Ear Protection For Shop

[Diamond Joe]

What’s your price range? Plenty of good shooting muffs with microphones that cut off at certain decibels. Some have headphone jacks, some have Bluetooth. Easy to hold a conversation until someone fires a gun.

This ^

Buy shooting muffs. They amplify sounds below a certain db range, but muffle sounds above. These Howard Leight ones are ubiquitous on the range - 2 out of every 3 guys rock these - and there's a reason they are so popular: they work. I have two pairs.
https://www.amazon.com/Howard-Leight...8-7874768?th=1
50 bucks, but whats your hearing worth?

[PeachesNCream]

Well he came down for the weekend and told me he bought a pair and he's excited about them. They're a standard pair of 3M muffs, no bluetooth. Fingers crossed he actually uses them. Thanks for all the recs, might still get him a pair of one of what you recommended

[bodywhomper]

Bump to share the isotune free aware: https://isotunes.com/products/isotunes-free-aware

Holy shit. They check a lot of (all?) boxes, but at a premium. Anybody use these? Anybody seen a lot of feedback on durability of the isotune in-ear stuff? What is the music sound quality like? What’s the “aware” transparency mode like? The volume control feature for transparency mode seems cool.

My typical use of ear protection is not for work but for using outdoor 2-stroke hand tools evenings and weekends, occasional woodworking power tools like saws, and driving t-stakes. Usually, I wear muffs while wearing my wired iPhone earbuds, if I want to listen to music, podcast, etc., but that system only sort of works because the earbuds sometimes fall out of my ears when putting on the muffs. I also use those earbuds for all the other shit that people usually wear music headphones. My 3rd or 4th pair of earbuds just shit the can.

My wife and teen have some cheaper (tozo brand) Bluetooth earbuds with a transparency mode. Apparently, music sound quality is pretty good but the transparency mode sucks (it took a while to figure out why our kid was sometimes talking so quietly to us). Those ear buds fit fine under muffs.

[Not DJSapp]

Bump to share the isotune free aware: https://isotunes.com/products/isotunes-free-aware

Holy shit. They check a lot of (all?) boxes, but at a premium. Anybody use these? Anybody seen a lot of feedback on durability of the isotune in-ear stuff? What is the music sound quality like? What’s the “aware” transparency mode like? The volume control feature for transparency mode seems cool.

Been using my isotune free 2.0 since around xmas. No complaints, but they don't have any of the transparency stuff. The sound is good enough for the purpose. They're not studio monitor headphones, they're shop hearing protection and you can still listen to whatever (at an OHSA approved limited volume) and it sounds pretty good. If the extra fancy version keeps all of the music and build quality from the previous version, they're probably winners.

[riser4]

Get the red ones.

[bodywhomper]

I only saw green

[bodywhomper]

Been using my isotune free 2.0 since around xmas. No complaints, but they don't have any of the transparency stuff. The sound is good enough for the purpose. They're not studio monitor headphones, they're shop hearing protection and you can still listen to whatever (at an OHSA approved limited volume) and it sounds pretty good. If the extra fancy version keeps all of the music and build quality from the previous version, they're probably winners.

Thanks for the response. It’s a steep price. The whole transparency function with volume control seems dope.

[climberevan]

If I'm doing only slightly loud stuff (electric string trimmer, electric chainsaw, short-duration orbital sanding, one or two chopsaw cuts, etc) I just leave my Jabra 75t in and rely on the slight attenuation it provides. Maybe 10-15db of reduction is fine for those things.

If I'm going to be doing something loud (grinding, extended sanding, planing, etc) I put a pair of serious 3M muffs over them. If I kind of roll them onto my ears the Jabras stay in place nicely and I don't have to turn the volume up at all since the muffs are good for like -25db.

If I'm mostly doing hand tool stuff or staining or whatever, I'll play music through the shop stereo and use a pair of earplugs that are on a plastic band that stays on my neck. Then I can just pop it on for the occasional noisy thing and leave it dangling most of the time.

[AlpiNord]

I really liked the sound quality and noise canceling feature of my JBL Live 650BTNC with bluetooth until the batteries died after a couple years. They were comfortable and I could wear them all day. I gave up looking, but changing out batteries is not straight forward and makes them 'OK shop muffs'. Before that (and now again) I used Elgin Ruckus wired earbuds which take care of moderately shop & mower noise. For louder sounds I add my chainsaw muffs. It'd be great to find something like the JBLs but with replaceable batteries.....except for brimmed hats.

Edit: WTF? Due to this thread I dusted off the JBls and tried them again and they are working??? The app says 90% charge. Sweet! For now, anyway.