- Looking for hearing protection
for hunting or shooting but still want to be able to
hear the person next to you and the game off in the distance? Well, in this video, I'm talking about the Westone DefendEar Digital hearing protection, coming up. Hi guys, Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Anthem, Arizona, and on this channel, I cover a bunch of
hearing-related information to help make you a
better informed consumer. So if you're into that, consider hitting the Subscribe button. So part of my job is
finding the best products to recommend to my
patients and to my viewers, and recently I did a review of the SoundGear Custom hearing protection that I will link in the card up here and in the description
below, but in this video, I wanted to talk about the
Westone Digital DefendEar. Westone's DefendEar Digital
line of hearing protection comes in three different models. DefendEar Digital 1 is
designed to give you overall suppression of gunfire but still allowing you to
hear and even amplify speech that's around you. The DefendEar 2 has two different modes. The first one is for hunting for basic intermittent gunshot protection but still being able to hear either someone who's next to you hunting with you or the game off in the distance. You can even amplify that
sound if you want to. And then the second mode
is called the clay mode, and this is for if you
have a lot of gunfire in rapid succession. It's designed to keep all
of that gunfire suppressed but when there's no gunfire, again you're able to hear
those sounds around you. The third one is DefendEar Hunter, and this is of course
designed for hunters as well. The first mode is exactly
the same as Digital 2, where it suppresses intermittent gunfire but it still amplifies sounds around you so you can still hear well. The second mode on this one is designed to reduce wind noise. So if you've ever been hunting, and there's ever been a breeze or a wind, that wind will hit the microphones
on the DefendEar devices, and if you don't want to hear
that rustling sound as much, you can switch it into the second program, where it will still suppress a gunshot but it also lowers
things down a little bit so that wind noise doesn't
bother you as much. All right, let's first
take a look at the pros of the DefendEar line of products. First and foremost,
DefendEar is made by Westone. Westone is an absolutely
terrific ear mold manufacturer. We use them for hearing aids. We use them for regular hunting protection that does not have
digital noise suppression. So all around, they just
really know what they're doing when it comes to making ear molds. And so when recommending a certain type of hunter's protection, it's
really nice to have a company that can make you a terrific product. The second thing that I really like about the DefendEar product is that it is made with their OtoBlast silicone, which is much better of a sound suppressor than an acrylic device. It fills up your ear nicely. If you have a little bit of movement, if you're moving your jaw or talking, it still provides you with protection because it kind of molds to
your ear a little bit better. It's also really nice because
if that silicone material ends up wearing out or ripping
or something like that, which can happen, you don't have to buy
an entirely new device. You can actually just get
another silicone portion made for you because
the digital suppressor is completely separate. Now the silicone comes
with a one-year warranty, and within the first 90 days of that, you can get it remade as
many times as you need to to make sure that it
fits your ear perfectly. Now the digital sound suppressor portion, which is this black piece
that you see right there, that portion right there
has a two-year warranty against any kind of
defects that it may have. And they basically just
fit together like this. Now the third thing that I like about the DefendEar line of hearing protection is that they actually have an NRR of 26, which is a noise reduction rating of 26. Now you can get larger NRR numbers with things like foam hearing protectors, but that's assuming you're
putting the hearing protector all the way inside your ear
canal to get that full value, and so you're not really
sure whether or not you're getting the full amount of the NRR when you're using a non-custom product. When you use a custom product like this, you know you're getting
it into the right spot every single time, which
means you're gonna be getting that full amount of NRR value. But the other thing that I
really like about these products is that they actually
publish their IPIL rating. Basically, this is a
rating that identifies the impulsive peak insertion loss. There are ANSI guidelines, or American National
Standard Institute guidelines on the IPIL rating, which
is designed to identify just how well a protector
attenuates or reduces an impulse noise like a gunshot. As you can see in the graph here, it shows the amount of attenuation given at a specific peak exposure
level in decibels in SPL, which is sound pressure level. Then you can see the amount of reduction given by the digital series
of DefendEar protectors versus the non-digital or
passive DefendEar protectors. Basically, you get way more protection with the digital protectors. Now considering you can
drop 168-decibel gunshot by 42 decibels, it shows
that these things work amazingly and it's one
of the biggest reasons why I love their product. All right, that's it about the pros but we have to talk about
the cons of this product a little bit, and the first
con is that you really need a custom ear mold in order
to send off to Westone. Generally you can go to pretty much any hearing care professional in order to get ear mold impressions and get them done for a reasonable rate, but you just want to make sure
that you're going to someone who really knows what they're doing because the quality of
the ear mold impression will directly impact how
well that hearing protector works for you. Finding a hearing care
professional near you is relatively easy. All you have to do is
go to hearingtracker.com and enter the state and
city that you live in and hopefully there'll be a provider that's close to where you live. The second con to digital
hearing protection in general is that they are going
to be more expensive than passive hearing protection. I mean, you can pretty much get a pair of those foam hearing
protectors for under a buck, and the Digital DefendEar line of devices will cost you anywhere
from $1,300 for a pair up to $1,900 for a pair,
and that middle price is around $1,500,
depending on where you go. But I would consider literally anything that costs $1,000 or more to be expensive whether we're talking
about hearing protection or anything else, but when you
consider the amount of money that you would spend on a hearing loss that would be sustained from
potentially only one gunshot, it makes sense to spend the
money to protect your hearing if you shoot a lot. Now I've been online
and I've actually seen digital hearing protectors
that have cost up to $3,500 for a pair. When you really look at these devices, they perform extremely well, and the thing that I really like is that they have good, solid data. In fact, you could even
look at that white paper, I will link it in the description below, that explains why these
products work so well and how much noise reduction
that they give you. That's it for this video. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section below. If you liked the video,
go ahead and share it, and if you want to see more
videos just like this one, hit that Subscribe button. I'll see you next time.
I wish someone would make a 2 part system that works in tandem. An outer, active over ear piece that has the microphones and also cuts out louder noises but also an inner one that further reduces the peak noise but maintains the integrity being able to hear what's going on around you.
Tbh I'd gladly pay 2k+ for that. Hearing is one thing I dont want to fuck with.
How are other brands with getting rid of gunshots and ambient noise amplification? I've noticed my slims are meh at best. Plus any background noise (e.g. a fan at an indoor range) is amplified way too much so I can't hear people talking. I always run 3m foamies + the outer ear and outside it's not generally bad but sometimes i'll have to make sure the mic is facing the person or they get drowned out by other ambient noise.
Are the comtacs/amps/MSA that much better at it?