Low risk products that people swear by.
Foam earplugs if you’re headed to a noisy area. I know too many people that have damaged their hearing by not protecting it at concerts and other venues with amplified sounds.
While having them as a backup is good. If you enjoy concerts I’d highly suggest spending the money on good earplugs that don’t distort the sound as much. They make the specifically for concert goers and they’re amazing. Putting in Regular earplugs is like listening to a 32kbps mp3.
Agreed. I have some that just turn the volume down and I keep them on my keychain. It also helps me a lot when there’s background noise to pick out conversation. After the first part of the pandemic, it seemed like everybody had been yelling on their zoom calls and it helped with that as well until either they adjusted back to IRL volume or I readjusted to it.
I pocket these whenever they’re available for free in places where I work. Recently downloaded a free app that measures decibels and was amazed.
Hearing loss is different from other things they warn you about. Get something in my eye? Guess I’ll start wearing eye protection. Back hurts? Guess I’ll start lifting with my knees. Hearing loss is different. You won’t lose your hearing, you’ll lose the ability to understand what people are saying in a noisy environment, it hurts you socially. Having to say “huh?” repeatedly is embarrassing, it makes you withdraw.
I went to see King Gizzard recently, earplugs in pocket, and I suppose I never found a moment to stick them in, but I was stood near the front the whole time and I came away with absolutely none of the usual hearing damage. I don’t know how they did it, but what a great bunch of lads.
Sometimes if you get ALL the way in front, you are in front of the speakers so they are pointed away from you, and it’s not nearly as loud.
Hearing damage is part of the concert experience though. If you don’t leave with mild tinnitus did you really even go?
Yes.
This is a dumb mindset that needs to be changed.
After 20 years of concerts wearing my studio plugs I can still hear.
My friends who thought it was dumb are now deaf as fuck and frankly their hearing loss is an annoying self inflicted wound.
Wear hearing protection ya dingus, every time.
Actually I’m also the weird friend that uses hearing protection lol all my friends tell me that. I still have tinnitus and plenty of hearing damage from not doing that when I was younger though
A friend of mine told me he went to a concert that was “so loud it physically hurt his ears.” He thought I was looking at him like he had two heads because that was such a strange experience until I told him that voices at normal conversational volume often “physically hurts my ears.”
He never knew why I was always asking him to lower his voice, he thought it was just a weird thing I did.
