It is no secret that prolonged exposure to loud sound is highly damaging to our hearing. Listening to loud music is one of the common factors leading to degraded hearing ability and tinnitus, and is deeply unhealthy.
At the same time, such level of noise negatively impacts the quality of sound perception, which degrades the musical side of the musical performance.
In what seems to be the echoes of the so-called “loudness war”, bands still stick to the idea that “the louder you blast it - the better”. But it’s not true. There are many other ways to energize the crowd without causing them sound damage, and I’d love to see more of those, instead of them trying to be the loudest ever.
Allow me to piggyback on to this post:
If you ride a motorcycle, you should be wearing earplugs. It’s not the engine noise, it’s the wind noise, even inside a good helmet. Yes, you will still be able to use your helmet intercom/headset. I recommend the silicone ear plugs with the tiny hard plastic insert, both for comfort (because they sit very flush) and headset (I can hear my headset perfectly).
I’m not a motorcycle driver, but doesn’t it lessen your situational awareness? Genuine question.
This gets into some funny spaces. Your ears can only handle “so loud” before things start going weird. Muscles start tensing up to attenuate the noise. The shape of your ear canals will funnel sound so your hairs in your inner ear stop hearing and just report noise.
Turning down the overall volume, lets you hear more, because more of the sound is in your range of acceptable volumes. I’m more aware of what’s going on with earplugs in, because I’m able to hear things like the tire noise of a nearby car, or the cooling fans of a semi.
This is the same reason wearing earplugs at concerts makes the music sound better. :-)
In my experience, you situational awareness is better, because all sounds are turned down, you can still hear everything, it’s just not as loud. Most of these attenuate the frequencies where the wind noise is more than the rest, which also helps.
The main reason why I say your awareness is better though, is that you have less fatigue when you aren’t constantly exposed to loud noise while riding, again in my experience.
The helmet you have also makes a huge difference, just like the bike. On a naked bike you’ll have more wind noise, whereas on a touring bike with a large windscreen, it’s mainly engine noise.
I second this. It’s absolutely nerve wracking to have that wind blasting while riding. With ear plugs there’s a feeling of calm combined with the joy of riding that can not be put into words. Damn I need to get another bike. I could use some of that in my life right now.
If I stick my watch arm out the window while driving, my watch warns me that I’m in a loud environment that could damage my hearing.
To be fair your car is concentrating a lot of wind right outside the window so it will artificially read higher. Plus your ears are like 80 degrees away from the wind flow vs your watches mic that’s probably getting fucked by the wind. If you ever stick your head out the window ear facing forward that shits LOUD.
Even with my watch inside the car when I’m driving my little Miata with the top down my watch gives me the loud noise notification. Granted I do also have my speakers turned up pretty loud to hear anything over the wind.
I know it’s illegal to wear headphones with music while driving. Wonder if earplugs also?
It’s different for motorcycles, since your head is in the wind.
As for wearing headphones while driving a car (in the US), it depends on the state, and most states have no prohibition on it.
https://www.vlaw.com/is-it-illegal-to-wear-headphones-while-driving/
Not a lot of information about earplugs, but I did find this:
https://www.thewisedrive.com/driving-with-earplugs/
I can definitely see where wearing earplugs while driving a car could be problematic, because you can roll the windows up, and I would expect that your ability to hear emergency vehicles would be hampered while wearing earplugs in a closed car.
On the other hand, hearing impaired people - including those who are wholly deaf - drive legally all the time, so I’m not entirely sure where earplugs would land.
In other news, in most states it is perfectly legal to drive naked as long as you’re not exposing yourself to minors. This includes not wearing shoes.
Yes, you will still be able to use your helmet intercom/headset.
Earplugs will actually significantly improve your experience. It’s much easier to hear everything without the constant wind noise.
When I used “regular” foam earplugs, I could only really use the headset under 70MPH. With the “filtered” ones, I can use it at literally any speed.
I also bought a bag of 1000 solid silicone earplugs with string tethers, mainly to throw at my son and his musician friends playing hardcore in the basement, but also to keep some with me on the bike all the time and hand them out to anyone who needs them.
