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Comment by abakker | Hacker News Reader

I work a lot in a wood shop/metal shop. I’ve always been a big proponent of ear protection. Recently, I’ve been using shure in ear monitors for blocking small sounds and supplementing with ear muffs when real tools are on. However, I’ve started to just wear those in ear monitors around even without listening to anything. The ear plug feature is actually really great. I can get on muni or bart in the Bay Area with them and listen to a book at 3-4 clicks of iPhone volume. It’s pretty great to get used to things being quiet.

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I've tried Shure (and other) earphones like this before, but could never stand the rustling of cable noise. Does that bother you at all, or do you have any recommendations for stopping it? I've tried shirt clips and cable loops, but nothing ever worked. For now, I use either over-ear noise canceling headphones or just AirPods.

if i understand correctly, the noise is caused by physical vibrations (as opposed to electrical waves) propagating up the cables. i think it's basically insoluble for earbuds/iems.

Microphonics!^[1] This is why you'll see IEMs designed with the cable going up and around your ear, rather than straight down.

[1]: http://ear-buds.org/microphonics-and-how-it-affects-your-ear...

(I have no idea how sourcing things works here. Hopefully I did it right?)

Pretty close to how most people source. You can just leave out the ^ it's just an inline [1], [2] etc. There are now hard and fast rules though, it's just common practice.

I think this is essentially people copying the ACM reference style.

I like the Shure's quite a bit and have used them professionally as a musician. I've experienced similar issues

Part of the issue is solved by running them over the backs of the ears so they exit down your neck. Additionally, mine have a cord pair keeper, and when I push that closer to the ends, that helps.

Another thing that's helped has been to get picker about which inserts I use. My ear canals aren't the same size (which I thought was strange, but whatever).

As others have said, over the ear wear helps a lot. Using a shirt clip to attach them to your shirt also helps. My etymotic IEMs came with such a clip.

Using both of those techniques makes the microphonics go from intolerable to barely noticable for me which is great because I wear them for 4-8 hours a day.

Is there a Bluetooth option?

Yes, there is. I have it, and have found it to be quite good.

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