A bit over a decade ago, I met the founder of a company called EarPeace [1] that makes volume-reducing earplugs for music festivals in a bar in a suburb of Guangzhou. He gave me his pitch about the irony of how people who love music end up damaging their hearing by going to loud music festivals, concerts and bars. I've always been sensitive to keeping the volume of headphones low, but had never thought about the danger of loud environmental noise in entertainment venues. I guess I always assumed that making your best customers slowly deaf surely wouldn't be very good for business. I mean, they're already poisoning our livers and making us hungover, they certainly wouldn't also make us deaf, would they?

Ever since then, I've carried a set of EarPeace around on my keychain and used them religiously in loud environments. When I owned a Vespa for ~5 years in Hong Kong, I'd always put them in before driving....motorcycle forums are filled with bikers who have destroyed their hearing from wind noise.

Once apple watch added the ability to warn us about loud noises, level and time allowing me to quantify the potential damaging sound levels I'd been avoiding all of these years, it was pretty shocking. Bars and club can easily come in over 100 dbs and 110 db isn't really that rare.

I highly recommend some sort of volume reducing earplugs - not only do you protect your hearing, but it also makes going out much more comfortable. By reducing the volume of instead of blocking the sounds, you can make out more detail of the music and what other people are saying.

Edit: on the same note, does anyone know if earbuds with active noise cancelation like airpods pro offer similar hearing protection benefits?

1: https://www.earpeace.com/