Custom Motorcycle Ear Plugs

Your Guide To Motorcycle Earplugs

Filter Sound Out While Keeping Maximum Awareness

Some of our most popular custom motorcycle ear plugs have a impulse filter or toggle filter which both protect your ears while maintaining situational awareness and safety. You'll find the filter frequency charts in the picture section of this page. Contact us if you have questions about our sound filters and why they're a great option, especially if you drive in city environments on a regular basis.

In addition to an array of colors and sizes for our custom motorcycle ear plugs, we also offer custom earphones with the same range of noise reduction rating (NRR -26dB) which comes in Bluetooth and standard corded versions. Listen to music, take phone calls, or connect them to your communication system with unparalleled comfort and sound quality.

* NRR Range: Hollowed out earplugs are meant for wind buffeting and are unrated, but can be as high as NRR -24 dB. Our solid full shell earplugs are also available in a recessed style and offer up to NRR -29 dB.

Human ears are not supposed to function at 100-decibel levels. As a species, humanity didn't evolve in places where they were constantly doing things like toiling away in factories, using power tools, or riding on motorcycles.

This is why earplugs don't block out all noise. They should block out enough that you can preserve your hearing, but they won't stop you from hearing things you should hear while you're riding. You need to hear other vehicles, sirens, and horns blowing. As a matter of fact, the right earplugs will let you hear sirens you might miss if there were 100 or more decibels of pressure present.

Hearing damage isn't something that can be cured yet. However, it can be prevented. If you wear effective hearing protection, then the wind noise that comes with riding a motorcycle won't hurt your hearing. High-caliber earplugs work as a barrier against wind noise and its hurtful tones, letting you safely enjoy the unique experience that is riding a motorcycle.

Benefits of Wearing Motorcycle Ear Plugs

The obvious benefit of motorcycle earplugs is protecting yourself from hearing damage. However, there are other advantages. To start with, you can focus more on the road. Concentration is crucial, and the noise of constant wind can eat up a lot of your attention and energy. With hearing protection, you'll have a much easier time relaxing all day long. In addition to preventing hearing loss later in life, you'll also avoid temporary deafness. The constant wind on a good ride, especially at highway speeds, can trigger TTS. A temporary threshold shift is a state of temporary hearing loss. This form of partial deafness will block out every frequency, and that's dangerous for anyone on a motorcycle.

A motorcycle helmet isn't enough to protect you adequately from hearing damage. It helps, but it's not enough by itself. You can still wind up with permanent ringing inside your ears, and that's even more likely at higher speeds.

At 60 mph, you get exposed to 94 decibels of noise. That means you are at risk of hearing damage after only 15 minutes. At 100 mph, you can risk 106 decibels of noise that result in hearing damage in just 2 minutes.

Your deep ear has a part called a cochlea. In it, there are small nerve cells connected to thousands of tiny cilia hairs. Excess noise, like wind, can hurt these. When these cilia hairs have been damaged, they don't actually transmit correct information to the brain, if they do any at all. When your hearing gets worse, you can wind up with many different conditions. Tinnitus is a ringing noise, hypersensitivity to particular sounds is called hyperacusis, and you can also wind up hearing distorted sounds or even different sounds with each of your years, called diplacusis.

Earplugs are more than just conventional foam earplugs. Those are certainly still commonplace on the market, but they're not the only ones. They do have the advantage of being cheap, and they do block hurtful noise. However, they also come with some serious downsides for motorcycle riders. Since they totally seal off the ear canal, they not only attenuate wind noise, but also noise from road traffic, your intercom, and even your navigation. Foam earplugs can also get irritable after a while, whereas filtered and other earplugs can be worn all day long without issue. Thermoplastic earplugs are flexible and can contract or expand as need be with body heat. Also, filter earplugs can be reused dozens to hundreds of times. Foam earplugs are a one-shot deal.

Reusable earplugs do need cleaning and upkeep. However, if you ride a lot and wear them often, you can easily get a pair that lasts more than a year.

Corded models of motorcycle earplugs make it much easier to keep them safe. Earplugs are by nature small in size, so it's very easy to lose them. Corded plugs are easier to take out of the ears, and you can simply hang them someplace when not using them.

Finding the Best Quality Earplugs

If you want an exact fit, opt for custom-molded earplugs. These will fit your two ears with great precision. They cost more than any other option, but if you ride often and want the best possible protection, this is the way to go. Molded earplugs let you hear the voices of other people, but any loud sounds are reduced tremendously.

For the highest-quality earplugs, you want molded earplugs customized just for your ears. Professionals in both motorsports and music typically protect their hearing with these.

Fit is certainly a key feature to look for when shopping. Many earplugs are one-size-fits-all, but not everyone's ear canal is the same size. Some brands might not work for you. Don't get anything too small, because they might get stuck in there. Having said that, don't get anything too large, because they won't stay put.

Look for acronyms like SNR or NRR on earplug packaging. Single Number Rating is an international noise reduction rating, whereas Noise Reduction Rating is an American metric. The higher either rating is, the better the noise suppression will be.

Comfort is also crucial. If they aren't comfortable, you won't keep them in. Also, make sure they don't get crushed by your helmet sides.

Your hearing is very essential to life, and it's a crucial sense you should care for as long as you can. While riding a motorcycle is something about life you always want to enjoy, make sure you wear effective motorcycle earplugs so you can keep enjoying life in general for the rest of your years. You'll thank yourself down the road.