Best earplugs for concerts, live music and events

At SoundGuys, we’ve long been advocates of protecting your hearing, especially when attending live events. The best earplugs for concerts are essential in preventing noise-induced hearing loss. Once damaged, your hearing doesn’t recover, after all. If you’re going to be exposing yourself to loud music and the level is outside of your control, earplugs become your best ally for hearing protection. However, the cheap foam plugs you get at the drug store will noticeably impact and degrade the sound quality of what you’re trying to hear, as well as reduce the sound pressure level, and aren’t really good for more than one use.

If you don’t want to invest in custom-fitted “musician” earplugs yet but still want protection for your concert outings, there are many reusable earplug options out there. Many of them aren’t exactly cheap, so we’ve decided it’s time to bring our industry-leading measurement rig into action. We tested a selection of the better-known passive, reusable earplugs on the market to see how good they actually are, and below, you’ll find which ones we consider to be the best.

Why is the best all-round earplug The Loop Experience Plus?

For our best earplugs for concerts, we picked the Loop Experience Plus. It has the best versatility by far, with a choice of regular silicone ear tips or a tighter-fitting foam tip. Loop also provides small circular inserts that fit inside the earplug’s loops to add additional sound attenuation for particularly loud situations. Four different tip sizes are provided to find your best fit.

Loop’s iconic design incorporates an acoustic channel within the loop of the earplug that forms a resonator, which increases the effectiveness around the frequencies where our hearing is normally most sensitive (2-3kHz). This means these plugs can really take the edge off loud concert sounds by attenuating the area of the frequency spectrum that appears loudest and is most likely to cause discomfort. 

Using the supplied foam ear tips instead of the regular silicone ones adds a significant amount (roughly 10dB) of sound attenuation across the spectrum. This means you essentially get a quieter version of the standard Loop Experience sound profile, including a good reduction in the key low-frequency region.

The “mute” inserts that Loop provides do nothing below 5kHz, but above that, they add between 5 and 15dB of extra attenuation of high frequencies, which can significantly reduce the “sizzle” of cymbals in a live setting.

The Groundshaker High Fidelity is the best value

Groundshaker’s high-fidelity earplugs are a flexible grey silicone design that features multiple flanges on the ear tip to achieve the best seal possible within your ear canal. The design also incorporates molded flexible “shark fin” loops, which make the plugs relatively easy to put in and remove.

The Groundshaker earplug design does an unusually good job of reducing low frequencies for a passive earplug. It lowers sounds below 600Hz by between 10 and 20 dB. The earplugs reduce the critical midrange region by 20dB to 35dB and mute high frequencies around 10kHz by more than 45 dB. These earplugs are especially useful at loud events and benefit people with auditory sensitivities like hyperacusis, a hearing disorder that makes sounds seem much louder than they actually are.

The Etymotic Research ER20 High-Fidelity Earplugs help with bad-sounding venues

Etymotic may well be familiar to SoundGuys readers and those in the personal audio space. It produces some well-respected in-ear monitors (IEMS), some of which we’ve reviewed in the past. Knowing that the company has some acoustics chops is somehow reassuring when it comes to hearing protection, and the ER20 High Fidelity Earplugs justify that feeling.

What we like most about this ETY-plugs model is that the attenuation doesn’t jump around a lot for most of the spectrum. Attenuation starts at around 10dB at 100Hz and steadily increases from there up to around 10kHz. It mutes frequencies above 10kHz more heavily (by up to 45dB). This characteristic is useful when you’re confronted by small, lively venues that haven’t been acoustically treated or where the PA system is being pushed too hard, resulting in lots of high-frequency energy that you probably want to hear a lot less of.

The Loop Switch are the most versatile

The Loop Switch earplugs offer a unique feature that sets them apart from other earplugs on the market. With a physical switch to toggle between Quiet, Experience, and Engage modes, these earplugs allow users to control how much sound gets through. During testing at a high-volume music festival, we found the Quiet mode comfortably reduced sound levels, especially high frequencies. On the other hand, the Experience and Engage modes allow more high-frequency sound through for improved sound quality.

The signature loop design keeps the earplugs securely in place, though prolonged use may cause discomfort for small-eared users due to the pressure on the outer ear. The Loop Switch’s higher price point may seem steep, especially with affordable options like foam earplugs offering greater overall noise attenuation. However, the added versatility of adjustable noise levels and the portability of the included case, which can be attached to a keychain, make them a practical choice for those frequently exposed to loud environments. For those who prioritize the ability to customize noise reduction, the Loop Switch might justify its cost.

The Happy Ears are the most compact earplugs for music

Small and minimal, we like the Happy Ears earplugs for a number of reasons. We like the eco-friendly packaging, we like how easy getting a good seal is, and we like how compact they are when stowed in their fitted case. This earplug only comes in one design, but the company sells additional versions made out of recycled ocean or landfill plastic.

The Happy Ears earplugs do a great job at reducing low frequencies by over 15dB, which increases gently towards the higher frequencies, where it maxes out at over 40dB of attenuation around 8kHz. The attenuation profile also exhibits a “hump” between 2kHz and 3kHz, which corresponds with the ear’s most sensitive region. This is a nice feature to see, as it reduces sounds that can get painful when loud.

What you should know about the best earplugs for concerts and what we look for

Earplugs intended for protecting your ears whilst enjoying live music are different from the foam plugs they hand out to help you sleep on the plane, for example. Those basic foam plugs are intended to block your ear canals and let as little sound in as possible. They will make everything sound dull and horrible. However, passive earplugs of all types block (attenuate) higher frequencies far more easily than low frequencies, making everything sound somewhat muffled, like someone talking with their hand over their mouth.

Isolation vs Frequency

Reusable earplug makers will often make claims about how their earplugs attenuate all sounds equally (which would be ideal), maintaining a flat frequency response for the wearer—making everything sound perfectly natural, just quieter. Unfortunately, due to the laws of physics, this is actually very hard to do with passive hearing protection. As our measurements show, no one makes this kind of earplug with anything approaching a flat attenuation profile. They’re usually heavily biased towards reducing primarily the higher frequencies.

This poses a problem. Generally, sounds won’t come across as particularly natural. Moreover, loud, low frequencies can damage your hearing if they pass through. These frequencies aren’t as noticeable or painful as the loud sounds in the more sensitive hearing regions, which typical earplugs usually block

The best we can hope for is an earplug that attenuates some of the low frequencies relative to their high-frequency reduction. If there is a reasonably even transition across the spectrum, it will still make for a somewhat natural sound when using the earplugs.

Max attenuation

The higher the attenuation, the more sounds around you will reduce in level. This is an important consideration, dictated by the types of events you plan on attending. For example, rock concerts can top out at 120dB (SPL). But, perhaps less intuitively, you should be packing your earplugs to protect your hearing at major sporting events such as the Super Bowl, where stadium noise levels can reach 125dB (SPL) or more.

Remember, experts consider 85dB (SPL) a safe listening level for up to 8 hours a day, and 95dB is safe for 4 hours. So, for events with those sound levels, you should reduce the sound by 25-40dB, depending on the event’s duration or the length of elevated sound levels.

Fit and comfort

Fit is of absolute importance. You need your earplugs to form a tight seal inside your ear canals for them to be effective. The charts we publish of our measurements are only close to representative of expected performance if you’re getting a perfect fit with the earplugs.

If you’re going to be wearing earplugs for any length of time—concerts can last hours, after all—you’re not going to want any discomfort. The materials used, the design, and the manufacturing process can all have an influence, even after you’ve found a size that fits your ears.

Ease of insertion and removal

Being able to easily and quickly insert and remove earplugs is an important consideration, too. You don’t want to be messing around trying to get the proper fit when the band goes on and plays the first chord. You also don’t want to have any trouble removing them, as the sensation of having occluded ears can be quite panic-inducing for some people when they don’t want it.  Features that reduce the sensation of pressure build-up are also beneficial.

Durability, portability, and lose-ability

The whole point of getting reusable earplugs is that they’re, well, reusable. This means looking for durable materials and designs. Small travel cases are a useful inclusion, too, as they keep them in one place and prevent them from getting dirty—introducing dirt or moisture into your ears can cause plenty of problems.

The case should also preferably include a loop or feature to keep it attached to something else. A feature like a neck cord could also help you keep track of the plugs themselves. Dropping an earplug in a mosh pit is always a bad time, but earplugs that are highly visible will make retrieving them a little easier. Oh yes, and getting something washable is also a good idea!

How we test the best earplugs for live music

Lab testing is the gold standard for determining the efficacy of hearing protection. Our objective test strategy for earplugs is the exact same as the way we quantify acoustic isolation in headphones. We use our B&K5128 test head, which has highly realistic outer ears and canals to best simulate the average user of the earplugs, and we expose it to a calibrated sound field generated by high-quality loudspeakers in an acoustically treated environment.  Here’s a short YouTube clip that covers the specific details of our process.

Note that our test setup doesn’t produce reliable data for this type of test below 100Hz, so we omit the data.

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