We have been using these earplugs for the last 7 years. In that time we have also used every other earplugs on the market. We ended with these time and time again.
In the article and review I also go into why it is a good thing to use earplugs for what it is worth


Why earplugs makes riding motorcycle safer and a review of the Alpine Hearing Protection Motorcycle earplugs
If you want to walk around when you are old with impaired hearing and keep responding with a “Whaaat did you say?” to your kids cheating at board games, then keep riding without proper earplugs. I am sure in this day of our lord 2018 there is enough information available on the WWW, for the majority of people not living in caves, to know that wind noise and noise levels while riding motorcycles can cause permanent hearing damage.
In case some people are not aware of it let me give some reasons and arguments as to why wearing earplugs is a very good idea. Remember it is not only for ear-protection, it makes riding motorcycles safer...................https://www.pikipikioverland.com/ear...orcycle-safer/

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Curious to know if you have tried Flare isolates? After trying half dozen others (but admittedly not Alpine) I fell in love with these about two years ago, and have been ridding with them daily since that time and I haven't been tempted to try anything else, they work so well.
https://www.flareaudio.com/products/isolate-mini




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It's true, much safer to ride with ear plugs. As you say, none of this is new to anyone paying attention. There are studies going back to the 70's.

My favorite was a British study where they hooked up instruments to bike racers. They monitored heart rate and blood pressure with and without ear plugs riding on the track.

They also compared lap times. The study showed marked lowering of BP and heart rate with plugs in. The subjective feedback from riders also found riders really felt more focused and calmer (at 160 mph) with plugs in)

A calmer rider means LESS fatigue. To me this is a big one. With plugs you will be less tired at end of the day and able to get up next day and ride another 400 miles.

Nowadays in modern racing of course ALL racers use them.

As a now retired audio professional for film and TV I've had a chance to use just about every ear plug on the market over my 20 plus years. I have also used several custom made, moulded plugs. I worked on many movies and TV shows with a lot of gun fire from every sort of gun. The prop master and Firearms master is responsible to protect the cast and crew from hearing damage.

In all those years I found the Howard Leight Laser Lite plug my favorite.
I do not like reusable plugs. They get dirty, filled with air wax, they get lost and some are expensive.

The Howard Leight plugs come in a box of 200 pairs for "around" $30 USD.
The Laser Lite's are quite soft, comfortable for 12 hour days, yet attenuate noise by about 32db. They are disposable but if kept clean and dry can be used for weeks at a time.

You can still hear traffic but damaging low frequency sub audible noise is well attenuated for hearing protection. It's low frequency wind noise that can do the MOST damage to delicate Scilia fibers around your ear drum. Hearing loss is gradual. Many don't even notice their hearing acuity going away. PROTECT IT!

Ear plugs may not work for some. Most problems are due to improper use where the plug is not inserted far enough into the ear canal. Some riders may have odd shaped Ear canals, so may have trouble with plugs.

For me? I can't ride without them. Period.

Yeah, that's always been my ambition but now that I am old I find the kids beat me at board games and my hearing's on the blink just because I am old. All that effort to get deaf and it hasn't helped me at all.

Actually I've been using ear plugs for riding (and concerts and, well anything noisy) for quite some time and much of what Mollydog says makes sense. They do give you an easy time. I can't hear the engine rattles, the wind noise or much of anything if I'm wearing good plugs and I am much more relaxed after a long day on the bike. The only possible exception is the GoldWing I have which, with its huge screen and wearing a crash helmet, isn't that much noisier than a car up to about 70mph.

That's the good side of ear plugs. The other side of the coin is that they're a practical pain in the ar*e to use. Over the years I've tried most of what's on the market:

custom fitted ones are expensive and the ones I had made were not that effective. They fitted well but nothing like as good as disposables. I also diy made some custom fit ones (and wrote about it here about 3-4 yrs ago). They didn't fit as well as the pro ones and were even less effective after the gloss wore off

Umbrella / christmas tree types are reusable over long periods (as long as you clean them now and again) but buying them is guesswork. The best I ever had was a free promo pair that Specsavers (UK optical chain) were giving away when they moved into doing hearing tests. They fitted easily but itched like hell in my ears until I got used to them. After that they were ok but I eventually lost one and as Specsavers couldn't tell me what they were I've been reduced to buying whatever looks like them from other sellers but so far without success.
Some of them are absolutely useless. The 'vanes' are much too hard and with the added pressure from a helmet are actually painful to wear. Right next to the laptop as I tap this out is a box of Howard Leight Airsoft plugs which rate as the worst I've ever used. I really would prefer to ride 'naked' than wear those.

Disposables are just an exercise in frustration. Fitted properly most of the ones I've used are supremely effective - noticeably better than both the umbrella type and my experience of custom fit. Sitting here now with a new set of disposables I can roll them up and fit them into my ear canal in probably ten seconds each. They'll expand and that'll be it until I have to take them out. The trouble is that 'take them out' might just be a mile down the road at a filling station and put them in is usually just after I've started the bike and realised I've forgotten them. That means helmet, balaclava etc has to come off and you can be certain that 10 secs per ear at home can be 10mins at the side of the road in the rain.

Disposables are reusable but only maybe half a dozen times. What gives is their ability to expand slowly. You need them to expand slowly so you have enough time to get them right into your ear canal before they grow too big. After enough reuse you roll them up as normal but they expand so fast you've no time to fit them. Then they just sit in your outer ear and do very little.

The type with a rounded end are the worst for that as the foam structure there breaks down first. The only way to get another cycle or two out of them then is to freeze them - easy enough on a winter rally but on a sunshine trip they're essentially scrap. That means you have to take loads of pairs with you. My bike jacket pockets are full of them - mostly ones that are on the cusp of being thrown away.

My medical friends / family have a patient advice adage for ears which is 'never stick anything in your ear that's smaller than your elbow' as there are lots of non user serviceable fragile bits in there. Yet here we are blocking them up with bits of rubber and plastic and foam. I think we only stick with that because it's mostly cheap.Surely there must be a better alternative. Would anti noise technology be of any use for example. My a-n headphones work very well at home when I want to be selectively deaf.

Some of the Howard Leight plugs I've tried were not good ... sounds like the super softs you tried are too soft? I love the Laser Lite plugs. Used 10 years now.

And true about old plugs expanding fast and not being able to put them in. This means they are WORN OUT or are wet. Toss them in the bin!

Don't hang onto old plugs ... and once WET ... they are junk. Don't know about UK, here they are very cheap at $30 USD for 200 pair. Pairs come in individual bags, so I keep a pair or two in every jacket pocket.

Fresh plugs should compress and stay compressed long enough to get them into your ears rolled up. I lick the tips so they slide all the way in easily, then hold it in for a few seconds while they expand, then they seal up nicely.

Getting them out can be tricky sometimes ... some like corded plugs for this reason.

Only time I have trouble getting mine out is when my hands are numb ... then it's hard to get hold of the plug.

Disposables are cheap enough to be, well, just that, disposable. You can buy them by the sackful on eBay for not that much and as I'm just about at the end of the last sack I bought right now I'll have to order another bag of them shortly.

It's just that when you think of how often you need to hear something - speech mainly - on a trip the damn things are in and out all the time. Cross a border, use a ferry, fill up at a gas station (some need prepayment or pay at a kiosk), stop for coffee / food / cigarette (if you're still on that), toll booth that wants to charge you the car rate so you have to argue it out on an intercom, phone rings - that's an average Eurotour day - and each time you have to pull the plugs, do what you have to and then try to put them back.

I know you should treat them like a bar of chocolate - unwrap, single use and bin the wrapper - but in practice the temptation is to try and put back the one you've just taken out. After all it was working perfectly two minutes ago and it's right there in front of you. When it won't slide back into your ear canal the tendency is to blame your road numbed stumble fingers or your inability to push the thing in at the right angle so you keep trying, thinking the fault's with you rather than with the plug. And of course, the more you re-roll it the worse it gets. So I use a new pair and a week or two later find I'm running out so I have to try to reuse the best of them after keeping them overnight in the hotel fridge.

I'm always very slow and careful when taking them out if they've sealed well as you need to release the air pressure difference to make sure you don't damage your eardrum. Some people's eardrums are sensitive to pressure differentials and just pulling plugs straight out can be very painful. You tend to only do that once though.

The problem with the HL airsofts is that they're too hard to be comfortable rather than soft. Soft I could live with but these things are painful in my ears in their own right and long enough that the stem is under constant inward pressure from my helmet padding so I notice them every time I move my head.

Clipping the stem sorts the latter problem - if I remember to do it - but the umbrella bits are still too rigid so they itch, irritate and hurt (usually in that order) and they're not even that good at sound deadening. They say SNR30 on the box which is disposable country but they're nothing like that good. The only upside is that they're a lot quicker to put in on the road than the disposables. I usually regret using them five minutes later though. I'm not using them any more (I now keep my spare GoPro batteries in the boxes) but I'll see if I can track down some of the Laser Lite's and see if they're any better.

Some good points. Too true about pulling plugs out fast. It can hurt! Go slow! Break the seal!

I've got my touring routine down pretty well, am very quick dealing with jacket on, ear plugs in, helmet on, gloves on ... go! Over and over.

Also, I use a flip up helmet so most times I can be heard ... and I tell them straight away ... I HAVE EAR PLUGS IN ... Please speak up! It works!

The db attenuation rating is pretty accurate ... but only when plugs are new ... like first time put in ... and put in properly, which means ALL THE WAY IN. After that it drops fast.

Many riders don't put them in right, or some have funny shaped ear canals and claim they can't get them in. I can wear the Laser Lite riding all day and then for sleeping in some noisy dive all night.

Hard ear plugs are unexceptable ... and really hurt after a while.

In movie business we went through dozens of brands of ear plugs. Most were crap. But some of the Howard Leight ones worked for most of our cast and crew. We shoot blanks on movies and TV and mostly just half or quarter load rounds.

But with ALL automatic weapons (lots!) you must use a full load to avoid jamming. They Jam anyway, but a full load helps ... any idea how loud an AK47 is shot off a meter from your head? .45 pistols loud too. But usually half load.

Good news is tech has changed some movies now and blanks no longer used.
Guns can be electronic ... only a little flash emits from barrel ... and a mild little "Pop". Nice! Honestly, the actors get the worst of it and make up puts in a painted half ear plug that does not stick out ... but it does NOT attenuate the worst of the sound. Terrible. Poor things!

Just looked up the HL Laser Lites and was surprised they looked like a disposable type. They look soft anyway. I half expected they'd be a softer version of the blue ones in the picture below. They're cheap enough though so I'll get some in and try them. Then, if they work, I'll see if there's an even cheaper Chinese copy.



The picture shows some of the earplugs I found in my tank bag when looked through it earlier:

The green plug on the left is my one remaining Specsavers freebie which fits and works well (if a little ticklish if I haven't used it for a while).

The blue one is a HL Airsoft and the plastic is much stiffer than the green one. When you try to 'screw' it into your ear the blue vanes seal too early for a proper fit and then don't 'give' so any further movement to get it in position just increases the air pressure against your ear drum. No wonder they hurt.

The next three are a new disposable and two well used ones where, out of desperation, I've torn off the tip area that no longer stays compressed when rolled and released in the hope that the rear of the plug has a bit more life left. Why I didn't just put them in backwards I'm not quite sure.

The last two are ones on sale in my local pharmacy. Both of them are really easy to fit (the last one on the right particularly so) and reusable, but as they both have holes down the middle (I guess they're intended for aircraft use) they don't actually work very well. They're better than nothing though and the end one is what I use on the GoldWing (when I remember).

I've had a couple of pairs with built in speakers from Ultimate Ear. How well they fit depends on the attention paid by the person doing it, and me learning what shape works in my ears. But they need redoing every few years as your ears grow all the time. So they say!



Had I not had some made by them I would never have know I have small canals, which is why I've never been able to get foam ones to work. And that is daily on a building site at times. The smallest they roll up down to is about as big as the hole I'm trying to get them into. So, custom for me is super smashing great.


A side effect of allowing music in but other noise out is a much lower volume is required, extending MP3 battery life too.

Not all foam ear plugs are the same. Most common ones use very stiff, rough foam that will not compress that is also quite painful after a few hours.

A new pair of Howard Leight Laser Lite plugs (very soft and quish-able) can be rolled quite small, then lick the end, and for most they slide right into even small ear canals. But as always, YMMV.

Some folks are terrified of having anything put into their ear ... so there is that.

Custom fitted speaker plugs can be good if you don't run the volume up too high and use at low riding speeds round town.

Problem is, on some bikes a LOT of wind noise is created at motorway speeds.
So riders UP the volume .... more and more. Hey! Sounds GREAT now! But you're slowly going DEAF!

Problem is, those little speaker drivers are sat in very near your ear drum and create significant SPL (sound pressure level) ... and as numerous studies in Japan prove ... are really hard on your hearing over long exposure. They also tend to SEAL the ear canal which adds trauma to little Scilia hairs in ear drum area.

And remember, that even noise canceling systems can do damage as in order to cancel out noise, the system matches noise then generates it's own matching noise 180 degrees out of phase, thus making the audible noise go away. It's there, but you won't hear it.

But that sound is still being projected into your ear canals and in many cases the plugs seal the ear canal, preventing venting, which is important with sudden, loud sounds.

If ever around gun fire, always OPEN your mouth when shooting. Relieves pressure ... and always use hearing protection.

Wish there was a perfect solution for music listening and wish I would listen LOUD riding my bike. Haven't found a way yet. Maybe some day? For now I only listen to music riding round town, use my Laser Lite for all other riding.

Interesting you should post this just now, as similar thoughts were going through my mind and I bought a set of Alpine plugs myself for the first time a few weeks ago. To cut a long story short I found the black ones fairly ineffective, in fact they almost felt worse as they seemed to amplify the "boom" of my 2-1 exhaust. The red ("race") ones however are pretty good and I have since worn them on some long rides and been happy with them. Insertion can be fiddly but the little tool they supply helps a lot - this was my biggest gripe with foam earplugs, too difficult to insert (maybe I have funny ears) - and you soon forget you're wearing them. Removal isn't a problem as they have an airway running through the plugs so there is no vacuum.

How much they will help at this stage is unknown. I raced for many years without earplugs and never used to wear earplugs on the road either. Only when racing on the IoM did I always wear earplugs, as an hour and a half of flat-out exhaust and wind noise can cause temporary deafness on a single occasion! I know I have some high frequency loss but that's not unusual for us old guys. Maybe these will help stop it going further

I've just ordered some of the Laser Lites on Mollydog's recommendation so I'll see how they work when they arrive. At just over £2 for 10 packs it's not going to break the bank so worth a try but they are foam one-shots so they're essentially a short term solution.

The Alpine's look interesting as they look very similar to the Specsavers ones I mentioned a post or two ago. Obviously a bit more expensive but if they're reusable for any length of time they could be cost effective. What surprised me though when looking through the specs was how little attenuation (comparatively) they gave - 17 db for the Tour and 20db for the Race. Most foam ones are up around the 30db level but whether that's overkill or not I have no way of knowing.

Certainly properly fitted foam ones cut out just about everything, reducing you to lip reading. On the other hand I also can't hear the various mechanical death rattles going on beneath me, something that would be a blessing if you ride a Ducati. Is 20db enough for bike riding? Presumably the idea is just to reduce it enough to take the harmful edge off rather than cut it all out.

Not sure if a 20db reduction would fully protect when riding higher speeds or in windy conditions. Remember, it's the low freq sub audible rumble that destroys your hears ... so I'm guessing 20 db would be enough ... but just a guess.

It's true that fresh Laser Lites when first inserted really do make conversation hard. But I'm good (and fast) and getting in and out in a flash. I also use a flip up helmet which aides in comprehension.

But as I've said in earlier posts, many guys I see using plugs don't have them in right ... typically about half way into their ear ...

That won't do the job!

The Laser's are so cheap I carry lots of new ones and hand them out to friends who aren't as adept at keeping track of their plugs as I am.

When I pull mine out ... they always go into the same pocket on my jacket.

Good luck with the Laser Lite's, hope they work out for you.

Yes, they will help slow your hearing loss. Loss of high frequencies is how hearing loss begins ... any pro audiologist will confirm this. As you lose high frequency you start to find in harder to comprehend conversation in noisy locations ... bars, parties and such. It just gets worse from there as next you lose upper-mid frequencies. That's when you respond with "What?" to everything said.

And trust me .... even modern hearing aides are NO FUN. Several friends have them and they are miserable. So, do your best to protect what hearing ability you have left.

I use the "race" ones and I can confirm they do provide a significant reduction in noise transmission. Remember noise is measured on a logarithmic scale so every 3dB reduction is a 50% reduction of noise energy.

From a recent ride I would say the underhelmet noise was still quite apparent but considerably less than it would have been without the plugs. For people like me who have trouble getting the squashy foam plugs correctly inserted they're well worthwhile (YMMV).