Eargasm High Fidelity Filtered Earplug Review

Maximizing the protection of your hearing is highly advised if you find yourself in a noisy situation, particularly if you want to prevent against hearing loss and tinnitus.  However, sometimes using foam hearing protectors or ear muffs provide too much protection if you are trying to appreciate live music or understand speech.  In these situations, using a filtered earplug may make more sense.  

That's why I decided to check out the Eargasm High Fidelity Filtered Earplugs for this review.  Eargasm is a company that uses it's name, that is an obviously clever play on words, to market it's flat attenuation hearing protectors.  They have a variety of different earplug options from their Regular plugs to a smaller version.  These plugs have an NRR or Noise Reduction Rating of 16.  

The higher this number the more protection it provides.  Scores typically range from 0-31.  Unlike ear muffs and foam plugs, that provide an NRR of 24-31, filtered earplugs provide an even level of attenuation to keep things like music and speech sounding natural, just not as loud.  Imagine that you are listening to music inside your car.  Now imagine that you turn the treble all the way down.  That is what you are doing when you wear traditional hearing protectors because they attenuate the high-frequencies more than the low-frequencies.  This creates an unnatural listening experience.The attenuation profile of the Eargasm Filtered plugs is very flat compared to a traditional foam plug.  It ranges between 25 and 35 dB of attenuation from 125 Hz to 8,000 Hz.  

The last time I was in Nashville, and everyone who has been to Nashville knows that everywhere you go there is live music, I wore filtered earplugs and it significantly improved how well I could hear my friends by lowering the sound of the music.  I also wore Eargasm plugs to my friend's wedding on New Years Eve.  That was an insanely loud wedding, but I was able to have great conversation with my friends, and I left without my ears ringing and without feeling like I lost hearing.    

The https://www.EargasmEarplugs.com website has a useful comparison tool that allows you to hear the differences between No Earplugs, Eargasm Filtered Earplugs, and Traditional Foam Earplugs.  

The difference is astounding and similar to how I perceive these protectors to perform.  The Eargasm earplugs seem to work great, but there are a few things that I am not a fan of.  First, the Regular size is way too big.  I have larger ear canals and they still wouldn't fit my ear canals.  This is even a problem for the models on their website.  If you can see the plugs sticking out of your ear they are not inserted properly.  

Fortunately, they have a smaller version of these plugs that fit my ears perfectly.  Second, they only offer one level of attenuation.  With around 30 dB of flat attenuation, it is go big or go home.  Other companies offer filtered plugs with 16 dB, 20 dB, and 25 dB of flat attenuation so you can pick the right level for the environment you are in.Otherwise, the Eargasm High Fidelity Filtered Earplugs are great and I highly recommend them if you want to protect against hearing loss and tinnitus, but want to still appreciate music and conversation in a noisy environment.