After I posted my review on the ISOtunes Link Bluetooth earmuffs, there were a couple of questions and comparisons related to active noise cancellation devices. A similar question has also been posted in reply to my video review, and it seemed a post on the topic would be a good idea.
Note: This post contains my opinions, and should not be considered as professional health or safety advice.
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Hearing Protection
In a nutshell, hearing protection products block out harmful noises. They provide a physical barrier that reduces the intensity of noise that enters your ears.
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Hearing Protection with Bluetooth Connectivity
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You also have hearing protection products with Bluetooth connectivity. Models equipped with microphones allow you to take phone calls while still wearing the products, and most allow for music streaming when wirelessly connected to a Bluetooth source.
Bluetooth hearing protection products also have limiters so that you cannot increase playback volume to hearing-damaging levels.
So, these products block out hearing-damaging noise, can enable Bluetooth headset-like communications, and allow for safe-hearing-level audio playback via Bluetooth streaming. Some models also have built-in radios.
Noise Cancellation Headphones or Earbuds
Active noise cancellation products are available in a headphone form factor, such as by Sony and other brands, or also in earbud format.
Apple’s AirPods Pro are an example of an in-ear product with active noise cancellation technology.
Hearing protection products block out noise. Active noise cancellation products counter it.
Active noise cancellation technologies use a microphone to pick up ambient sounds, and a speaker that produces its own noise equal amplitude and opposite phase. The result is destructive interference where everything cancels out – except your desired music or audio playback.
Hearing Protection vs. Noise Cancellation
Let’s say someone has a water blaster filled with water dyed with blue food coloring. You’re wearing a green shirt.
Hearing Protection Analogy
You hold up a rag in front of you, and it blocks most of the blue water from reaching your shirt. With a high-pressure water blaster, some of the blue-dyed water might make it through the rag and get on your shirt, but in small amounts that won’t ruin the shirt.
Active Noise Cancellation Analogy
Instead of holding a rag in front of you, you have your own water blaster filled with yellow-dyed water. Every time you’re blasted with blue water, you blast yellow at the same spot. The two water streams interact, and when mixed you have green. Since you’re wearing a green shirt, you don’t notice any spots with green-mixed water landed.
What Happens at Unsafe Levels?
Active noise cancellation technology does not block loud noises, it measures and counters them.
Noise cancellation devices are primarily designed for use at everyday safe noise levels. They’re not designed to counter unsafe noise levels, they’re designed to eliminate background noise, such as steady fan and HVAC sounds, mixed chatter on a train or plane, and things like that.
They might have difficulty countering unsafe levels of tool and jobsite noises, leaving you unprotected.
To perfectly cancel out noises, noise cancellation products need to emit their own noise waves out of phase with the incoming signal. There’s a limit as to how loud of a cancellation wave such products can emit. There’s the potential that muffled sound and playback sound could lead to unsafe noise levels during use.
Additionally, what happens when you run out of battery? You’re left unprotected. with hearing protection products, they block unsafe noise levels (to a degree) and then offer playback features on top of that.
Some people have shared positive experiences where they’ve used active noise cancellation technologies in lieu of hearing protection, but it’s risky.
There are headphone products that also block out some noise levels, due to having ear cups that surround your ear, but they’re not designed to block out harmful noise levels, and might not be as effective in doing so.
I haven’t seen studies that test active noise cancellation products with respect to hearing-damaging noise levels. Still, it cannot be assumed that they’re safe.
Active noise cancellation products must be charged, their microphones sensitive enough, their speakers must be capable of emitting a broad range of matching frequencies, and the response rate must be fast enough. And even then, there might still be factors that could potentially lead to hearing damage over time if used around unsafe noise levels in lieu of hearing protection.
Hearing protection products need to be replaced over time, and you have to use them as directed, but they simply work.
Consider This…
100 birds are perched in a tree, and you must stand under that tree. The birds are starting to do their business, one at a time. Would you rather protect yourself against the birds’ bodily functions with an umbrella, or by looking up and trying to dodge the falling droppings?
Thoughts?
Noise cancellation tech has come a long way in recent years and they are quite effective at blocking out ambient sounds. But when it comes to harmful sound levels, can they be trusted?
My recommendation is to use hearing protection products when you need hearing protection.
This is a comparison I am still learning more about, but one thing is certain – the two types of products are very different and not interchangeable.
Could active noise cancellation (ANC) products be used for hearing protection? I don’t know. Maybe? But I wouldn’t trust them. If you disagree, show me why this is wrong.
Alex
I recently got a pair of the Isotunes Link over ears and I’ve really enjoyed them so far. As you note in the article, it’s nice to just be able to use them as regular hearing protection as well, whether due to the battery dying or just a quick cut or something where you don’t need music.
Jared
Why would someone want to use noise-cancelling tech for hearing protection? Does it result lower perceived noise? Is it cheaper than hearing protection with music and bluetooth capabilities?
Stuart
Comfort? The convenience of only having to buy and charge one product?
There have been a lot of questions about ANC products compared to protection products.
Individual reasons might vary, but they won’t affect the comparison.
Jared
That makes sense I suppose. Like if you wanted hearing protection and already had airpod pros, I assume the temptation is to just use them.
I was just curious because I’ve never tried it. I have a set of corded Stanley hearing-protection earmuffs that I can plug into my phone – or I’ve also just put my Samsung buds under regular earmuffs. Just never thought to rely on noise-cancellation. Buds have that too – but my (thoroughly subjective) opinion is that it’s not great.
I wonder if wireless earbuds under earmuffs poses any safety issues? Doesn’t seem like it would.
JoeM
If I may point something out? Chances are good someone paid a very high dollar amount (compared to usual) for the ANC headphones. I spent almost $400 CAD on my most recent pair of Sennheiser Momentum Wireless headphones. They have absolutely amazing ANC, are supremely comfortable to use, and provide some of the most industry-topping gold-standard sound quality available in the consumer tier of audio products.
But they’re absolutely not protective headphones/ear protection. I believe a major factor in someone choosing ANC over ear protection may easily be a budget-entitlement illusion. IE “These were so much more than those ISO Tunes noise cancelling ones, and sound so much better, they must be good enough.”
Human beings… can be very arrogant… Myself included (though, not to that particular degree. I know I need separate ear protection.) and that can be a real barrier to investing in separate ear protection to perform the same perceived task that their more expensive audio products do. It’s kind of this aggressive desire to block out anything that might “Just be a cash grab” or “Just be a reason to get me to do something I don’t want to.”
*Disclaimer* I may not own any hearing protection, but I am fully aware I need it. I have trouble deciding what I need, because I rarely, if ever, have any way to test them in action to find the right ones for my exact needs. I do not condone the belief that ANC Headphones, regardless of the cost or quality, substitute for hearing protection of any sort. In fact, the vast majority of manuals that come with said headphones clearly state “These are not intended as hearing protection.” as well as having several safety features that warn you of unsafe listening volumes.
Luke
I went skeet shooting recently. I started with the foam inserts they provided but the fit never felt right so I switched to my Airpods Pro. The noise cancellation worked great against the 12 gauge right beside my face. Plus it was super handy just giving my ear a squeeze to switch to transparency for conversation between shots. I wouldn’t buy a pair to serve as dedicated hearing protection, but they’re nice if you already carry them around and suddenly need hearing protection.
Jared
You had nothing but Airpods Pro for hearing protection against a shotgun? These must work better than I thought…
Seems like the scenario Stuart is warning about though – like can your airpods really respond fast enough to deal with the percussive blast of a shotgun.
Stuart
That’s the thing – do noise cancellation products protect your hearing, or do they give you false impression that they do?
MM
I suspect it’s a little bit of both. I don’t believe for a moment that an airpod has the power to actively cancel the sound of a shotgun blast via destructive interference. I also doubt it could respond fast enough even if it had the power. But that said, it still functions as something of an “earplug” since its stuck inside the ear canal, and regardless of what its internal electronics are doing it’s still a mechanical plug. Now the question becomes how much of a dB reduction does it happen to give? I think there are standards for how earplugs are tested, I wonder if anyone has ever tested airpods or similar in the same way?
Stuart
That’s the thing – it’s not a good idea to make assumptions when it comes to safety – either a product protects you or it doesn’t.
Hearing damage can occur from a singular event, or cumulatively over time.
AirPods don’t provide a very good fit compared to say foam ear plugs.
Protective products are also tested across different frequencies. Can AirPods counter noises at all those frequencies?
MM
@Stuart
Oh, I totally agree that ANC and hearing protection are not interchangeable and that something like an AirPod is not a replacement for proper PPE. I didn’t mean to imply anything otherwise.
My point was that I don’t think things are necessarily binary. It’s obvious that a physical obstruction in your ear canal would reduce noise to *some* degree. The question is by how much, which is why I mentioned the standardized testing that earplugs undergo. I couldn’t tell you how much an Airpod would protect someone’s hearing but there exist tests that can answer that question, and perhaps someone out there has tested them? I haven’t bothered to look but perhaps there is some data out there.
Also, the fact that they give some degree of noise reduction simply by acting like a plug can explain why some people might feel that they are adequate PPE.
Stuart
There are numerous instances online where consumers ask whether AirPods can replace earplugs, but the question is usually no, or that there is no NRR rating.
JoeM
I can pretty much verify conclusively that the frequencies that damage our ears, and the density of a standard ANC set of headphones, whether that be Pods, In-Ear Plugs, or Over-Ear Headphones, don’t equate to safety standards.
What genuine safety equipment does using material dampening of sound, and what noise cancelling using a technologically generated waveform does, are entirely different to the eardrum itself.
I know Stuart covered this in the article, using analogies. But to really summarize it, there’s a more… real-world analogy that proves why non-protective earphones are incapable of performing even the slightest task to protect one’s hearing. In fact, I would call into doubt the entirety of the Shotgun experience as a whole. I’m sorry, Luke, but you can’t brush off the laws of physics simply because your opinion differs as to what happened.
You see… hearing protection is similar to putting pillows over your ears. The sound waves, even the ones strong enough to get through, are reduced in pressure, weight, and thus literal volume. Any other kind of headphone is made of materials that can’t actually stop the transmission of soundwaves through them. They can redirect them around themselves, but there’s a huge flaw in this….
ANC only generates a SECOND sound into your ear canal. Your inner ear cannot perceive both the outside sound, and the inverse cancellation. So it is a perception trick and only a perception trick to your ears. You are still getting 100% of the wave pressure into your ears, it is simply filtered using the anatomy of how we perceive sound.
Where hearing protection products and ANC products share some similarities, is that they are in the same physical space as eachother. It is literally the only thing the same. Even the fact that they both play music is only a conditional statement for those models of hearing protection that feature embedded speakers. The physical properties of the materials used in civilian headphones and earphones are entirely capable of allowing loud, and extremely dangerous, sounds through to the eardrum, without any interference.
Headphones are often hollow-bodied, creating echo chambers and reverberation sources that transmit the loud sounds through the body of the headphones untouched. Also, to make the argument against them worse, since ANC is a perception difference, not a volume difference, the noise that they “cancel” can be transferred to the ear drum along with the sound coming out of the headphones themselves. It can also be transferred, via ear buds or in-ear plugs, directly to the bone, and do damage to the bones of the inner-ear via bone conduction. They make headphones that take advantage of this, and there is a form of hearing aid that specifically targets the Cochlea itself, the main organ that provides our hearing from the ear drum and accompanying bones. TMI, I know… Nerd… Sorry.
My point? Although you can perceive a lowering of sound reaching your eardrum, it doesn’t mean the waves have not entered your actual Ear to do the damage. If the wave is redirected to your skull with enough force, the 5 components of your ear are entirely vulnerable. The Timpanic Membrane (Ear Drum), Ossicles (Bones) called the Malleus (Hammer), Incus (Anvil), and Stapes (Stirrup), plus the Cochlea itself, are vulnerable from the inside-out as much as they are vulnerable from the outside-in. And Headphones provide none of the physical dampening required to prevent the inside-out damage possible through conduction.
The physics of wave conduction through materials just do not support the substitution between the two products. As I’m one of those people who, as a child, was diagnosed with a severe hearing defect, I have been studying this stuff my entire life. It gets overwhelming, even if you’re well educated at it, because there is such a variety of overlap between fields. But, it is an absolute… Ear Buds are not a substitute for proper hearing protection. Luke’s Shotgun anecdote is very firmly in the category of “What to Never, Ever, Ever, Do, Ever. Seriously, don’t do it.”
I am not a doctor in any way, shape, or form. This is not even my own opinion… This is out of Biology and Physics text books, written by people who have studied for decades to keep people safe from harm. You don’t have to believe me. I’m not too proud to admit it isn’t my own work here. This is 100% straight from the world of Academia. I’d quote the books, but they were read in a library many moons ago now, and I don’t have access to ISBN numbers or things you can look up to double check what I’ve said. I’m sorry.
Koko The Talking Ape
We’ve run out of reply levels, but I want to respond to JoeM, who says, “ANC only generates a SECOND sound into your ear canal. Your inner ear cannot perceive both the outside sound, and the inverse cancellation. So it is a perception trick and only a perception trick to your ears. You are still getting 100% of the wave pressure into your ears, it is simply filtered using the anatomy of how we perceive sound.”
That is not correct. Active noise cancellation is not a perceptual trick, and you aren’t getting 100% of the wave pressure in your ears. It really does prevent sound from reaching your ear. Sound is a wave of alternating high and low pressure, and the ANC generates, as closely as it can, a wave that is the exact opposite, with reversed high and low (or “out of phase”). High pressure plus low pressure equals normal pressure, i.e., no sound. So you actually get flattened or attenuated sound waves reaching your ear.
It doesn’t work perfectly, of course. There are limitations to the frequency range and amplitude (volume) they can cancel out. You will notice, for instance, that airplane noise during airflight doesn’t disappear entirely. The reason is that the noise is made of a huge range of frequencies, and the ANC will only cancel some of them. And of course, any small device can only generate so much volume.
IIRC, ANC became possible only when processing power became fast and cheap enough. The most sophisticated devices listen to the incoming sound, compute the opposite sound, and sends it to your ear the exact same instant the incoming sound reaches your ear. Kind of remarkable!
In this article, a leading authority of the audio industry actually tests the isolation of various kinds of earphones, with and without NC.
https://www.soundstagesolo.com/index.php/features/142-how-much-noise-do-your-headphones-really-block
Frank D
I don’t think ANC should be / can be trusted in a work environment with loud noises as happen in construction, heavy equipment, outdoor power equipment …
I’m sure they’re helpful to some extent, and people who otherwise mow the lawn without earplugs or earmuffs may say that their brand x model y headset with ANC works great … that doesn’t mean it is in inherently good or safe.
OSHA may have something to say about it.
I might very much enjoy a set of those ISOTunes, if I didn’t already have their in ear model (one side tends to slip a bit, controls always find themselves button down in the shirt collar) and the 3M BT (inferior noise isolation, foam does not seal well when wearing glasses or safety glasses, shallow cups that press against the ears, zero controls … always have to dig the phone out to tick the volume up or down etc)
Alex Peel
A better analogy instead of dodging the bird poop would a device which fired bird poop at the falling bird poop to block it.
Hmm, whats a patent fee cost again?
JoeM
Strange… tangentially related… question: Do these models come in versions that accommodate hearing aids? I know some hearing aids are entirely in-ear, but others go around the ear… are there special models of these kinds of hearing protection, or do you think the ear cups should be fine interacting with hearing aids?
I’m not to the point of owning hearing aids yet, but… I am looking into them. In the next year or so, I plan on having a decent set of hearing aids, as a congenital hearing problem progresses. It’s a genetic thing, it has always complicated my selections for hearing protection. The two fields of hearing augmentation, and hearing protection, have plagued me my whole life. Where one begins, and the other ends out of necessity, is very frustrating.
Stuart
You would have to ask an audiologist.
My father has removable hearing aids, and there are too many other varieties for me to simply guess about.
I wear corrective glasses, and still wear safety goggles. Sometimes I can remove my glasses and wear safety glasses, but goggles work better. I’m sure that there are ways to protect your hearing if/when you need hearing aids.
JoeM
See, Eyes it’s easy, right? They make safety gear that either goes over our glasses, or are safety glasses ground to our prescription. Eyes I got covered… literally… I have safety glasses that go over my glasses, as well as goggles.
What I don’t have is proper hearing protection. Because it’s not as simple as putting goggles over glasses. Somehow you have to navigate the world hoping you’ve got sufficient hearing protection, whether you can perceive it or not. And when you have a pre-existing congenital defect, you cannot tell how much protection is enough for you, or equally, what things are supposed to sound like when you get back to the normal, protection-not-needed world. You could’ve damaged your ears and never known it, because you had the wrong protection level.
Sorry to vent on this, it’s… just a life-long struggle for me. I’ll be 40 in January, and I still haven’t figured out how to deal with the hearing aid/hearing protection paradox for my family’s genetic defect.
MM
I’m no audiologist, but I belive that most modern hearing aids fit more or less entirely inside the ear, and if that’s true you certainly can wear ear muffs over them. I regularly “double up” on ear pro when I go to the shooting range or if I’m using an unusually loud tool. I have no problem wearing earmuffs over plugs, either the disposeable foam kind or the larger custom-molded silicone ones which appear to me to be the same size as a hearing aid.
JoeM
I don’t have my hearing aids yet. I’ll be fully vaccinated by the end of June, and will start looking into my options. So, I’m not sure if I’ll end up with the in-ear, or tube-in-ear behind ear type.
Headphones, I already prefer my big over-ear phones. So, I’m… Pretty sure? … My hearing protection choices will also be of the earmuff style. Comes down to their strength… When I go to consult an Audiologist… I have a ton of questions to ask… That I will have to ask while I can still somewhat hear them…
Frank D
Seconding that.
I have no trouble doubling up using ear plugs and large ear muffs.
Keeping regular old earbuds for some tunes positioned in the outer part of the ear is a bit of a different matter due to the audio cord.
I think hearing aids fit rather deep in the ear canal with a small control piece behind the ear lobe … so I think it should be fine.
JoeM
I really appreciate the verification… Ever since I was a kid, I’ve both used, and not used, hearing protection, because I just can’t tell what is genuinely working.
Unlike glasses, where taking them off instantly shows the difference between the two, hearing protection and a hearing defect aren’t instantly apparent when actively used. Yes, there’s a muffled, then open sound… but it’s nearly imperceptible if the unmuffled sound before the sound protection was on, is the same as the unmuffled sound afterwards. Hearing isn’t normal to start with, so if there’s damage growing due to an external source, without an on-the-spot audio test that can detect any damage inflicted… someone with hearing problems literally cannot tell if what they did was enough to save themselves from damage.
I’m not worried about earbuds though… I already know I’m an over-ear headphone user for life. I like them too much to go for buds, pods, plugs, or anything in-ear. I know I’m going to have to reserve that space for hearing aids anyways, so a headphone becomes a headphone at that point.
Hon Cho
Hearing protection is a big deal in the military. I spent too many years in artillery units and, even with protection, have damaged hearing. That said, the Army’s most recent generations of vehicular intercom headsets incorporate both typical mechanical noise blocking (ear muffs) and active noise cancellation. Bose was the supplier for a few years but it may be someone different now. Combat vehicles are noisy places even without firing anything and hearing commands is essential for safety and mission success. I have and would trust models certified for hearing protection but would pass on consumer ANC devices in environments with harmful sound levels. I have multiple pairs of Bose, Sony and Sennheiser over-the-counter ANC headphones and wear them often but turn to my 3M hearing protection when I want to protect my ears. I’m a believer in maintaining situational awareness and consider it a risk to listen to anything other than sounds and communications required (no music, audiobooks, podcasts, etc) in a work environments with safety hazards like moving blades, heavy equipment, heights, etc…..
PETE
I had some regular air pods- love them. Bought the isotunes noise cancelling ear buds and HATED them, i’m missing 90% of my ear drum in my left ear and have a tube in my right ear- so i end up missing a lot of the highs and some of the lows but with the iso tunes i miss just about ALL of the sound. The speakers are TINY.
I ended up loosing the ISO tunes and bought the airpod pros. They’re not ear pro, but for most tasks it can keep the noise reduced so i don’t get a headache.
Frank D
Are they plugged up?
I have them. Yes, their canal for audio is small as it goes through the metal tip. I try to keep them on volume 4 or 5 depending on how loud the environment is, because they can get pretty loud for me … and I usually can’t tell if anybody is trying to talk to me.
Geoff
I like to use my shooting ear muffs! Not only do they have bluetooth, they even have microphones to amplify the quieter ambient noise around you. When noise reaches a certain decibel level, they cut the mics and block the noise.
This is great because when my girlfriend comes into the garage and needs my attention, she doesn’t startle me. It’s way less distracting!
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/101712898
Addison
I agree. I thought that shooting muffs would be brought up earlier in the thread. They both attenuate harmful noise levels, but also allow for useful conversations, I believe these should be the foundation of occupational hearing protection in loud environments. Yet another product that is awesome and adjacent product is “trucker headsets”, like Blue Parrot, they seal around your ear(s) and isolate your voice. I can use them while using a nailer.
Active noise cancelling with porous (non-sealing) muffs should be called out for being the truly terrible product that it is. Yes you can sleep on a plane without the one note pitch of the plane engines, but you have doubled the db going to your ears. Crap! All products in between should have a minus db rating that should be tested by UL or osha especially for consumer knowledge.
Ex_dtw2003
Try wearing a pair of ANC headphones as a plane takes off. They will freak out and be louder than not wearing anything. Or try wearing them in wind.
ANC work great in certain conditions but I wouldn’t test them or rely on them for my safety especially after having had the behaviors I noticed in the above conditions.
JoeM
I will add that higher end companies, such as Sennheiser, don’t have this effect. They handle wind, air pressure, and traffic sounds without hesitation, or volume increase.
The problem is, Sennheiser is one of the top end audio companies in the world… and you have to pay a lot for them… I can see a lot of good reasons that people might not want to go to them. Thoughts like “Well, if my Sony ANC headphones can’t do it, why would I trust these fancy Sennheisers that are four times the price?” are very common. I don’t blame people for not wanting to put out the money for this brand. But they’ve been the brand that practically invented the audio technology for Aviation, and Theatre Sound Production industries… The consumer audio and gaming market is simply child’s play to them, but you do pay quite a bit for the name.
I know, I sound like I work for them (no pun intended) but I’ve trusted them since High School. They’re worth the investment, if you can swing it.
Bruce
My ANC buds have enough isolation that without the ambient noise feature turned on the world is pretty quiet. I believe they are NA of 22 just sitting there without the ANC turn on. With it turned on, I’m relying on the high volume cap of the circuit to prevent amplification of outside noise. My over the ear ANC muffs have proven very effective at canceling the noise of my belt grinder in the garage, but do almost nothing for the air compressor. I’ve taken to wearing my music buds inside normal hearing protection muffs when working with the air tools.
MoogleMan3
For the longest time I used 3M peltor (the red and black ones) and they did the job nicely.
A few years back I bought a set of 3M bt worktunes and they’ve been a game changer for me. I get to connect to my phone, which I have set up via foobar2000 to stream my music library from my PC right to my ear muffs. It’s amazing.
I’m tempted to try out the isotunes link to see if the audio quality they offer is any better. Has anyone compared both?
I’m a huge audio enthusiast, so hearing protection and audio quality matter a lot to me. I don’t trust ANC to protect my hearing, especially when standard hearing protection does the job just fine at (generally) a fraction of the cost.
Mike S
The effect of ANC is to actually modify the original waveform. Sound waves are funny – you are not hearing 2 waves, the waves interact and combine to a single new wave that – if ANC were perfect would have none of the unintended wave’s features and only the features of intended wave. I’ve done testing of both products in my own shop with my own tools. Your ears won’t deceive you – what you hear and feel will be real – you can decide for yourself.
Mike S
A better analogy would have been to shoot the incoming blue water with your own water hose in the opposite direction. If you do it right, you won’t have any blue water hit you…
seth
For those a bit paranoid about noise protection at the range this is my setup. Howard Leight L3s (NRR of 30 dB) and Mack’s Silicon (22 db) for a combined reduction of 35 db. I can’t find a way to get much more reduction.
https://www.howardleightshootingsports.com/collections/passive-earmuffs/products/leightning-l3-shooting-earmuff-black
https://www.macksearplugs.com/product/pillow-soft-silicone-earplugs/
calculate double ear protection = 33 * log((0.4 x NRR ear plug)+(0.1 x NRR muff))
JohnD
I just want to run loud lawn equipment while listening to an audio book. None of the the Bluetooth hearing protectors currently on the market meet my needs. The limit of 80dpa is too hard to hear over the noise that leaks through. I think I need a passive reduction of 30dba+ or a combo of 24-26dba and ANC/ANR.
Does something like that exist? … outside of spending a good chunk of a grand for an aviation set…
Jared
I often listen to my wireless earbuds underneath proper earmuffs – riding my garden tractor, operating a skid steer or driving my full-size tractor. Maybe that would work for you? Just buy some high-quality earmuffs and worry about the audio separately.
Exceeding 85db for 8 hours is its own kind of risk though. There’s a reason hearing protection with audio capabilities has volume limits.
Joe
I work for a company that does a lot of jackhammering & SDS hand held rotary hammers for drilling holes into concrete. We gotta run chipping hammers also to get through & around concrete. If that’s not noisy enough it’s always in a confined space like buildings & basements. So anyways I usually put in earbuds under my earmuffs & it cancels out a lot of noise. Pretty much makes all that noise damaging sound sound like it’s coming from a far distance away at a low sound below the music that I’m listening to. The only thing about it is it can be a little uncomfortable after hours of having both on. If the earbuds run out of juice it makes the sound coming through the earmuffs sound probably a little louder if you just started the day off with the earmuffs. But then again you can always put the little foam earplugs in then the earmuffs over top them. Both ways work really good it’s just the most important thing is that you gotta pay attention what’s going on around you. If your jumpy & one of your coworkers comes up from behind you & taps you on the shoulder it might make you jump a little. When you gotta drill holes all the way around into a very big building after you jackhammer the hole perimeter of the inside of it’s not fun to lose your Bluetooth music!!
John D
What muffs do you use? None of my muffs have room for buds under them.
Elizabeth
I believe that everyone is confusing AirPods with actual shooting noise attenuation ear inserts. An active noise attenuating ear insert, which looks like an ear pod for an iPhone or any other mobile device, does not function the same way. It reduces the incoming noise level which reaches your tympanic membrane / the eardrum to a much less harmful range, from 80 to 120 dB down to 20 to 29 dB which is in a protective range against hearing loss. There are several models available but I just purchased the AXIL brand of these noise attenuating “earplugs”. They come with the disposable soft foam which is moldable to your ear, soft rubber tips as well as slightly harder silicon tips. They actively reduce the level of sound, the decibel level of incoming sound. they are as good as active noise attenuating headsets for the shooting sports.