Be True To Your Ears, Or They’ll Be False To You
It’s a very unwelcome sensation, but we’ve all probably had it – that moment of panic after experiencing a ringing in our ears following a night of particularly loud music. Indeed, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, about 15% of Americans between ages 20 and 69 have high-frequency hearing loss, or tinnitus, due to noise exposure. Thankfully, there are simple steps people can take to counteract the damage, and in some cases even reverse it, but they all stem from the necessity of wearing hearing protection in the first place.
“It used to be that you would go to concerts and then laugh about your ears ringing for a couple days. It sort of felt like a rite of rock’n’roll passage, or a sense of accomplishment that you had a great night,” says Adam Rubenstein, who has played in rock bands such as Split Lip/Chamberlain, Bad Moon Music and Dear Lions since he was a pre-teen in the late 1980s and also works extensively in studio settings on film and TV projects. “I learned that the hard way on a tour in 1996, when I wasn’t using earplugs. Halfway through, I got such bad ear fatigue that it sounded like everybody was underwater when they were talking to me. That was a wake-up call to spend the money to get proper ear protection.”
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It’s a sentiment echoed by New York musician and studio engineer Chris Blanchard, who first started experiencing tinnitus symptoms in high school and now deals with the issue every few weeks. “I didn’t know any better at the time, but I’ve since been more conscious about loud music and sound in my environment and try to take necessary precautions whenever possible,” he says. “My first steps were to not listen to music with earbuds super loud and buy some earplugs whenever I played drums. At live shows, I would always carry my pair of earplugs and wear them during sets.”
Properly fitted plugs can reduce noise exposure by 15 to 30 decibels, which becomes even more important in light of Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations that such devices be worn whenever noise levels exceed 85 decibels. While acknowledging the benefits, some live music junkies are understandably resistant to the concept of hearing protection, which they feel may dampen their enjoyment. However, it’s hard to put this genie back in the bottle after a lot of time has passed – especially when you suddenly can’t hear your friends or family speak.
Traditional hearing protection, like foam plugs, muffle and deaden all sound, making us feel closed off from the music we’re trying to enjoy, trendy earplugs are uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time, and while custom in-ears are fantastic, they can be pricey and you always run the risk of losing them. EARPEACE combines a triple-patented Contour Earplug
shape with high-fidelity filters–engineered to be as close to custom molded without the price tag so you can comfortably control the noise and protect your hearing without losing any of the sound fidelity.
“In a live setting, maybe you look at it from more of a clinical perspective: I know this music is at 100-plus decibels, so what can I do to protect myself but also still get the concert experience?,” says New York-based musician and studio tech Walker Curtis. “The idea is that special hearing protection filters in such a way that it broadly matches the relative loudness. It’s essentially like turning the volume down and not losing any more of the high end than you are the low.” This is why EARPEACE is so beloved among the music industry–their high-fidelity filters provide clarity and the patented shape are made for all-day comfort. After all, hearing protection doesn’t work unless you are comfortable using it.
Choosing the right kind of protection also depends on the setting. In the studio, Curtis utilizes professional-grade headphones at a reasonable volume level, which help “prevent a cymbal that’s being hit two feet behind my head from being skull-splitting,” he says.
“There was an era where I had such reckless disregard for this,” Rubenstein concedes. “I had a Marshall 412 cabinet, and I was so hyper-focused on having the best guitar tone in the world – which, now that I’m older, I realize nobody cares about. I would lean into the speaker cone and almost press my ear against it, which is just crazy to think about now. I would always have my amp at ear level. Now when I play, I make sure to have the speaker cone of my amp pointed at butt level so that it’s not right next to my head.”
Rubenstein and Blanchard pick their spots carefully in these environments, but have found effective ways to forgo earplugs for short periods of time. “As a guitar player, I tend to really prefer to track in the control room. I refuse to track in a small live room with a drum kit in it, because I know I’m just going to start cranking the headphones and start playing volume wars,” he says. “The high frequency of the cymbals is just going to permeate into my skull and definitely end up exacerbating the tinnitus that’s always always with me.”
For Blanchard, it’s important to accurately determine “how the instruments sound in the room naturally without earplugs, since they tend to dull what you’re actually hearing. I don’t wear earplugs when placing drum mics or positioning mics for guitar amplifiers, but I’m also not in the live room for an extended period of time when engineering.”
All parties advocate for obtaining reusable, high-fidelity earplugs – preferably shaped for comfort and/or featuring a variety of levels of decibel reduction (most range from nine dB to 30 dB). “Clarity is a concern for me, but you don’t have to sacrifice comfort with a little bit of deliberate consumption,” says Curtis. Adds Blanchard, “clarity first, comfort second. I can deal with an uncomfortable pair since I won’t wear them for more than three hours or so. But as a drummer and live sound engineer, clarity is of the utmost importance.”
Like any new experience, wearing hearing protection consistently can take some getting used to. But for professionals like Curtis, Blanchard and Rubenstein, the difference has been noticeable and significant.
“For me, the pro of wearing earplugs is that you can enjoy the music and listen to all the elements of the performance with a bit of a balanced perception, rather than the drums being incredibly loud or the guitars being abrasive – not to mention also suffering much less ear fatigue,” Blanchard says.
“I don’t know if it’s psychosomatic or not, but I definitely feel like my tinnitus has gotten better now that I’m not touring like I used to be,” adds Rubenstein, who has been on the road on and off with the reunited Chamberlain since 2018. “It’s not just playing music. I rarely go to concerts without wearing my plugs. I find it more enjoyable because you know you’re not going to end up laying in bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering what’s going on.”
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