Earplugs are a necessary evil for the card-carrying gig-goer. Without them, each show we attend is another roll of the dice for the sanctity of our ears; it’s a sad fact hard-ignored that big riffs, played loud, are a big threat when it comes to hearing damage and hearing loss.
Far too often, unprepared gig-goers will make the most of the memory-foam freebies handed over the bar before the first support. These absolutely do the trick for protecting your hearing, but at what cost? Well: muffled sound, agitated ear canals and the sense that you’re being robbed of something fundamental. Thankfully, earplugs don’t need to be so cruel to your gigging experience.
Sennheiser’s SoundProtex Plus package of earplugs is one of the more comprehensive answers to this hearing-vs-“hell-yeah” conundrum. Amongst a great many inexpensive reusable earplugs that aim to preserve some of the fun while protecting your hearing, the SoundProtex Plus aims also to provide the most versatility. In here you’ll find three sizes of eartip, four levels of sound attenuation, and an evidenced commitment to keeping things sounding sick at the same time as keeping you safe.
Sennheiser SoundProtex Plus: Design
If we’re talking aesthetics, the Sennheiser SoundProtex Plus look better than any set of generic earplugs really ought to. The TPE eartips are a fetching smoky grey (some might even evoke ‘anthracite’ or ‘gunmetal’ – but I won’t), and the filters they festoon grade from bright to black in order of attenuation. Each coin-shaped filter has Sennheiser’s logo pleasingly centred out front, a tastefully-branded stopper for your lughole that actually sits quite inconspicuously in your ear.
If we’re talking comfort, then, again, the SoundProtex Plus do a better job than any set of generic earplugs really ought to. This is for the extreme versatility of the set you purchase (more on which very shortly indeed), and for the ease with which that soft TPE material settles in your ear. Other earplugs have a stronger central column which makes installing them easier, but what these lack in initial user-friendliness, they make up for in resulting comfort.
Sennheiser SoundProtex Plus: Features
On a core functionality basis, there isn’t much to see here. The Sennheiser SoundProtex Plus are TPE earplugs that provide passive sound attenuation by virtue of the acoustic sound filters with which you equip them. What sets these apart from other earplugs is their sheer versatility.
You’re not buying a set of one-size-fits-all earplugs, but a ‘set’: a set comprising three different sizes of eartips, four different levels of sound attenuation, and the accoutrements you need to make your earplugs portable, accessible and safe from clumsy drops – namely a nice keychain-friendly pouch, and an elastic neck leash that’s clamped on to your earplugs behind the filters you fit them with.
This smorgasbord outclasses most other earplugs at or below its price, enabling you the freedom to find the perfect fit for your own ears and the perfect level of sound attenuation for environments you find yourself in. This flexibility is extremely welcome, not just for the acknowledgment that no two ear canals are the same, but also for the acknowledgement that no two gigs are the same.
This is because, by and large, the big problem with one-size-fits-all generic earplugs is their lack of versatility. Lightly-attenuating plugs preserve fidelity for the more sensibly-engineered shows you go to, but do nothing for thrashed-out drums in tiny venues or limiter-pushing heavybands that lost their own hearing years prior; similarly, full-block earplugs do the job for the big hitters, but rob you of any nuance in the less-loud shows.
With the SoundProtex Plus, you don’t need to choose the lesser of these two evils. Instead, you can simply customise your earplugs for precisely the gig you’re headed to. Of the four filters supplied, three are two-stage acoustic filters, offering low, mid and high attenuation at 10dB, 17dB and 20dB respectively; there’s also a full-block filter for 25dB attenuation and complete isolation of the ear canal from the outside world (a useful ‘nuclear’ option for the drummers and swimmers amongst us).
The eartips, meanwhile, are each triple-flanged, and sized small, medium, and large. I’m usually one for the smallest eartips in any given bundle, but the small ones supplied here are small. I found the medium to be perfect for me.
Sennheiser SoundProtex Plus: Sound
The average earplugs experience at a loud show is one of disappointment. Earplugs tend to be better at attenuating higher frequencies, which is a good thing for preventing frequency-specific hearing damage but a bad thing for your overall enjoyment of the riffage you’ve shelled out money to enjoy; without a proportional approach to attenuation, you just end up hearing things as a flubby mess. The Sennheiser SoundProtex Plus, for its design, does a far better job than most of its ilk.
As you might expect, each level of sound attenuation comes with a correlated roll-off in high-end, the full-block filter being the most aggressively low-passed of the lot. But the extent to which this happens is lesser than with the cheaper fare, and even the full-block filters retain some decent fidelity (here a likely result of the eartips’ design, more so than the material plugging them).
I leant towards using the mid and high-attenuation filters (the middle two) during my testing; the lightest filter is great for turning down real life a bit, but I wouldn’t trust it with your friendly neighbourhood noise rock band. The mid filter took a lot of the bite out of cymbals and lead guitars without stealing any energy; everything was still crystal-clear as you could ask for. The high-attenuation filter was great for more challenging hardcore shows, and a more obvious wall between me and damaging stage volumes.
The Sennheiser SoundProtex Plus spent a lot of time following me to gigs, but I also spent some time using them in a professional capacity. The high-attenuating filters, again, were a great wall between me and the more eager proclivities of my drummer, even in our pokey little recording space.
I found the mid-range attenuation filters, meanwhile, to be surprisingly adept at keeping me safe during some of my louder DJ gigs. I have a preferred set of earplugs for this job already, but the SoundProtex Plus gave them a run for their money – both for comfort under headphones, and for their remarkably even-handed preservation of information across the frequency spectrum. I could hear everything I needed to hear, and my ears weren’t screaming about the fizzy high-end from the loud PA speakers overhead anymore.
Suffice to say, Sennheiser’s SoundProtex Plus earplugs absolutely do the trick when it comes to saving your ears from the loud stuff. They’re low-profile, low-impact, and very comfortable for longer listens (provided you’re not sweating too hard). The price is maybe a little on the high side, but that price does buy you a smorgasbord… and a demonstrably fidel-icious smorgasbord at that.
The alternatives
The earplugs market is as tightly-packed as a well-protected ear canal – but it doesn’t mean that everything on the table is as versatile and thorough as the Sennheiser SoundProtex Plus.
As such, if you’re after something on the cheaper end of the spectrum, I’d recommend the Alpine MusicSafe Pro. These are practically the industry standard for affordable earplugs, and the ‘plugs du jour for almost every musician I know – with three filter options for similar versatility.
If you’ve more to spend, I can’t help but point you to the Minuendo High Fidelity earplugs. Despite already having a pair of custom moulded earplugs to hand, these are my go-to out-and-about earplugs, both for their incredible built-in passive attenuation control (like a volume knob for your ears!) and for their incredible fidelity all the way up to full block.
