TIL this exists. Does anyone know where to read more about these plugs? What do they do? I always feel like I've got a harder time understanding people than everyone else
In loud environments, I've definitely found the same phenomena, where it was much easier to understand people talking w/ the dB cut. I never thought this was a disorder, but rather a natural result of lowering the sound floor that made voices easier to pick up/distinguish?
A minor warning: experiencing "silence" makes a lot of people uneasy - in my opinion it's just a matter of practice, but some find it so unpleasant that they would never use earplugs by choice.
If you want to spend more cash I find Senner brand my sweet spot (doesn't block that much, reasonable cost, reusable). Alpine for a bit cheaper option with wide range of "dB's", good for concerts or motorycle, single pair will last long time. Or Loops, a lot of hype for these ones (people claim it does precisely what you are looking for), but it's overpriced in my opinion, and blocks a bit too much sound for me (to use in office, home, but perfect for a bar, commute, cinema). Also doesn't work well in wind. All 3 of those brands give fairly natural music experience, especially Senner.
I write "silence", as it's never silent. You will hear many annoying things (hums, squeaks, high pitched noise, pulse, feet on the ground). This things sometimes get into your head and you can't stop thinking about them. That's also why googling people's experience with tinnitus (that usually has no physical reason - at all, or one that you can fix - and is constant) is the most depressing thing I did last couple of years - highly recommend not investigating that too far.
I remember riding a motorcycle with earplugs. (Uncertain if it is legal)
they were the 3m 33 db ones, and were the exact opposite of uneasy. Although I could hear things around me, the muting made the world quietly slide by, and I felt like I was in the center of an island of calm. It was very peaceful.
I suspect this is akin to driving a high-end car with NVH dialed into "ultra luxury silence", or sitting in the good seats of a jet where the sounds of the engines are far behind you and can't quite catch up.
In this ever more hectic world, I think silence (and freedom from other distractions) will be more and more a luxury.
Generally they (claim to) try to sound more neutral so it's "just" a reduction in volume without much tone bias - personally I can't tell and haven't bothered to check, the small volume cut is all I really care about and any tone bias would be small enough that it's tough to notice anyway.
You can of course go much more specialized for many specific goals, but start cheap and simple. $20 or less is easy to find, though you might want to hunt around for comfort purposes (e.g. personally I only find completely soft ones comfortable for long periods, and anything with a long hard stem that pokes out gets bumped and seems like a safety hazard to me).
I've also taken to wearing them while driving at highway speeds with the windows down (feels good man) after noticing how the wind noise was damaging my left ear especially.
Since Active noise canceling technology works by emitting "opposite" frequency of what the mic just listened, its limited by the processing delay so it is only really efficient in filtering sounds that are constant in time.
Turns out most sounds you’d want to filter are meeting this criteria so that’s ok.
But for sounds that aren’t constant like voices it still works but less.
So it’s not a surprise that the technology helps you isolate voices.
Vision is different here in
It's easy to fall asleep inside, especially when they show videos of panda's eating via a tilted mirror they put above your eyes.