Dubs – Acoustic Filters
Price: $25
Tip Style: Silicone
NRR: 12dB
The Dubs brand is relatively new, but has certainly made their mark in the dance community early. We’ll say that Dubs can be considered one of the first brands to bring hearing protection into focus of the mainstream dance community. Last year Doppler Labs (Dubs) officially launched by providing a pair to every ticketholder at Coachella. Since then, the brand has partnered with Bonnaroo, Tiesto, and Hans Zimmer, helping propel itself into one of the most recognized brands for hearing protection at dance music events.
The idea behind Dubs was to take a standard set of earplugs and make them cool. With some people seeing earplugs as something dorky looking, the folks at Doppler Labs designed a plug thats stylish and built for music events. The Dubs look almost like a badge of pride, and when people ask “Hey…whats that in your ear”, they’ll likely be surprised to find out they’re earplugs. For that, we applaud the brand for helping bring the hearing protection conversation into our community. It’s not to say it wasn’t already there, but they’ve certainly helped it get noticed.
The Dubs fit comfortably in our ears and having several color is a nice touch. We did find them taking a little getting us to when it cam to fitting them in our ears properly. Their design is slightly different from other plugs we tried, but after a few uses we got it down. They’re able to reduce harmful frequencies while maintaining the ability to carry a conversation with someone. We did find in some settings that they didn’t provide as good a reduction in higher decibel settings, especially at indoor dubstep shows.
Vaters
Price: $15.95
Tip Style: Silicone
NRR: Not found
Vater is a brand best know for their percussion instruments, and well know amongst the drumming community. We decided to pick these up at a local instrument store, as they’re easily bought in a brick-and-mortar store, and a quick buy for anyone in need last minute. They offer roughly a 19dB reduction and come with 2 different filters depending on the level of protection you need. We were unable to get an NRR on them however, but we will attest to their protection after several uses.
They come with a lanyard that keeps them together, and is easily worn around the neck when not in-ear (it also comes with an aluminum carrying keychain). The green filters offer slightly less protection in the lower to mid-ranges, while the red offers a more flat reduction across the attenuation chart. The Vater earplugs felt like the larger, 3 flanged version of the Earpeace HDs and we were quite happy with the fit and quality. They did however get a little irritating after a about 2-3 hours of wearing so they may not be ideal for long periods of sound exposure at events like festivals.
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