admin 
For musicians, hearing loss is an occupational hazard. Any time you put yourself in a loud environment for an extended period of time, you risk damaging your hearing, and musicians tend to experience more damage to their ears than the rest of us. But thankfully, if you’re smart enough to wear hearing protection, you’re likely to prevent that from happening.
I am someone who obsessively monitors her hearing, not only because I am an avid music fan, but also because I’m a TV Producer and frequently find myself standing on a set, wearing earpieces for a pair of walkie-talkies, or a headset attached to two cell phones. I’d heard about ListenHear’s musicians’ earplugs—the FEA 25 Filtered Ear Attenuators—but having tried a variety of others with mixed results, I had my doubts.
I went ahead and got fitted for a pair of my own FEA 25 filters and I embraced the chance to put them to the test… but this wasn’t just any test. I wore the ListenHear FEA 25s to the three-day Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, a non-stop fiesta of sound attended by tens of thousands of music lovers in the 100-degree desert temperatures of Indio, California.
Interestingly, I ended up wearing the earplugs incessantly all three days, not just because the concert’s sound levels were so high, but also because the plugs were surprisingly so comfortable! Starkey Audiologist, Dan Thomas says the FEAs “are made from heat-cured silicone because it’s the type of material that gives the listener the most-sound attenuation in a custom product.” Silicone earplugs provide a passive filtering of sound so if you’re a music fan you can actually hear the lyrics and enjoy the music, and they create more of a balanced reduction between the lows and the highs, so you can carry on conversations better in loud environments.
Pretty cool considering the alternative—solid earplugs like the kind you’d use in a machine shop or on a shooting range, which completely reduce the quality of sound you’re hearing. Why? Because when you’re protecting your ears from machine or gun noise, you want to completely block out the sound. For us music lovers the goal is different—when you’re listening to your favorite band play, you’re looking to preserve the quality of sound, and that’s exactly what I was able to do while wearing the FEA 25 musician’s earplugs.
So what was my experience like? While concert goers around me were yelling in order to get their point across, or straining to hear their friends talk, I was able to carry on conversations easily, while fully enjoying the sounds of some of my favorites—bands like The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, Thievery Corporation, and The Cure.
Good thing is any time you wear earplugs, you’re protecting yourself from tinnitus—a temporary threshold shift in your hearing that can result in a continual noise in the ear such as a ringing or roaring. This constant ringing is usually caused by damage to the hair cells of the inner ear, and any time you experience a threshold shift from continuous loud noise, one of the potential side effects is tinnitus, or ringing in your ears.
For music fans like me, the choice is easy—wear earplugs. But musicians have tougher decisions to make—whether to wear filtered earplugs or in-ear monitors, which allow them to monitor their mix while they’re performing on stage. Not much of a choice really, when you’re a musician, the mix usually wins out.
Starkey’s Dan Thomas says in-ear monitors technically aren’t considered hearing protection, but musicians who wear in-ear monitors actually can use them to protect their hearing, the choice is theirs, “The opportunity is there to protect your hearing but not everyone takes advantage of it. They [monitors] can provide hearing protection, but you need to turn the monitoring levels down,” he explains, “You’ve got the chance to isolate your own voice, your own drums or your own guitar, so you get the isolation, but now it’s your choice how loud you choose to listen to what you’re monitoring.”
Thomas says drummers have a unique situation, “Drummers can wear earplugs. They [more than other musician’s] might be able to monitor something with filtered earplugs [rather than in-ear monitors] but either way, they need to protect themselves from the sounds they’re making themselves. After all, everyone else [on stage] is protecting themselves from the drummer.”
ListenHear FEA series actually come in a variety of filter choices—the FEA 09, the FEA 15 and the FEA 25. The numbers for each model represent the decibel level of protection you’re getting. The lower levels give you a lower level of protection, for example, fans might use the FEA 09 or the FEA 15 for up to 15 dB of noise protection. Musicians usually opt for the FEA 25 which gives them up to 25 dB of protection, and it’s not like that adversely affects the level of their experience; consider that most concerts range in sound level between 110 and 150 dB!
That’s exactly why I used the FEA 25 filters myself at Coachella and could easily hear the music and carry on a conversation. The filter level you choose to use is up to you. You decide what level you’re interested in wearing. Experts say performing musicians are best off wearing a 25-35 dB level of protection, whereas music fans will sometimes choose the lower levels because they want to hear more of the music. Again, it’s up to you.
For me there’s no question, the FEA 25s are the way to go because I want to be sure I’m protecting my hearing for the long haul. Believe it or not, I know several music fans in their 30s and 40s who chose not to protect their ears in their 20s, and are now paying the price. Sadly, they’re hard of hearing!
So what’s the lesson here? For your ear’s sake, wear earplugs! And if you’re a music lover like me, take the time to get fitted for a pair of customized earplugs, your ears will thank you… today, tomorrow, and decades from now when your grandchildren ask you to sing them a lullaby.
