As musicians, our ears help us with many things. They keep us in tune; they ensure our instruments sound the way we want, and they allow us to gain inspiration from lots of sources. Essentially, without them, we'd find it had to do the thing we love so much.

Vital for preventing long-term damage to your hearing, and sometimes the subject of disdain among the rookies, a proper set of earplugs can be the distinction between practicing your music for the rest of your life and having long sleepless nights just hoping the tinnitus would give it a break.

Any experienced musician will probably respect their significance gladly. For those of you not assured enough, maybe you need to try a high quality attenuated set to see the virtues outweigh the disadvantages. So listen carefully as we present to you everything you need to know about earplugs for musicians.

Buying advice

To the uninformed, the thought of wearing earplugs can be an adversary one. After all, why would you wear something to reduce the sound you’re hearing?

When creating music, we're always searching for the tiny margins where we can enhance a sound, song, or arrangement. How can we critically assess what we are listening to when we can’t hear properly?

Today, that is not a thing we should worry about. That is because there are plenty of options on the market that provide noise reduction, but not at the cost of sound. This means you can wear earplugs and they will only diminish overall volumes, not cut out specific frequencies or overload others.

Some people fear that their music will be reduced to a muffle, however, you will instead be able to play for prolonged periods without the worry of damaging your ears.

Another advantage is that most of the earplugs for musicians are not expensive, relatively speaking. So if you try one option and they don't work, you're not tied to them for eternity. Just try a different pair.

That said, sets from the higher end of the scale bring additional benefits like higher noise reduction ratings (NRRs) and extra comfort for extended sessions. It's all very well reducing decibel levels to an adequate range, but then your ears ache because you have cheap buds in them. The two priorities here are comfort and proper noise reduction.

What’s the difference between earplugs for musicians and consumer earplugs?

If you’ve spent some time searching online for earplugs, it’s clear that there are a lot of options available. It may not be apparent at first which earplugs are made specifically for musicians or what the distinctions are among them.

While there are a lot of professionals that need hearing protection, from airport ground crew to constructors and factory foremen, musicians require earplugs with a specific set of characteristics.

Principally, professional earplugs for musicians will give you a flat frequency response to avoid skewing the balance of lows, mids, and highs. Earplugs for musicians need to serve for an overall volume control without interfering with the frequency. The non-professional options focus on volume reduction first and will usually reduce high frequencies more than mids and lows.

These typically offer higher volume reduction than the ones for musicians do. That’s crucial when working around heavy machinery, but musicians need to hear a precise, balanced frequency range at a lower volume — that’s why it’s important to choose earplugs specifically made for musicians.

A Word on Volume and Decibels

Any earplugs you look at are going to show their volume reduction in decibels — one decibel is usually considered the smallest volume alteration the human ear can detect with certainty. The different decibel scales used and the average decibel levels for certain environments or situations are pushing away from the subject of this article.

What is most pertinent is that a 6dB reduction approximately halves the heard volume level. For musicians, 6dB to 20dB is sufficient volume reduction to reduce hearing damage from concerts or band practice. If you see earplugs promoting 30dB of volume reduction or more, these are almost surely designed for use involving heavy machinery, rocket launches, and excessive wind conditions.

The Thunderplugs Story - Enjoy Live Music Minus the Hearing Damage.

Thunderplugs earplugs should be use at music festivals and concerts, by serious music lovers who know very well what can occur without adequate protection from severely loud noise. Dance music and live music do have a certain impact.

Amsterdam musician Quinten Huigen had already developed permanent tinnitus by age of 15 because of years of listening to loud, live music without using hearing protection. Huigen had created Safe Ears Thunderplugs along with his colleague Koen Brouwer to prevent others from experiencing the same problem.

Thunderplugs isolate enough sound to make live music (and other loud music events) secure enough to prevent hearing damage, but without enough noise blocking to twist the sound. By wearing Thunderplugs during band practice and at concerts or music festivals, you can prevent the hearing damage that could lead to the persevering tinnitus Huigen and many others have to deal with on a daily basis. Noise-induced hearing damage is, sadly, chronic.

Today, the Thunderplugs design is both stylish and functional. Its triple flange design forms a decent acoustic seal in your ears. Pushing them in is as straightforward as it can be. All it takes to get these earplugs seated properly in your ear canals is grabbing their tip and gently pressing them against your ear canal.

The small finger tab on each earplug enables swift and simple removal, an innovative improvement that helped Thunderplugs to win the 2013 Netherlands Student Entrepreneur Award. The ideal way to pack your Thunderplugs in between shows or on the way to practice is by putting it in an aluminum carry case, which is included in the packaging.

Conclusion

Thunderplugs earplugs are a simple, yet effective and affordable solution to reduce noise exposure in noisy environments.

The plugs come in two sizes, standard for most people and large for children. The plugs actively manage sound levels without affecting the fidelity, being able to attenuate noise from 98-102 dBA on the high end.

This means that you can use Thunderplugs when going out with friends or family members who enjoy loud music without risk of turning down the volume too low or missing any voices in conversation just because those around you are listening to it at a higher volume level.

Please Note: Just because an ear defender is marked, for example, "Gunshot" - it will still cover other things, like "explosions"