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If I have said it once, I’ll say it a thousnd times - earplugs have been the single greatest improvement to the riding experience.  Seriously.  By cramming a small piece of foam in each ear, I was able to reduce physical and mental fatigue for those all day rides.  Seriously.

I used to not wear earplugs until about 1998.  I’d like to think that I have good hearing still, but if so, it would likely be better.  Instead of using the tachometer for shift points, I used the lovely music that all inline four’s with aftermarket exhausts make to judge when to shift.  I feared earplugs would dull the experience and kill the melody.  I was wrong.  Ever since, I have been wearing earplugs religously…even turning around at times if I forgot them.

Until now, there has still been something missing - MUSIC piped into my helmet somehow.  I have enjoyed becoming a moto-commuter in the non-summer months here in Arizona.  I have a very easy ride with 36 miles each way and ony three traffic signals as I ride away from town (read: against traffic).  And with fuel prices the way they are, it just makes sense.  My problem though is that my mind wanders when I can hear myself breathing for 40 minutes or so.  I need something to do!

As a brake engineer responsible for brake noise evaluation when needed, I have a broad understanding of noise and loudness.  So when I did a little research about the different methods of delivering music into the ears, I was very surprised at what, in my opinion, destructive (to your hearing) products are available for motorcycle helmets.

In the end, you really have two choice for sound delivery to the ear inside a helmet.  You can deliver music through helmet speakers or ear buds that overcome the windnoise by simply being louder or you can isolate the wind noise by having a version of an ear plug with a speaker inside.  There is a big difference.

For you nit-pickers and audio nerds, no I am not a professional audiologist.  This is my opinion based on my experience and findings.

Helmet Speakers - This is the philosophy to make the speakers louder (enough) than the wind noise to be able to hear the music.  This is usually for the folks that don’t wear earplugs regularly.  The problem is that sound is cummulative to a degree and if wind noise alone can damage your hearing, imagine what music that is that much louder to hear it clearly will do over time.  To make it worse, they sell mini amplfiers if your mp3 player isn’t loud enough.

Analogy - Imagine trying to talk to someone at an airport while a jet is taking off.  You have to scream over the jet engines to be heard.  You also have to duck the right hook from your buddy for screaming in his ear!

Noise Isolation - This is the method I chose.  It’s very simple.  First, by wearing some sort of earplug, you isolate (reduce) the wind noise.  The result is that you only need ‘normal’ sound levels of music as if you were sitting at your desk.  Another benefit it the improved fidelity delivered from a speaker that goes to your ears in a sealed cavity, versus a loud speaker that is competing with low-mid frequency wind noise.  The highs are crisp, and the bass (with a reasonably good driver) thumps.

Analogy - Plug your ears with your fingers.  You can hear yourself breathing.  You can hear your heart beat.  You can hear the ocean!  Now whisper something.  To demonstrate the magnitudes of smaller sound levels needed when outside noise is isolated, whisper at the same level without your ears plugged.  Big difference.

The two analogies above attempt to simply demostrate the difference between the sound level necessary with a speaker that must overcome helmet wind noise and the much smaller sound level needed to travel literally millimeters in a sealed ear canal.  And as you can tell, I am an absolute proponent of noise isolation versus just making it louder.  My hearing is not replaceable and a little common sense can give me tunes when I ride with minimal risk of hearing damage. 

NOTE:  When my MP3 player shuffles to Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast, all responsible regards to sane volume levels are temporarily ignored!

I have bought two different brands of noise isolation headsets (both new off of ebay).  The first was a set of Koss The Plug earphones modified to include Etymotic ER4 earplugs.  They suck.  I went on the cheap and well…they suck.  The second set was the Etymotic ER-6i isolator earphones.  Awesome.  The extreme opposite of sucking.

Stay tuned because I will knock out reviews on both items tomorrow.