Noise Canceling Earplugs Some Day?

[David]

 

This technology has some promise, me thinks. Every other solution I've read about and used requires a combination of passive and active noise reduction. In the case of at-the-ear solutions, this involves:

 

1) over the ear passive noise canceling, which is difficult to do in a motorcycle helmet.

 

2) some means of measuring the delta between the ambient noise environment and the ear canal, also difficult to do, especially in a setting where it changes dramatically.

 

So these active noise canceling ear plugs intrigue me. The passive protection is solved by the plug itself. The active protection would seem to allow pumping in the sound that you DO want.

 

If this makes it to the marketplace, we ought to contact this guy and let him know that there's a huge market for this if the price is right.

[HappyMan]

You've been doing your homework, David, or your good at quoting. So few people understand that is "At the Ear" and not "In Ear" though we use the terminology anyway. You are correct, this would be huge for the cycle industry or any other sport that requires good hearing protection. Great reference! Thanks for sharing.

[David]

I use Bose's wonderful (but expensive and bulky) solution for aviation, and it's the best investment in that arena I've used. And I've often been troubled by a solution for riding.

 

Anyway, I read about this in a weekend edition of the WSJ, where they talked about geographic concentration of patents.

[HappyMan]

Aviation has been a great place for the Bose headphones. I've had some musicians using them over their "ear" monitors when the stage volume was ridiculous. There has been damage to people's hearing when using ths type of monitoring to overcome ambient noise levels. We've saved many musician's hearing because of the ability to lower the listening level but some have made the mistake of trying to overcome noise with noise only to subject themselves to far higher SPL. This was earlier on when personal monitoring was beginning. Our stage levels are much better today as more musician's are using them so the use of the Bose headphones has all but disappeared. The Noise Canceling Earplugs are a nice thought. Curious though, would it cancel the voices in my head.....?

[bakerzdosen]

Well, I've got about 300k miles flown with my Etymotic ER-4p's, and I can't imagine flying without them. (Noise canceling headphones just can't compare - I'm too anal retentive about music quality among other things.) I'm getting to the point where I can't imagine riding without them either.

 

With that said though, I'm thinking that the shure e500pth's would be great in a riding environment with the "Push to Hear" thing - as long as they were comfy in a helmet.

 

Back on topic though, if they really worked, I'd love a pair. No need to worry about blocking the screaming baby next to you on a bike.

[James Clark]

Is that wire going to the ear plugs or polypropylene tubing?