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An electric drill, a screaming infant, the relentless drip of a leaky tap. Some sounds are universally annoying. But for people with auditory sensitivities, sounds which many take for granted can be a source of irritation, distress and even pain.
For example, the sound of chewing might be annoying or disgusting for someone with misophonia. Anyone with hyperacusis (also known as noise sensitivity) can find everyday sounds much louder than others. People on the autism spectrum, or those with ADHD, might find quiet sounds shockingly loud or have trouble processing sounds in different environments.
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It’s challenging to find solutions that address these sensitivities because everyone experiences sound so differently – even those with the same condition.
I’ve recently been looking for ways to manage my own hypersensitivity to sound and find effective approaches to focus when I can hear more than one sound at once. Keeping track of a conversation when music is playing in the background can be a challenge for me. Up until now, I’ve relied on simple foam earplugs, but they’re not ideal.
There are, however, earplugs aimed at people with auditory sensitivities. Some earplug brands are frequently recommended in lists, forums and groups for neurodiverse people, as well as those with misophonia and hyperacusis.
Some are explicitly marketed at people with auditory sensitivities and hypersensitivity, whereas others can be used for a range of purposes (commuting, going to concerts, etc), and helping people to better manage their sound sensitivity is cited as one of many benefits.
The Calmer earplugs by Flare Audio, for example, claim to “minimise stressful sounds”, allowing you to “focus on important ones.” The Vibes earplugs promise to “lower volume to more comfortable levels, while still allowing you to hear your environment with clarity.” Similarly, Loop says its Loop Experience earplugs are “for sensory overload” and “designed to take the edge off noise while keeping sound and speech clear.” And when you use the Knops earplugs, apparently, “real-world sound is filtered, the same quality is being kept and the volume is reduced.”
These claims are clearly appealing. Regular earplugs simply block and muffle sounds. This can negatively affect social interaction and isn’t particularly safe for people with auditory sensitivities if you wear them throughout the day. What’s more, many earplugs aren’t comfortable for long periods, and they’re often bulky and brightly coloured, too, which isn’t ideal for anyone who wants to keep their sensitivities to themselves.
Some people with auditory sensitivities still prefer regular earplugs, especially for specific purposes, like getting to sleep whilst travelling. But because auditory sensitivities can affect people all day and every day, there are different requirements for usage, style, and the amount of noise that’s blocked out.
The earplugs from Flare Audio, Vibes, Loop and Knops work in a similar way to other high-fidelity earplugs, like the kind worn by musicians that allow them to hear whilst blocking out loud sounds, but I was specifically interested in their use for auditory sensitivities.
You can read detailed reviews of each product below, but overall I felt that they all helped make sounds more bearable and conversations with people close to me less of a challenge in noisy surroundings.
But were these experiences all that different from using cumbersome foam earplugs? Some of these earplugs were undoubtedly more comfortable, thanks to the soft ear tips with a choice of sizes. Most didn’t give me that ‘blocked ear’ feeling, which muffles most sounds and isn’t ideal for all-day wear. What’s more, they looked much better with streamlined, discreet designs and, although pricier, are all under £30.
They also, mostly, delivered on their promise of reducing some louder sounds whilst allowing me to hear others. This is vital if these are going to be worn for more extended periods and not prove to be prohibitive for socialising or staying safe.
To better understand the benefits of these earplugs, and separate marketing claims from technical facts, I spoke to Bill Davies, professor in acoustics from the School of Science, Engineering and Environment at the University of Salford, who specialises in human response to sound.
Davies tells me these earplugs are examples of passive acoustic filter design – passive means there's no active electronics on board. He explains these designs use the same principles as the silencer on a car exhaust in an old-fashioned car with a combustion engine.
"You have a finite pipe with one input and one output. Sound at the input travels through the pipe to be heard or measured at the output," he explains. Within earplugs, the input end is the entrance to your ear canal, the pipe is your ear canal, and the output end is your eardrum, which is where you detect sound.
But a pipe like this doesn't transmit sound perfectly, so the output isn't the same as the input. "It's similar, but the natural resonances of the pipe will amplify sound at some frequencies and attenuate sound at other frequencies," Davies says. The pipe acts as an acoustic filter, which is the basis for wind musical instruments, and the thinking behind earplugs that claim to attenuate different sounds and frequencies.
"Traditional earplugs just fill the ear canal with foam to try to attenuate as much sound as possible," Davies says. "This is still the best and cheapest way to give the most attenuation with an earplug, but it works much better the higher the frequency."
However, the earplug brands I’ve been testing made other adjustments to the design of the pipe, like changing its shape, filling it, adding extra pipes or adding material to it.
"This will give less attenuation than traditional foam plug but lets them design the filter shape to some extent," Davies says. This is how we get products that claim to reduce some sounds, but not all of them. However, Davies says "the exercise seems to be accompanied by variable amounts of pseudoscience and marketing guff."
So, how effective are the different pipe designs inside each of the earplugs? I asked Davies to comment on them, as well as Jérémie Voix, a professor at École de Technologie Supérieure in Montreal who leads the NSERC-EERS Industrial Research Chair in In-Ear Technologies (CRITIAS).
Both hearing experts didn’t have a chance to test any of the earplugs in a lab – the gold standard for determining their efficacy. But they could make observations based on the technical data that’s available about the earplugs online.
The Loop Experience earplugs work by ‘plugging’ your ear canal partially closed with a soft tip – this is the similar kind of design you’d find in other high-fidelity earplugs. But what about the design of the pipe?
“They replace your actual ear canal with a pipe (rolled into a circle) that aims to do the same thing as your canal,” Davies says. “Then they put a bit of mesh on the end of the new pipe.” He explains that this is likely to give acoustic mass and resistance.
The Loop Experience claims to reduce noise by 18 to 20 decibels, and thanks to the mesh that acts as a filter, you should still hear some sounds clearly. There aren’t any lab-tested details available on the Loop website to prove this that potential customers can access, but the design suggests there would be some noise reduction.
The Loop Experience earplugs are explicitly marketed to people with auditory sensitivities and I found these to be the most comfortable of the bunch, as they come with a range of ear tips to suit different-shaped ear canals. However, unlike the Calmer earplugs, these do feel more like regular foam earplugs – a plus for blocking out sounds, not so great if you don’t like that stuffed ear feeling.
They’ve attracted attention for being a stylish alternative to traditional earplugs. That’s because they have a simple black base, which sits at the top of your ear canal, then small metal loops (you can choose from different colours) on the outside, which look kind of like you’ve got an unusual ear piercing from a distance.
I enjoyed wearing the Loop Experience earplugs. I did hear conversations and music through them well, but everything else sounded muffled and reduced. That means I wouldn’t feel safe going outside with these – I might miss important traffic sounds. But they provided me with some much-needed peace so I could work, effectively reducing the sound of the fan on my desk, as well as the construction noise that was going on across the street.
I didn’t have a chance to try the Loop Experience at a concert – they’re sensory overload minefields for me – but I can imagine these would be firm winners for festivals and gigs.
The Vibes are similar in design to the Loop Experience. “They’re another way of making an acoustic filter with a mixture of some kind of foam plug for broadband attenuation and then a few thin resonant tubes to try to even out the frequency response,” Davies says.
The Vibes earplugs promise a 22dB sound reduction across frequencies. This visualised on the Vibes website as a graph of insertion loss. However, both Davies and Voix found this a little misleading for people interested in buying a pair.
“This graph has a rather sneaky linear frequency scale, so it looks mostly flat,” Davies says. “Replotting on a logarithmic frequency axis would be standard and would make it clear that the claimed attenuation is highest for 2-8kHz.”
Like the Loop Experience, the Vibes are an example of high-fidelity earplugs, which aim to give a flat frequency response, the same kind that musicians use to protect their hearing while listening to music. However, Jérémie Voix says the Vibes might not be ideal for everyday use when it comes to sound sensitivities. “What we need to hear – for the intelligibility of speech, for example – are high frequencies, and we typically don’t want or need the lower frequencies.”
“Low frequencies should actually be attenuated because often they are detrimental to your hearing and your intelligibility of speech,” Jérémie Voix says this is called low-frequency energetic masking. He explains that if you’re on the tube or metro and you’re having a conversation, it’s the low frequency that’s masking your speech.
I was interested in whether I’d get the same reduction in noise with other high-fidelity earplugs or even foam earplugs with a hole in them. Voix tells me that, quite literally, putting most things in our ears would give us similar results – although I can’t speak to how comfortable they’d be. “Cigarette butts, and any of the passive filters you can see in the passive earplugs, will typically give you that same attenuation shape: a low-pass frequency filter that lets the low-frequency leak in, unfortunately.” Jérémie Voix says.
The Vibes earplugs were recommended in lots of forums for people with auditory sensitivities. They’re reasonably comfortable and come with small, medium and large ear tips. They have simple stems, making them easy to put in and take out, which are also discreet because they’re transparent. But I don’t think I’d want to wear these all day. They might be a step up over my foam earplugs, but they still made my ears feel full and, sometimes, too muffled.
However, they were the most secure earplugs I tested and, like the Loop Experience, they did effectively reduce some sounds but allowed me to hear others, like most music and conversations. This allowed me to focus on work, while still giving me the peace of mind that I could hear most of what was going on around me. I was also impressed that they reduced some of the shock of hearing my loud neighbours marching about upstairs – a huge source of stress for me.
The design of the Knops is a little different. They have four settings that enable you to reduce the sound around you in steps. The filter allows you to reduce sound by 10dB, 16dB and 21dB at setting 2, 3 and 4. Although setting 4 meets a hearing protection standard, there’s not much detail available about the technical build of the Knops or the pipe design inside.
Davies agrees these earplugs can, indeed, make things quieter. But he warns the messages used on the Knops website might be confusing for some. “One of the videos has a text overlay suggesting a 21dB range of attenuation, although when the person in the video adjusts from ‘21’ to ‘16’ dB, the bass level increases suddenly. Perhaps the music soundtrack needs revisiting,” he says.
I found that it's best to think of the Knops earplugs as sound dials for your ears. If that seems gimmicky to you, you’re not alone. And rather than being overtly marketed at people with auditory sensitivities, these come recommended because you can easily change the level of attenuation depending on your environment.
At the first position, there’s no filter, which means you can hear as normal. At the second, some sound is reduced, the third reduces sound a little more, and the fourth creates a near-silent environment – well, depending on where you are and what’s around you.
While I was testing these, I enjoyed having quick and easy access to change the volume of the sounds around me. I think these would work best if you’re travelling or in a city with lots of traffic.
I wore them on the tube into central London and really liked being able to adjust the settings as I moved around – mostly switching between settings 2 and 3. However, the design of the dial does mean they’re bulky. Even with a snug fit in my ear, I was worried they’d fall out, which isn’t ideal for public transport.
7/10 | From €35 | Knops
Davies says the Calmer earplugs from Flare Audio have the most technical details available for customers, as well as evidence based on measurements of a prototype in a lab from ISVR, the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton.
The evidence from the ISVR measurements shows that these earplugs can attenuate sound by about 7dB over a frequency range of 2-10kHz. This means they slightly reduce sounds at specific frequencies. This is thanks to the Calmer earplugs’ design, which is an open tube you insert in your ear.
Davies explains that the physical mechanism at work here is different to the other earplugs. “The Calmer alters the acoustic resonance of the ear canal (present in all typical ears) mainly by changing the shape of the airspace in the canal when inserted.” Although this design does work to attenuate some sound, we need to be wary of some assertions about these earplugs.
“The repeated claim that Calmer removes distortion isn’t a sensible way of summarising what the product does. I think it would be more accurate to say that Calmer reduces the level of mid- to high-frequency sound by a noticeable, but not a large, amount,” Davies says.
Another claim on the Calmer website is that “Calmer reduces stress by removing distortion that would usually trigger the human ‘fight or flight’ response.” However, Davies isn’t sure this is accurate. “While there is evidence that increased exposure to noise can increase physiological markers associated with stress at the level of a large population, I’m not aware of any good evidence that particular frequency bands are associated with stress.”
What we need is more research about the complex relationship between sound exposure and health outcomes, which is what Danielle Benesch, a Master's student working alongside Jérémie Voix at the École de Technologie Supérieure in Montreal, is interested in finding out.
"There hasn't been much research comparing different products and seeing which ones are most helpful," she explains, "And in the long term, whether they reduce stress. I think that's definitely a need that still exists."
Flare Audio's Calmer earplugs don’t look like regular earplugs. They’re small, made of soft silicone and have a big hole in the middle. There are specific instructions about how to fit these – they need to go into your ear canal at a certain angle – but they’re easy to follow, and this is a crucial step considering they work by ever-so-slightly changing the way your ear works.
The effect is subtle, but that’s the point. If I was in a noisy bar or at a concert, I doubt the Calmer would have made a noticeable difference. So, if you’re after a way to block out loud sounds, look elsewhere.
But when I was sitting outside a cafe talking to my partner with low-level traffic in the background, I noticed a slight uptick in my ability to pay attention to the conversation and wasn’t quite so distracted by ambient sounds.
I kept them in for a few hours to work and didn’t feel they did much for me in quieter surroundings. However, when I took them out, the fan I was working next to sounded extremely loud, as did the muffled stamping from my neighbours in the flat above. I also got a lot done, which suggests that, without knowing it, the Calmer helped me to concentrate on writing – not worrying about all the usual background noise.
With that in mind, I don’t think you should expect miracles from the Calmer earplugs. Instead these offer a way to reduce distracting background noise. This is likely to be the most beneficial to those who suffer from severe hyperacusis and other auditory conditions.
At £20, I think that if you’re curious, these are worth trying. Just pay attention to the advice from the experts: don’t wear these all day, every day. They’re comfortable, especially after an hour or two of wear, so you run the risk of forgetting you’re wearing them.
The earplugs I tested tend to combine all auditory sensitivities on their websites under one umbrella, but that might not be helpful. “These different sound sensitivity conditions need to be looked at separately. Because hyperacusis, misophonia, etc, these are all a little bit different,” Benesch explains. “For misophonia, a type of sound sensitivity, there’s ongoing research about whether certain trigger sounds have common acoustic properties, or whether it’s more context-dependent.”
Does this mean people with auditory sensitivities are safe trying out these earplugs? The online reviews seem to suggest they are. Some people have reported life-changing effects from certain brands – particularly the Calmer earplugs – and wear them all day and into the night.
However, Davies warns that the placebo effect might be at work in some cases, and believes all of these products need more sound attenuation tests to a recognised standard from a reputable lab.
Benesch also tells me that none of these earplugs should be worn 24/7. “I would like to know how these affect sensitivity in the long term,” she says. “It’s possible that people who are wearing earplugs all the time can increase avoidance behaviours or make sensitivities worse. That needs to be researched more too.”
Jérémie Voix and Danielle Benesch are currently researching ways to attenuate surrounding noise while participants have physiological readings taken, including those indicative of stress levels. That way, they can see, in real-time, the effects that sound – and changing sound in response to these readings – will have on stress.
Research like this is an essential step in learning more about individual hearing needs. It could also help to make more specific, personalised recommendations for certain audio sensitivity profiles in the future.
One day this could mean customisable earplug solutions tailored specifically to you. Until then, the experts recommend you try different options but stay wary of bold marketing claims that appear to speak to a more general audience – we are all unique, and so is the way we hear the world around us.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
