> It's also how I realized that wearing special earplugs in noisy places helps me understand what the people around me are saying, mitigating a mild auditory processing disorder that I had never thought much about.
TIL this exists. Does anyone know where to read more about these plugs? What do they do? I always feel like I've got a harder time understanding people than everyone else
These are plugs with "flat attenuation" - the Etymotics custom-molded Musicians Earplugs are the classic ones (you go to an audiologist to make a mold) - they actually have a variety of attenuators, including a 25dB one (for drummers). I used a 15dB set for years and they were responsible for saving a lot of my hearing over countless shows, etc. Custom molds will lose their fit (your ear shape changes over time?) and when I was looking to replace them, I tested a bunch of the new plugs around, I found Earasers to be fit and work as well as my customs, at a much lower price (about $40).
In loud environments, I've definitely found the same phenomena, where it was much easier to understand people talking w/ the dB cut. I never thought this was a disorder, but rather a natural result of lowering the sound floor that made voices easier to pick up/distinguish?
Back when I went to bars with way too loud music I would always plug my ear when someone was shouting in it. Made it much easier to hear what they were saying. I don't think I have any auditory disorders, but you never know.
Warby Parker measured the distance between my pupils by having me upload a picture of my face while holding a credit card. I had to upload 3 pictures because I was too close or at a bad angle twice. I'm not sure if they had an algorithm or if they actually had people looking at the photos.
The glasses seem fine, but the process did make me feel like measuring my own PD would have been easier. I've done it before for Oculus prescription lenses.
+1 for Etymotics, though I cheaped out and got the non-custom molded ones. But excellent for gigs. Which reminds me - I need to dig mine out for the Iron Maiden gig tonight.
Try any earplugs. They will all have that effect to some extent. In earplugs I can hear lyrics of a song that bus driver listens to, while without them I could not even tell if that's music or just noise.
A minor warning: experiencing "silence" makes a lot of people uneasy - in my opinion it's just a matter of practice, but some find it so unpleasant that they would never use earplugs by choice.
If you want to spend more cash I find Senner brand my sweet spot (doesn't block that much, reasonable cost, reusable). Alpine for a bit cheaper option with wide range of "dB's", good for concerts or motorycle, single pair will last long time. Or Loops, a lot of hype for these ones (people claim it does precisely what you are looking for), but it's overpriced in my opinion, and blocks a bit too much sound for me (to use in office, home, but perfect for a bar, commute, cinema). Also doesn't work well in wind. All 3 of those brands give fairly natural music experience, especially Senner.
I write "silence", as it's never silent. You will hear many annoying things (hums, squeaks, high pitched noise, pulse, feet on the ground). This things sometimes get into your head and you can't stop thinking about them. That's also why googling people's experience with tinnitus (that usually has no physical reason - at all, or one that you can fix - and is constant) is the most depressing thing I did last couple of years - highly recommend not investigating that too far.
> experiencing "silence" makes a lot of people uneasy
I remember riding a motorcycle with earplugs. (Uncertain if it is legal)
they were the 3m 33 db ones, and were the exact opposite of uneasy. Although I could hear things around me, the muting made the world quietly slide by, and I felt like I was in the center of an island of calm. It was very peaceful.
I suspect this is akin to driving a high-end car with NVH dialed into "ultra luxury silence", or sitting in the good seats of a jet where the sounds of the engines are far behind you and can't quite catch up.
In this ever more hectic world, I think silence (and freedom from other distractions) will be more and more a luxury.
Concert-oriented earplugs work fairly well for this, and they're pretty easy to find. They aren't safety-oriented so they don't cut by the ~30db of "normal" plugs, more often around 15db.
Generally they (claim to) try to sound more neutral so it's "just" a reduction in volume without much tone bias - personally I can't tell and haven't bothered to check, the small volume cut is all I really care about and any tone bias would be small enough that it's tough to notice anyway.
You can of course go much more specialized for many specific goals, but start cheap and simple. $20 or less is easy to find, though you might want to hunt around for comfort purposes (e.g. personally I only find completely soft ones comfortable for long periods, and anything with a long hard stem that pokes out gets bumped and seems like a safety hazard to me).
I've also taken to wearing them while driving at highway speeds with the windows down (feels good man) after noticing how the wind noise was damaging my left ear especially.
+1 for the ER-20s. Although I cycle between them, some Howard Leight Laser Lites, and some titanium Flare Audio things (from when they launched originally.)
I've tried plenty of ear plugs for sleep, loud environments, and concerts. I'd stay clear of anything that's clearing putting most of the money into marketing like loop and talk to a audiologist or someone in the music industry. I ended up getting mine from "1of1 custom"[1] based on some research and references. They're a bit pricey, but based on the amount of loud environments I'm in they're literally life savers. I pair it with a sound level app made by NIOSH to let me know when I should put them in at bars/concerts.
I also want to read more about this. I recently purchased AirPods, which have several different settings. I’ve noticed that in very noisy environments I can hear voices way better when I have Noise Cancellation turned on. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising. I could hear people close to me very well and I could even hear people 15 feet away. Conversations I don’t think I’ve ever been able to ease drop on with nothing in my ears.
Since Active noise canceling technology works by emitting "opposite" frequency of what the mic just listened, its limited by the processing delay so it is only really efficient in filtering sounds that are constant in time.
Turns out most sounds you’d want to filter are meeting this criteria so that’s ok.
But for sounds that aren’t constant like voices it still works but less.
So it’s not a surprise that the technology helps you isolate voices.
There are lots out there, but a popular model you could check out is the Loop Engage. They suppress certain frequencies more than others to help distinguish speech from background noise.
Very interesting, I see Loop is a Belgian company so it's not some distant shipping (I live a stone's throw from the border) and, for a niche (or so I thought) hearing aid I didn't expect a price tag far below a hundred bucks! Looks like good value if this does what it claims (https://www.loopearplugs.com/products/engage)
I have the same thing, I can hear perfectly, but I can't understand speech over noise (I can't tell what people are saying). Flat response earplugs (musician earplugs, but not custom molded) negate this, and I can hear fine even in concerts, very comfortably.
It's not bad enough that I feel comfortable making use of the hearing tests that they afaik don't let you pay for (similar with vision tests), though I'd be curious to have it quantified indeed and so have considered it
Yeah check out how it works. In BC the hearing tests by an audiologist are offered for free by the places that sell hearing aids. In my experience there is no obligation to act on the result.
Yeah this is interesting. It makes sense...you're filtering out low level background noise so all you really get is the higher volume stuff like speech. Just like adjusting squelch on a radio.
TIL this exists. Does anyone know where to read more about these plugs? What do they do? I always feel like I've got a harder time understanding people than everyone else