I love music. And as one of my favorite music professors always says, live music is always better than dead music.
Just in the past year and a half, I've really started getting into the live concert scene. Let me rephrase that, I've started getting into the live rock concert scene. I've always been a frequent attendee of wind ensemble and orchestra concerts.
I've also always have had a mild case of tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. This ringing is evidence of hearing damage, and it irreversible.
Needless to say, going to rock concerts without hearing protection left me with a few nights of extra-ringing ears, and almost certainly hearing damage as well.
More recently, I've actually been experiencing perforations of my ear drum and even just this year a full burst. Because of all of this, I decided to get my hands on a pair of ear plugs.
The problem for me is that I can't just wear any old foam earplugs. I'm a bit of an audiophile, and those regular earplugs just make everything sound muffled, which for me defeats a lot of the purpose of going to a live show in the first place.
That's where the downbeats come in. They are a special type of ear plug that lets most of the sound profile in, but cuts the volume to a safe level (they advertise 18dB noise reduction).
Spoiler alert: they really do work as advertised. I wore them at a five hour metalcore concert this past weekend and I'm happy to report that I didn't have ringing ears after the show. I also was able to hear all of the frequencies, just quieter. I could still feel the music, and it wasn't *quiet* by any means, but it was not a damaging loudness.
One thing to note is that unfortunately, these earplugs cut out conversation almost completely at a concert event. Conversations are hard at a concert event generally, because of all the noise, but these made it noticably harder to hear. I found myself removing one plug if I wanted to talk to my friends.
Related to conversation, these earplugs tend to make you talk even quiter than normal. Because of how they sit in your ear canal, you end up hearing your voice pretty loud in your head, so you talk quiter to other people with them in. It's really a minor inconvenience, though, considering that these save your hearing. Again, you can just remove one when you feel the need to talk, and that solves the problem.
The downbeats fit pretty comfortably, which is to say that I could wear them for the whole five hours of the show. To me, they feel like in-ear headphones. You definitely notice a pressure in the ear canal, but it's not terribly unpleasant. That means a lot from me, because I *despise* in ear headphones, because I find them incredibly uncomfortable.
Luckily, even though these earplugs sit very similar in the ear to in-ear headphones, they stay in much better. One of my biggest fears in getting fancy earplugs was that they would fall out while I danced, jumped, headbanged, and otherwise moshed at the show. I am happy to report that these earplugs stayed in very well, and I never once had a problem with them slipping out or feeling loose. These are earplugs that I would recommend for metal, hardcore, rock, punk, etc shows.
The downbeats also don't stick out from the ear very far, which is nice because you don't have to worry about catching a bump from the crowd and shoving the earplug too deep into the ear, damaging the ear drum (rock shows get intense). This also means that the downbeats are pretty inconspicuous, so you don't have to worry about everyone in the crowd knowing you're wearing earplugs.
I didn't have any problems removing the downbeats from my ears after the show, although I have read reviews that said people did have some trouble with this. The included carrying case is also a really convenient storage system for when you take the plugs out, which is always a bonus. It's made of metal, and could definitely take a beating, although I didn't subject it to one.
Overall, these are highly recommended by me. I liked everything about the product, and I look forward to taking them to more shows in the future. But even if you choose not to get this product, or if it doesn't work for you, wear earplugs to concerts, people.
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