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Comment by ohyoutravel | Hacker News Reader

Not a musician but earplugs help me sleep. I use the Amazon hearos now and they’re great, 30db reduction iirc, and wear them to concerts. I knew there were custom earphones, didn’t realize there were custom earplugs. The pressure of the hearos tend to give me ear pain sometimes.

Curious on your take about sleeping nightly in these custom sensaphonic earplugs?

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Mentioning because it took me a surprisingly long time to realize this, and maybe I'm not alone:

With soft earplugs like hearos, you can adapt their comfort quite a lot with a pair of sharp scissors. Try shortening them a small amount, which is the easiest modification and might fix pressure when lying on your ears (sharper the scissors, the less they'll distort while trying to do something more precise)

There are sleep versions of customs as well. I originally got them for working at home with two kids in lockdown: the combo of Airpods Max, rain noise and custom earplugs is a godsend.

For sleep they weren‘t quite as good as they were too hard for situations when I was laying on that ear. I got new ones from the same molds with the softest silicone they had and these are better.

All in all, it was worth it for me. They clocked in at a third of my Airpods Max and while they don‘t make a big difference in sound to soft silicone, they are much less of a mess to remove and clean. I can pull them our in order to listen to someone and put them right back in.

The musicians plugs I have sit pretty close to flush with my ear so you would like be able to sleep with them better than off the shelf stuff. I’d recommend going to an audiologist and inquiring about this scenario.

Thank you! Looking more closely the sensaphonics website has sleep earplugs additionally. From what I see the db reduction and profile are same, but the more expensive ones do more to even out the reduction across the audible range for better quality I guess. I am going to check with the audiologist in my area their site recommended tomorrow to see about getting ear molds taken.

I've researched custom earplugs and you don't need them for sleeping. The point is more to have a flat frequency response.

Nothing beats some 3M E-A-Rsoft FX.

I have used the 3M superfit 33's for years and they are excellent.

I've found deformable silicone earplugs avoid much of the pain. You can get a really good seal without going much info the ear canal. You do need to find a decent brand though. Decent is subjective; most formulations don't seem to adhere sufficiently well.

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