acoustibuds - listen to music while using your air tools

[Daox]

A coworker of mine mentioned these to me the other day. I dunno about you guys, but I like to listen to music when I'm working on stuff. But, I also use tools that are way too loud to not wear hearing protection. So, I end up usually just wearing ear protection and go without the music. Well, with these little dealybobs you don't have to accept a trade off. Its a rubber boot that fits over your earbuds and acts like an earplug, but allows you to listen to your music. I haven't tried them yet, but I think I'll probably be ordering a pair soon. FYI, they are not the cheapest earplugs @ $13 on amazon.

ACOUSTIBUDS - Earphone Adapters

[wikityler]

Those look like adapters to make earbuds into canalphones. It doesn't look like they're intended to be used to protect your ears from tool noises. Why not wear your earbuds under some ear muff style hearing protectors?

[Daox]

Muffs really get in the way when working under a car or in tight spaces. If you add a welding helmet or other head gear and you just can't do it.

Their site really doesn't state it can be used as an ear plug, but if you look in the testimonials you'll see they work alright as one. I also read the article in Popular Mechanics and it states "they did a fine job of blocking outside noise".

[Ryland]

I use the normal head set hearing protection at work and picked up the FM radio head set two months back, not as much noise reduction but they still work well and I can listen to NPR all day, the same compeny for $59 sold one with a 1/8" mini plug for mp3 players or whatever to plug in to, if I were to buy another set I would go for the style that have a microphone so in low noise you can hear regular conversation level sounds and listen to music or NPR...
my plan is to hook up my FM transmiter so I can listen to audio books while working.

[cfg83]

Daox -

Pretty cool. I'll give them a try at some point. The "stays in better" is a sell for me. Earbuds drive me nuts from falling out all the time.

CarloSW2

[MechEngVT]

I have a pair of "canalphones" and they stay in OK, but I never had a problem with my previous pair of earbuds either. The canalphones do block out more noise but the pair I have is designed to use the ear canal as somewhat of a "speaker box" to improve low-frequency response. Wearing them in noisy environments encourages excessive listening volume and won't likely protect your hearing in the long run.

Why don't you look into some racing equipment catalogs. I know for a fact that they make special small-diameter speakers intended to insert into a pair of foam insertable ear plugs with ~30 dBA NRR. I used a pair at a previous job where I had to drive a vehicle on a skidpad to collect data but didn't have instruments so a spotter radioed instructions on when to speed up or stop to download the data. I had to wear a racing helmet for the test so used these headphone-thingies that slipped into a foam earplug under the helmet.

If you ever see racing drivers take their helmets off they sometimes have earplugs with wires coming out taped into their ears...they have headphones in there too.