Ear Plug Superstore - Official Blog

Hunting and Shooting: Get Gold & Get a FREE Extreme-Duty Case

When it comes to hearing protection for hunting and shooting, ProEars Gold Electronic Ear Muffs really are the gold standard. Put a set of these ear muffs on, and you're protected from hazardous gunshot noises, while still being able to hear everything that's going on around you. With Dynamic Level Sound Compression Technology, ProEars Gold ear muffs provide smart protection and sound that won't cut out during gunshots, so you can carry on a conversation while firing your weapon. Great for shooting ranges and hunting trips with buddies.

Right now, you can get a FREE Extreme-Duty Carry Case with any ProEars Gold Series Electronic Ear Muff. The case is rugged, watertight, and airtight, and has plenty of customizable interior space for your high-end ear muffs, small firearms, extra clips, ammo, and more.

Get the best. Get Gold. Get a $50 value -- free. Shop Now!

Until next time, be safe and love your ears!
--Sarah Bergman, Web Developer

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Westone DefendEar $300 Instant Savings - Ends April 30th

$300 Instant Savings Available Now! Limited time only.
Order and impressions must be received before offer expires on 4/30/13.

More About the Westone DefendEar® Digital
Custom Fit Westone DefendEar® Digital Modular Electronic Shooting and Hunting Ear Plugs offer true state-of-the-art hearing protection + assistive listening for shooters. DefendEar® constantly monitors environmental sounds such as gunfire, responding with lightning speed to instantly compress the soundscape. The result is that you hear everything around you better with DefendEar® Digital than you would with your open ear, while also being protected from dangerous noises automatically, and seamlessly. Get yours before our DefendEar® spring savings event expires. Learn More >

Why Pro-Ears Gold Belongs on YOUR Christmas Shopping List

When it comes to hunter hearing protection, nobody beats Pro-Ears. These guys don't mess around: every single one of their products is aboslutely top-notch, their ear muffs offer incredible hearing protection with superb comfort and smart features you can't find anywhere else, and their products are well-designed, rugged, and quality made right here in the U.S.A. And out of all of the brilliant hearing protectors Pro-Ears makes, the very finest is their Pro-Ears Gold Series.

I'm not blowing smoke, here -- Pro-Ears really are great. My mother, father, aunt, and cousins all use Pro-Ears. Working at Ear Plug Superstore, we have the unique opportunity to try out many, many different hunter's hearing protectors... and every time, we end up picking Pro-Ears Gold.

As a matter of fact, I was actually at the dentist a couple weeks ago and Pro-Ears came up. My dentist is this great, personable guy who likes to fix your cavities and then go hunting with his family. Knowing where I work, he told me he was looking into hunting hearing protection, and he asked me for the scoop on the very best shooter's ear muff we carry at EPSS. And even with my face half numb and the gas on full blast, I immediately responded, "Pro-Ears Gold Series." True story! After the gas wore off and we chatted about these ear muffs in a bit more detail, my dentist will now be picking up Pro-Ears Gold Series electronic ear muffs as Christmas gifts for the whole family. How cool is that?

My family (and my dentist) aren't the only ones. Pro-Ears Gold ear muffs are the ultimate gift for your favorite hunter/shooter. These ear muffs are the very best you can get, and they're loaded with innovative electronics and unique features -- like the ability to hear someone talking without interruption while the ear muffs protect your ears from nearby gunshots going on at literally the same time.

Our customers love Pro-Ears, too. Carol writes about the Pro-Ears Pro Mag Gold, "I bought these Pro Ears for my husband for Christmas. He LOVES them!" Feel the love!

And if that's not enough to convince you that Pro-Ears Gold ear muffs belong on your shopping list this Christmas, then get a load of this sweet morsel of information: this Christmas season, all our Pro-Ears Gold Series Ear Muffs come with a FREE Pro-Ears Extreme Duty Carry Case.

This is not just any old carry case. When they say "extreme," they mean it. If there was a more extreme word for "extreme," that would be the word they would use to describe this case.

This beauty is water tight, air tight, impact absorbant, crush proof, and it'll even float if you accidentally drop it in the water. Inside are two pull-out sheets of thick protective foam, scored in a grid pattern, so you can quickly and easily punch out the perfect shape to cushion and carry your ear muffs -- or even a pair of ear muffs, a pistol or two, and some spare clips and ammo. These are good-sized cases you won't have any trouble carrying around, but that you can also fit some serious gear inside.

The Pro-Ears Extreme Duty Carry Case alone would actually make a pretty fabulous gift all by itself -- but this Christmas, we're giving it away for FREE with any Pro-Ears Gold ear muff purchase.

That's a hefty $64.95 value, friends.

Now, to be fair, Pro-Ears can definitely be pricy -- but they're very much worth the money. And with the FREE Extreme Duty Carry Case, Pro-Ears Gold will give you some serious bang for your buck this holiday season. (I honestly don't know when we'll be able to offer a Pro-Ears deal this good again, so while you're picking up a pair for your favorite hunter, you might grab some for yourself, too, for an extra merry, value-added Christmas.)

Pro-Ears Gold Series Electronic Shooter's Ear Muffs really are the ultimate Christmas gift for the hunting/shooting enthusiast. They're a practical, useful, and clearly high-quality gift that will last for years. Too, giving Pro-Ears hearing protection also means you're giving the gift of good hearing, so these ear muffs not only come with the free Extreme Duty Case, but they also come with a free dose of that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know that you're doing something really good for someone... and that your gift is going to kick everyone else's gift's butt.

Until next time, be safe and love your ears!
--Sarah Bergman, Web Developer

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NEW: ReVO Electronic Shooter's Ear Muffs for Kids

When it comes to protecting the little ears in your life from dangerous noises, child ear muffs are the best solution available. They're comfortable, they're durable, they're easy to use, and they're safe and effective for the little ones. But until now, all ear muffs designed especially for children have been passive (non-electric).

And until now, that's been just fine.

But this season, the new ReVO Electronic Ear Muffs for Children are totally changing the child hearing protection landscape.

If you're a loyal reader (or even just a hearing protection enthusiast), you're probably familiar with electronic shooter's ear muffs in general. The key difference between electronic ear muffs and passive, non-electronic ear muffs is situational awareness: with electronic ear muffs, microphones on the outside of the ear cups "listen" to the sounds around you and play them back at a safe level right inside the ear cups. Passive ear muffs just block noise. So do electronic ear muffs -- but the electronic variety also allows you to hear what's going on around you clearly, often actually improving how well you can hear safe sounds like voices or game sound. For hunting and shooting, electronic ear muffs can't be beat.

And now, for the first time ever, electronic ear muffs are available for children.

The new ReVO Electronic Ear Muffs combine the benefits of industry leader Pro-Ears technology with the top-quality design of the enormously popular ReVO passive child ear muff.

The result is an electronic ear muff actually designed for children -- with a smaller and tighter band radius to fit smaller heads, extra plush cushions on the ear cups and headband for fantastic comfort, and the ability to get that critical hearing protection while still maintaining the ability to hear what's happening nearby.

For parents and kids who enjoy hunting together, this is incredible news! Now there are high-quality electronic ear muffs available for you and your child -- which means that during family hunting trips, you can all stay safe and protected and still have meaningful conversations (or give timely instructions and advice) while you're at it. No more taking your ear muffs off and putting them back on every five minutes!

If you and your little ones enjoy hunting or shooting as a family, ReVO Electronic Ear Muffs are an absolute must-have.

Too, for hunting and shooting in particular, the enhanced safety of electronic ear muffs is an incredible benefit for parents and kids alike. Situational awareness is absolutely necessary when firearms are involved; you and your young hunter-in-training both need to be able to hear the range instructor, warning sounds and sirens, each other's voices, and the voices of any other hunters out in the field.

You obviously have to protect your hearing, but you also need to be able to use all of your senses -- including hearing -- to remain safely aware of your surroundings. That's why electronic ear muffs can so drastically improve your overall safety, and not just the safety of your ears!

If you've never taken your child hunting before because of the risk of hearing damage or worries about your child not being able to hear you at critical moments, ReVO Electronic Ear Muffs are the answer.

While ReVO Electronic Ear Muffs will fit infants to small adults, we especially recommend these ear muffs for kids ages 3 to 12. They come in four cool colors/styles -- neon green, pink rain, skulls, and zombie -- and if your kids love to hunt or shoot with mom or dad, they'll love these ReVO Electronic Ear Muffs.

I highly encourage you to try these innovative new ear muffs on your next family hunting trip; if you've been using passive ear muffs to protect your child's hearing before now, I think you will be amazed at what a difference electronic ReVO's can make -- not just in terms of drastically improved safety, but also in terms of dramatically improving the quality of your hunting trips as a parent/child learning and bonding experience.

Get your ReVO Electronic Ear Muffs here, and happy hunting.

Until next time, be safe and love the little ears in your life!
--Sarah Bergman, Web Developer

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Indoor vs Outdoor Shooting Ranges

If you're a hunter or shooter, you probably already know that your environment affects how loud your gun sounds. Outdoor ranges are, in general, less hazardous to your hearing than indoor ranges. This is because the sound has plenty of room to dissipate. Indoor shooting ranges, which are enclosed and filled with surfaces for noise to reflect off of, bounce a lot more decibels at your ears with each shot.

Outdoor shooting ranges have other benefits, too, such as allowing for much longer-range shooting practice, and giving you the opportunity to learn how to properly handle and fire your gun in a variety of weather conditions.

Still, indoor ranges are popular, and (with hearing protection) they're generally a more comfortable place to practice your marksmanship. Fortunately, good acoustic sound-proofing can mitigate quite a lot of the reflected noise problem. Though most acoustic solutions dampen an average 60%-80% of that extra reflected noise, it's possible to carefully plan and sound-proof a gun range with acoustic features that actually remove 100% of reflected noise. So if you're not a fan of outdoor shooting ranges, no problem: just pick your indoor range carefully.

As a general rule of thumb, an indoor gun range will require an amount of acoustic-damping foam equal to the square footage of the range's ceiling. The foam should be spread around evenly on the walls and ceiling for the best results. You might very well be able to spot this sound-damping material the next time you visit your favorite indoor shooting range, but keep in mind that this kind of material is not always visible. If you're concerned about extra hearing damage from indoor shooting, talk to your range instructor or the range's owner. And when in doubt, always bring your own high-NRR hearing protection; electronic shooter's ear muffs work best for shooting ranges, where you need to hear voices clearly but you also need good protection from ongoing gunfire noise.

Until next time, be safe and do the right thing.
--Tom Bergman, Marketing Director

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Fact or Fiction: Silencers

"Silencers," also known as suppressors, have gained a lot of fame thanks to Hollywood: the action movie hero, equipped with a pistol and a silencer and facing overwhelming odds, sneaks through a warehouse full of bad guys, taking them down one by one with shots no louder than a soft, high-pitched ping or a quiet, muffled thump. This familiar film trope seems sensible enough at a glance. It's called a silencer; it makes guns silent.... right?

In reality, not so much. The whisper-quiet gunshot is pure movie myth. A typical suppressor actually reduces the sound of a gunshot by about 30dB, depending on which hardware you're using. And while that's a significant amount of noise reduction, you're still left with well over 100dB of sound AFTER suppression. That means a "silenced" gunshot still sounds just like a gunshot, it's still loud enough to damage your hearing (and it's still loud enough to be heard clearly from one end of the bad guy-filled warehouse to the other -- unless you have Bruce Willis style movie magic on your side).

So the name "silencer" is a bit of a misnomer, but suppressors do have other important benefits, especially for police and military applications. Suppressors can reduce recoil, improve accuracy, significantly reduce muzzle flash, and help diffuse the sound of the gunshot, making it much more difficult to pinpoint the location of the shooter. And a suppressor does reduce blast noise enough that firing a silenced weapon in a small enclosed space is much less likely to badly disorient you and seriously damage your hearing.

Until next time, be safe and do the right thing.
--Tom Bergman, Marketing Director

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Can One Gunshot Damage Your Hearing?

First off, a typical gunshot sound ranges from 2-5 milliseconds in duration. (To put that in perspective, it takes about 300-400 milliseconds for you to blink your eyes.) Now, the longer you're exposed to a sound, the more damage it can do to your hearing -- so hearing damage isn't just about volume, it's also about time duration.

This is common sense: 5 minutes of listening to a noisy chainsaw is obviously going to be less damaging to your ears than 5 hours of listening to that chainsaw!

So if a gunshot only produces 2-5 milliseconds of noise, is unprotected exposure to one gunshot really going to damage your hearing?

In a nutshell: you bet it will -- but only by a small amount. According to Dr. Clark, Ph.D., senior research scientist in charge of the Noise Laboratory at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, one shot from a .357 magnum pistol, which dishes out a hefty 165dB for just 2 milliseconds, is equivalent to spending over 40 hours in a noisy workplace. However, noise induced hearing loss is usually gradual; many people describe it as "sneaking up on them" over the years. So one shot fired isn't going to noticeably damage your hearing: once the initial discomfort or pain in your ears subsides, you probably won't notice a thing. But each subsequent gunshot you're exposed to is another big dose of noise, and hearing damage is cumulative and permanent -- so over time, those hazardous doses of sound all add up to serious damage to your ears, and serious noise induced hearing loss. (Think: 52 shots fired would be the equivalent of a whole year spent working in a noisy factory, in terms of wear and tear on your ears!)

Don't panic: just invest in some hearing protection, use it whenever you're shooting or in other noisy situations, and you'll be able to keep the hearing damage that starts with "Whatever, my ears are fine!" from snowballing into "SORRY, WHAT DID YOU SAY??" a few years down the line.

Until next time, be safe and do the right thing.
--Tom Bergman, Marketing Director

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What Makes a Gunshot so Loud?

What Makes a Gunshot so Loud?

There are two components that create the impressive sound of a gunshot.

The first factor is the actual muzzle blast. A muzzle blast sound occurs because of the rapidly expanding propellant gasses that actually cause the bullet to accelerate; the gas expands extremely quickly, and the resulting pressure wave from that explosive expansion creates a whole lot of noise.

The second piece of the puzzle that makes gunfire so loud doesn't actually have to do with the gun: it's all about the bullet and speed. The vast majority of modern guns fire bullets at speeds that exceed the speed of sound. And just like a jet creates a sonic boom, bullets create a loud sonic crack when they break the sound barrier.

The muzzle blast and the supersonic crack happen virtually simultaneously (at least as far as our human ears can perceive!), combining to form one big bang.

 

Until next time, be safe and do the right thing.
--Tom Bergman, Marketing Director

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How Loud are Different Guns?

Everyone knows guns are loud -- but exactly HOW loud is a very good question.

First off, it's important to understand that sound and distance have an important relationship: as you move further away from the source of the sound, the sound levels drop off dramatically. So if you're one yard away from a gun being fired, you might get 150dB of sound. If you move back another yard, so that you're two yards away, you only get 1/4th of that sound. Move back to three yards away, and the noise dose is reduced down to 1/9th! This is called the Inverse Square Law. The key point to remember is this: how loud a gunshot is -- and how it will affect your hearing -- depends on how close you are to the gun itself, and taking a few steps away can dramatically reduce the dose of noise you get.

Of course, you're probably most interested in how loud YOUR own gun is when YOU are firing it! Check out this data Dr. Krammer, Ph.D., of Ball State University, Indiana has collected on how loud different types of guns are, from the point-of-view of the actual shooter:

Shotgun Data

.410
(.409")	28" barrel	150dB
(.409")	26" barrel	150.25dB
(.409")	18" barrel	156.30dB
20 Gauge
(.614")	28" barrel	152.50dB
(.614")	22" barrel	154.75dB
12 Gauge
(.729")	28" barrel	151.50dB
(.729")	26" barrel	156.10dB
(.729")	18" barrel	161.50dB

Centerfire Rifle Data

.223 with 18" barrel	155.5dB
.243 with 22" barrel	155.9dB
7mm Magnum (.276) with 20" barrel	157.5dB
.30-06 with 24" barrel	158.5dB
.30-06 with 18" barrel	163.2dB
.30-30 with 20" barrel	156.0dB
.308 with 24" barrel	156.2dB
.357 with 18" barrel and muzzle brake	170dB

Centerfire Pistol Data

.25 ACP	155.0dB
.32 LONG	152.4dB
.32 ACP	153.5dB
9mm (.354)	159.8dB
.380	157.7dB
.38 S&W	153.5dB
.38 Spl	156.3dB
.357 Magnum	164.3dB
.41 Magnum	163.2dB
.44 Spl	155.9dB
.45 ACP	157.0dB
.45 COLT	154.7dB

Aside from distance, gun type, bullet size, and barrel length, there are other factors that can change how much noise exposure you get from a gunshot. While the blast noise from the gun actually being fired lasts only an instant, that noise can and will be reflected off the ground and other objects, significantly increasing the dose of noise you're actually subjected to. (Consider: the difference between firing a weapon in an open field, versus firing a weapon indoors in a small room... ouch.)

Also, direction makes a big difference in how loud a gunshot is, in terms of how much sound actually reaches your ears. The sonic crack component of a gunshot sound travels in a cone shape pointing forward and spreading outward from the barrel of the gun.

That means it's best to stand well to the side and a bit behind someone who is shooting, to reduce the punishment your ears take from your buddy's gunfire. (Obviously, standing directly in front of the gun would smack you with the biggest and most damaging dose of noise the gun can produce -- but of course, if you ever find yourself in that situation, impending hearing damage probably won't be your biggest concern!)

Until next time, be safe and do the right thing.
--Tom Bergman, Marketing Director

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Special thanks to Vassilis of Thessaloniki, Greece for providing a correction here: The Centerfire Pistol Data table previously contained an error, and he was kind enough to point it out! The above data has now been corrected, so what you see here is accurate. Thanks again, Vassilis -- and a big thank you to all our readers: we love your feedback, your corrections, your questions and your comments in response to our newsletter and blog articles! YOU are an important part of making EPSS great. We appreciate you!