www.starcom1.com/earplugs.htm

[S Boy]

I have to get some decent plugs, i always waer them on the bike.
My engine sounds alot smoother with them in !!!:laughboun

[Jetski]

Bad Jet, never really bothered with ear plugs on the bike, although after reading them stats I feel I need to TAKE THE SHAME! :o That is quite shocking.

I suppose I've never really been that fussed because I've got terrible hearing anyway, always have had. I forget how bad my ears are, until late at night, in a quiet room, just as Mick's dropping off to sleep I say something random about the day in what I believe to be a soft tone and his sleepy face turns into a :eek:

:grin2

My new nickname is officially Foghorn Leghorn :grin2

When I next manage to get out on my bike, I will almost certainly wear ear plugs. :grin2

[The Guvnor]

Well I didnt even understand the figures !!! .........so im more worried about my brain at the mo !:grin2

[kasandrich]

You aren't alone Guv, I didn't understand them either :)

[auroredj]

Me neither, although I must say I have worn them in the past but only when watching racing, not actually when riding :grin2

[NitroDaze]

One of my criteria for choosing an helmet is the low noise characteristics. Fofr this reason l have used the Schubert S1 helmet which was very quite and recently l bought the AGV Ti Tech which one of the Motorbike magazines claimed was quite but really isn't.
Being a guitarist, l am exposed to screeching guitar noise regularly. And l am begining to notice the constant ringing sound in my head, so maybe it is time to invest £15 on one of those earplugs.

[Neil675]

The stats about hearing loss worry me- ( i used to run 4 amps in my car totalling 6800watts + 10 speakers: :laughboun - silly!) but i feel vunerable and partially 'blind' without my hearing when i ride. I couldn't get on with the nasty little foam ones but i guess the next step is custom fit jobbies?

[Perilous]

Having had an ear op to replace an eardrum I blew out water sking (yes I crash those too:grin2 ) I've been into this in quite some depth and had quite a b##locking from the ear specialist when I mentioned how long my ears used to ring for after the none stop South of France trips we did, although in fairness lids were a lot noisier then. (3 days after 12 hours of three figure speeds on a unfaired z1000 although at the time I was more concerned about the neck ache:grin2 )
Anyway what happens if you've been constantly exposed to prolonged excessive wind noise (that'll be me then:rolleyes: ), ginders etc (that'll be me then:rolleyes:) loud live bands(that'll be me then:rolleyes:) and so on is rather than just loose all your hearing you loose specific decibal ranges to start with. (classic industrial noise damage)
On my chart the graph was above average everywhere except for on one decibal range where it dropped straight to zero then went straight back up again after wards. So basically although I had what I thought was good hearing, on certain decibal ranges(pitches) I was actually stone deaf.
By the time you notice the difference yourself without seeing a graph you are into serious damage.
A good case in point was my father. He has classic noise induced hearing loss. At one point he could hear better than me mostly but on one occasion an oxygen bottle he was using was leaking badly and although we could all hear it 30 feet away he couldn't hear it standing right next to it because he had lost that entire decibal range. When his hearing actually started to deteriorate generally it went down hill at a frightening rate.

My arguement that as my hearing was damaged anyway I may well just carry on was shot down in flames when the consultant said that noise at the same rate would just keep damaging it further and further so that I would have been looking at hearing aids by my fifties.

Ok so if you don't work in an industrial environment and just use a bike at speed alot then it'll obviously take longer but you are still taking a risk all the same.

The arguement that you can't ride because you can't hear the bike properly is rubbish. Er Rossi wears ear plugs as do most top level racers. Oh yeah and Dave Twyford won four out of four SS400 races at Brands in 2005 and he is very nearly deaf!
On track, wearing earplugs I can still hear the bikes behind me as well as my own. (out of the good ear:grin2 )

There are other considerations that you might want to hear on the road around town etc but not at ear damaging speeds and anyway if you're on the road twenty years without ear plugs your hearing will most likely be the same as the young person wearing them anyway by that time!

Spookily enough the old adage that men never listen to what women say could actually have some medical truth in it going back to our more industrial eras.
Apparently the first decibal ranges that males loose are the ones the the majority of women's voices operate on. :grin2
Hence a classic early hearing loss sign is struggling to hear the woman on the super market checkout over the backround noise.
I've got to get that in writing though next time I have a hearing test as Lenny thinks I made it up as an excuse.:grin2

Personnaly mine seems to have gone on the decibal range people seem to speak on when they say "It's your round". :grin2

In my case I've had lots of other noise to deal with but most of my long term, high mileage, biking mates from the "what's an ear plug era" all have cr#p hearing and some quite bad. (Also bad knees. It was the "what's aleather trouser " era too:grin2 )
Obvioulsy as with all things (eg the 80 a day smoking paint sprayer who never wears a mask and lives to 93) some will be effected worse than others but if your ears are buzzing all the time then you seriously should be wearing earplugs. Tinnitus is bad enough but if it goes on to tinnitus block it's bad enough to have caused people to commit suicide.

[Perilous]

Droning on even more.:grin2

Funnily enough last time my ears were tested I told the guy i wear ear plugs all the time at work now (lied actually) to which he said ear plugs didn't knock enough noise off and you should wear proper ear defenders.

Although I don't take much notice of the comic (other than the classifieds) a few years back MCN ran a test on ear plugs and the only ones that provided full safety were an expensive set that had something built into them to stop a certain ear damaging pitch of noise that normal lugs don't hold back. Aparently with normal foam ones, although it seem quieter a lot of the damaging high pitch noise gets through still.

Going on what the ear bloke said that is probably about right so if your a high mileage biker you're probably going to have to accept you're gonna end up as one of those irritating pensioners that goes , "Aye , what'd you say. Ok Ok no need to shout, I'm not deaf!" alot.:grin2

Still reduced hearing is still better than tinnitus block.

Also you don't want a hearing aid if you are in engineering at all because it gives people like me the opportunity to switch on the high frequency on the tig welder and cause noisy interference in it when you're getting on their nerves .(My 67 yr old afternoon tea boy and sweeper upper:grin2 )

[Lateshift]

It doesnt surprise me in the least especially where the industrial noise comes into it, for years when we still had the old "self loading rifle" that sounded like an elephant gun, we were using the same sort of ear plugs that you pick up for 50p a pack, then one day someone suddenly dragged the red tape out and said "you can't do that, its going to damage someone's hearing using them things".

So we swapped over to Amplivox, the standard type ear defenders that you see in all walks of life, the very same ear defenders that 10 years after we got them have now been banned by the Military as being unsuitable for use the SA80, which has a lower noise level than the old Elephant gun :D

I get yearly audio tests due to the fact that i am a Radio Operator by trade and we are supposed to hear at set frequencies, the older you get the more you have to cheat at it :D

But the fact remains that ear plugs unless bought from a specialist these days arent up to the job, in some cases they are worse than wearing none at all (proven fact) ;)

Personnally i dont use any, i have tried them and they have worked, i am too lazy to spend an extra minute or two messing about with them, if it was a long journey then i would probably consider putting them in, i suppose its no different to an eye test, if you value your eyesight then you sod off to Specsavers, with your ears incidentally you can now do the same :D

sorry, say it again, :D

[Perilous]

I just use the foam ones that are about £45 for 250 and as you say although they make things seem quiet in reality they propbaly do diddly squat to save your hearing in the high decibal ranges. Just have to make sure I hang out with deep voiced people when I'm an O A P.:grin2

Still changing the tune in your ears by moving your jaw around gives you something to do on boring train journeys, although it tends to make people stare. :grin2
Despite the preachy nature of my post I have to admit that the main reason In wear them was I found my times are deffinitely better with the plugs inn than without. You can have too much noise information I suppose.

Utlimately as posted before the best thing is to try an pick a make of lid that is fairly quiet.
The level of noise difference between my usual Arai racing crash helmet and the Shoei is incredible.(similar price bracket) It's about the same as plugs in or plugs out.

[harriebird]

Still changing the tune in your ears by moving your jaw around gives you something to do on boring train journeys, although it tends to make people stare. :grin2

I'll be sure to try that one :laugh2 seem to be spending a lot of time on trains recently :shooter

[NitroDaze]

bonnett/juvenilerider switched me on to Alpine ones, they are £15 a pair and you can get them from Gerickes. THey are SO comfortable you really can forget they are in,
http://www.starcom1.com/earplugs.htm

Thanks for the recommendation. I got mine 2day from Hein Gerickes. I would try them out on my ride into london on monday. I am sure it would make a world of difference to riding without them. I take Lateshift and Perilous's point, that they probably are not very effective in the high frequency range. I think some sort of protection is better than none. Besides, helmets should be built better to reduce wind noise. The edges for vents, visor seating etc cause the wind noise, surely they can be improved to cut out high frequency noise?:bike2

[Lateshift]

Believe it or not a lot of your wind noise comes from under the helmet, especially on ones that havent got a baffle around the bottom of them to keep the wind out ;)

[Perilous]

THey are SO comfortable you really can forget they are in,


They wanna be for £15 for a bit of moulded plastic-rubber stuff.

[harriebird]

they really are, i promise. i'm not the kind of girl to spend £15 on something like that if it didnt come with a hefty recommendation....!

[stu600cc]

Gotta wear plugs the cheap ones will do but gotta have something

[DoodleBug]

Believe it or not a lot of your wind noise comes from under the helmet, especially on ones that havent got a baffle around the bottom of them to keep the wind out ;)

You're not wrong. Over the winter I wear my Darth vader mask thingy under the lid that effectively seals the bottom of the lid. Keeps me nice and toasty and also cuts down on alot of noise. You don't notice until the weather warms up and I stop wearing it. Then its cghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh all the time. Not to mention EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE for ages afterwards.

I actually think I damaged my hearing badly whilst at college going to too many Jimi Hendrix memorial gigs, and standing practically in the speaker units.

Should really do something about it as my Dad is now deaf and it is so bloody annoying.

[SDM]

Personally I never wear ear plugs when riding.......I just wear them when I'm in doors :grin2 :grin2 :grin2

[two]

Gotta wear plugs the cheap ones will do but gotta have something
likewise... don't like riding without them now... (never used to use them... used to listen to music)

one of my old lids (dainese evo) had a noise issue... but tilt your head back a couple of degrees and everything went very very quiet .... think the helmet would have suited a more upright riding position rather than a sports bike

ringing in my ears
means that damage is being done, another way to think of it is the receptor cells are screeming as they die... enjoy that ringing sound..you will never hear that frequency of sound in the same way again
these cells don't regenerate :shock:

[NitroDaze]

Believe it or not a lot of your wind noise comes from under the helmet, especially on ones that havent got a baffle around the bottom of them to keep the wind out ;)
Talking about baffles, the AGV Ti Tech have this cool fold away baffle which is very effective for under helmet noise reduction. However, l have figured out that the visor on my helmet is not fitted correctly anyway because it doesn't close down snugly. If l sort the visor, it would probably get quieter.

[Gixxer-TeZ]

I wear ear plugs on a long trip but to be honest, since I got my new Shark lid, I havn't really needed them.
MY old AGV was good aswell for noise (as in it stopped it).

I think the lid you wear makes all the difference.

[Perilous]

Personally I never wear ear plugs when riding.......I just wear them when I'm in doors :grin2 :grin2 :grin2


:grin2 :grin2 :grin2 You and me both. :grin2 :grin2 :grin2

[Perilous]

Believe it or not a lot of your wind noise comes from under the helmet, especially on ones that havent got a baffle around the bottom of them to keep the wind out ;)


I think when the racing gets a bit lively a lot of the wind noise comes from inside my leathers.:grin2 :grin2

The fairing screens seem to make a lot of difference too.

When I went from my unfaired Z1000J to a GPZ900 (which I used to say felt like a 250 in comparison. Oh how times change.:) ) I couldn't beleive how much more wind noise there was unless I ducked right below the screen yet on a Fireblade where the fairing screen was smaller so, again unless I was flat on the tank, I should have had my head in the wind more, but the wind noise was actually less.

On the ZXR 400 although on the straight in a race your head is so pressed into the tank you only look up every now and then to see where your going, on track days where I don't bother to get under the screen the double bubble screens make a massive difference to the noise compared the the standard screen.

It all depends where the screen directs the wind blast I suppose.

[auroredj]

Personally I never wear ear plugs when riding.......I just wear them when I'm in doors :grin2 :grin2 :grin2

:headbashThat's why you don't hear me when I tell you about all the things I've spent you're wages on :laugh1

[harriebird]

that's the way dawn, excellent come back :clap

[Perilous]

:headbashThat's why you don't hear me when I tell you about all the things I've spent you're wages on :laugh1

Huh, Lenny's just craked up over that one.:grin2 :grin2

[troutslayer]

i cant bear to wear the darn things. i like to hear whats going on around me, take away that, and its like losing another sense.


although some would say i have no sense anyway... (thought i'd best get that in before anyone else does)

[SDM]

:headbashThat's why you don't hear me when I tell you about all the things I've spent you're wages on :laugh1

:suprised1 :suprised1 :suprised1

[Perilous]

i cant bear to wear the darn things. i like to hear whats going on around me, take away that, and its like losing another sense.


although some would say i have no sense anyway... (thought i'd best get that in before anyone else does)

That arguement is OK until you hit 45 and all you hear is ping ping whistle whistle and your hearing is worse than it was with plugs.

Mind at the end of the day with the average 20 mile club race only taking about 8 minutes your hardly out of the safe time anyway. Endurance would be different though.

[NitroDaze]

:headbashThat's why you don't hear me when I tell you about all the things I've spent you're wages on :laugh1
ouch! ****ssssssssssssssssssssssssssss :shooter :shooter :shooter
Sizzling hot response

[AlexG]

I try and wear them whenever I remember, but I always end up loosing one or dropping it in a puddle :(. Don't suppose anyone's had them custom fit ones that are always at the bike shows, where they fit it to your ear, I'm tempted to try them next time I'm at a show.
Cheers
Alex

[NitroDaze]

they really are, i promise. i'm not the kind of girl to spend £15 on something like that if it didnt come with a hefty recommendation....!
I have used those Alpine ear plugs over the last two days, l can honestly say that they are magnificent. They are made out some soft textured rubber that deforms to whatever your ear hole size is. While they reduce the attenuation of the noice around you, they still let in some sound of near by traffic, enough for you to hear what is going on around you.
Hearing less of the engine noise has had an effect of my riding as well. For a start l hear the engine better and apply it more readily than l did before l started using the earplugs.

If you are still thinking about what earplugs to get, l highly recommend the Alpine earplugs. They are certainly worth the asking price. I still have the ringing in my ear though :laugh2