Equipment

Earplugs

There are three main options you can go with earplugs.

  1. Custom earplugs
    Pros - Fits perfectly if you can get it done correctly. Excellent quality.
    Cons - Expensive. Your ear will change over time and you’ll need a new pair. Your ear may change so much it’s hard to be fit correctly.

  2. Off the shelf ‘audio/musicians’ earplugs
    Pros - Best audio quality for the money. Affordable. These use a flat attenuation filter so music sounds like music, just quieter.
    Cons - Not as much protection as you might need, especially for clubs/raves. Most are in the NRR 12–20 range.

  3. Foam industrial earplugs
    Pros - The strongest AND cheapest protection you can get. 33 NRR is the ceiling I’ve found. Buy a box of 50 pairs for the price of one fancy pair.
    Cons - The worst sound quality you will get. Everything sounds like it’s underwater.

My strategy

I keep off the shelf musicians plugs and foam industrial with me any time I’m at a show.

Why? To be honest, I’m throwing the foam boiz in if I’m not trying to be exposed to the music/dj at that point. And I use the lighter ones when I want to enjoy the music.

Why not always wear the musicians plugs? It’s great if you can tolerate the decibels. Head over to Safe Limits to see what you can actually deal with. The calculator there will show you why a 15 NRR musicians plug isn’t enough for a 100db room.

Pro tip on foam plugs: most people insert them wrong and get half the protection. Roll it down tight, pull the top of your ear up and back with your other hand, insert deep, hold it for 20-30 seconds while it expands. If someone can see most of the plug sticking out of your ear, it’s not in right.

Brands I actually use

  • EarPeace: my favorite off-the-shelf pick. Reusable silicone earplugs with swappable filters (their MUSIC line comes in SNR 17/20/26dB sets) instead of raw foam, so they’re comfortable enough to keep in all night without that “cotton in your ears” feeling.
  • Eardial: the most discreet ones I’ve found, by far. Low-profile and nearly see-through once they’re in. I wear these in bars or restaurants when I don’t want anyone to notice I’m wearing earplugs. Worth knowing: they’re rated SNR 20 / NRR 11, which is light protection (run the math on the calculator: that’s a real-world reduction of just a couple dB). Fine for a loud restaurant or bar, not what I’d reach for at a club or a show.
  • Moldex Meteors: the strongest foam plugs I’ve been able to find, NRR 33. Contoured shape instead of a plain cylinder, which makes the deep insertion technique (see the pro tip above) a bit easier to get right. These are the foam boiz mentioned above: sold in bulk (200 pairs a box), disposable, and they’re what I reach for when I’m not trying to hear anything clearly at all.

Measuring: decibel meter apps

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. This is how I know clubs sit at 95db+ and how I caught those 107db peaks.

  • NIOSH Sound Level Meter (iOS): free, made by the actual government researchers, and tested against professional meters. Get this one if you have an iPhone.
  • Android options: phone mic quality varies a lot, so Android apps are less consistent. Sound Meter apps work for ballpark readings. If you get serious, a cheap dedicated SPL meter (~$20-40) is more trustworthy.
  • Apple Watch: the built-in Noise app passively warns you when your environment crosses 80/90db. Surprisingly useful for the “wait, this restaurant is HOW loud?” moments.

Earmuffs

Underrated. Over-ear muffs (the construction-site kind) run up to about NRR 31, don’t require perfect insertion technique like foam does, and you can double them up over earplugs for the loudest situations (add roughly 5db to the higher rating). Nobody’s wearing these to a club, but for mowing, power tools, shooting ranges, or a drummer’s practice room they’re the right tool. Kids at concerts should be in earmuffs, full stop. Their ear canals amplify differently and they can’t tell you it’s too loud.

Supplements

Soundbites sells a patented supplement called ACEMg, a combination of beta-carotene (vitamin A), vitamin C, vitamin E, and magnesium formulated to reduce oxidative stress in the inner ear during loud sound exposure. The original science comes from guinea pig studies showing the formula cut noise-induced hearing damage by up to 75% in animals.

The human evidence is newer. A 2026 real-world evidence study (Seifer, Minor, and Detweiler, published in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health) tracked 190 people for six months, 93 taking ACEMg daily and 97 who didn’t. 75.3% of the ACEMg group maintained or improved their hearing (measured via otoacoustic emissions) versus 26.8% in the no-treatment group, a statistically significant difference.

One honest caveat, consistent with how this site treats every other number: this was a real-world evidence study, not a randomized controlled trial. People chose whether to take it rather than being randomly assigned, so anyone already more careful about their hearing in other ways (wearing earplugs, avoiding loud venues) could skew the result. It’s real published data, not just marketing copy, but it’s a different level of evidence than a blinded RCT.

If you go this route, treat it as something you do in addition to actually protecting your ears with plugs and exposure limits, not instead of.

I take Soundbites myself. It’s hard to tell in the moment whether it’s doing anything, there’s no feeling of “working” the way an earplug obviously is, but I trust the science behind it enough to take it daily.

Recovery devices

RestorEar makes ReBound, a wearable cold therapy device rather than a supplement. The idea: cooling the cochlea after noise exposure reduces the inflammation that actually causes the damage, the same basic principle as icing a sprained ankle, applied to the inner ear.

The backing is a decade-plus of published animal and human research on therapeutic hypothermia protecting against noise-induced hearing loss and cochlear implant trauma, plus ongoing human trials funded by the NIH and Department of Defense, including a study on ReBound itself with occupationally at-risk firefighters and two chronic tinnitus trials running through 2026. Worth being clear that the ReBound-specific human trials are still underway, so the device-level evidence is still catching up to the underlying cold therapy research.

I use RestorEar myself, and the science behind cold therapy for the cochlea seems to hold up. It’s part of my recovery routine after a loud night, alongside the earplugs, not instead of them.

If you already have tinnitus or hyperacusis

Gear that helps manage, not just prevent:

  • Sound machines / white noise: a fan, a cheap white noise machine, or a masking app at low volume makes quiet rooms less brutal when the ringing is loud. Don’t blast it, the point is to take the edge off the silence, not cover the tinnitus completely.
  • Hearing aids with masking features: if you have measurable hearing loss, modern hearing aids can amplify what you’re missing and generate masking sound. This is the core of Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, which is legitimate science (see Hearing Health).
  • Comfortable sleep headphones / speaker pillows: for falling asleep with low-level sound instead of ringing.
  • Volume-limited listening: keep headphone listening at 60-70% and take breaks. Noise-cancelling headphones help here: they kill the background noise so you don’t crank the volume to compete with it. On a plane or train, ANC is hearing protection.

I don’t do affiliate links and nobody pays me. Not medical advice. See the disclaimer.