Anybody tried the Ryobi earplugs?

[atblis]

Saw these in Home Depot and thought they might be interesting for shooting. NRR of 30 dB which should sufficient. The cell phone app sounds interesting.

https://www.ryobitools.com/power-tools/products/details/651



Eliminate noise and protect your hearing with more functionality than ever before. With RYOBI Phone Works mobile app and Noise Suppression Earphones, you get the protection of jobsite earplugs plus the convenience and functionality of noise cancelling headphones. Using the free mobile app, the OSHA- compliant earphones connect to your smartphone, where sounds are measured and can be recorded. The innovative app allows you to selectively block noises up to 82 decibels and amplify sounds you need to hear- such as conversations and alerts. The set includes a microphone, so you can make phone calls and record sound even in noisy environments. All of these functions are controlled from your smartphone screen for easy, adjustable control over noise. Take care of your ears the smart way with RYOBI Phone Works Noise Suppression Earphones and mobile app. RYOBI Phone Works – Transform your phone into your smartest tool.

 

[Creature]

I would not actually trust my hearing to a company like Ryobi.

 

[atblis]

The reviews on Home Depot's website are not particularly good.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ryobi-Ph...ng-Earphones-with-Microphone-ES8000/205495711

 

[chicharrones]

I would not actually trust my hearing to a company like Ryobi.

Ryobi's funky looking over the ear protection works very well.

I have a pair of these older Ryobi electronic muffs. I use them for loud machinery and handgun shooting. They aren't good for rifle shooting as they are too bulky and interfere with cheek weld.

 

[Creature]

I used to sell Ryobi products at THD. I will not personally purchase/own any Ryobi products

 

[chicharrones]

I used to sell Ryobi products at THD. I will not personally purchase/own any Ryobi products

I gotta admit, I dislike their proprietary battery operated tools.

However, I really like Ryobi's plug in corded tools. For me they just work. Plus, I'm a little biased from being around Ryobi heavy equipment in a non-construction industry over the last 3 decades.

Back to firearms, those old over the ear Ryobi muffs work well. I hardly every put a battery in them, but when I do I can communicate with other people wearing electronic ear protection very easily.

EDIT: The Zombie yellow green is off putting. I like the older line in blue, they seem better built.

 

[Tirod]

If you don't need professional grade tools and don't want to tie up hundreds of dollars in a Brand with a more fashionable color, the Ryobi works just fine. The average homeowner leaves them sitting in the bag for months at a time - I have plenty of other uses for the money I didn't spend to stroke my ego.

In terms of practicality and value for the dollar I didn't have to rebuy a whole new tool set when the nicads wore out. I just bought the lithium battery set with charger and kept using the tools. In the marketing cycle of handtools, we were all getting flipped by the upgraded voltage outputs and forced price advantage of buying new ones for the higher outputs. Not this time. The market has matured and there's no advantage moving into the upper voltage paks when you are forced to buy new tools to do it.

Smart phone based accessories are a huge new field of merchandise - I sell a different brand of ear pro at twice the price, but until someone actually tests and rates them in an understandable method we are going to just have opinion and anecdotal experience with them. In one regard $20 isn't a horrible price to pay considering active hearing muffs run $50 to $250. You do get what you pay for - with these the app will let you alter some of the parameters. With muffs all you get to change is the volume, which is a distinct advantage for the plugs with app.

You are using your smart phone for the processing with programming in the app. Hopefully you aren't limited by other apps in the background eating your battery time, and have room in memory. Depending on the limited battery life a cell phone has means you will likely want a power cell to recharge as needed on the job - ear pro implies you aren't motionless and have things to do.

There is the advantage of having just plugs instead of muffs which may interfere with headgear or the use of a weapon. And if you are a little hard of hearing it's got another advantage in your workplace in that you can hear what other's are saying in that midlevel of sound where things tend to get a bit garbled with a lot of background noise. Good electronic ear pro help there a lot.

And these don't cost $1000 an ear for that.

Ryobi is just a brand, the actual manufacturer is an ear pro manufacturer, not some plant with "Home Depot - Ryobi" on the sign next to the entrance. Likely Chinese, like MOST of the power tool makers on the market. Until we hear of some relevant reason to avoid them, $20 isn't a bad choice. Likely a much better product than the HF electronic muffs, which I can state thru ownership are likely the basement level grade muffs on the market. But, they were only $14 and still do the job.

 

[Sheepdog1968]

Might get those ear plugs for my iPhone. For range work, I prefer the simple disposable in the ear kind that are rated at 32 or 33 decibels.

 

[hso]

Stick with d I sposable NRR 33 foam plugs.

Noise canceling electonics done work with impact noise like firearms. Noise clipping technology requires very fast response times to turn off the mic and not transmit too much sound.

I have no experimental data to speak from, but I think anything other than dedicated fast circuitry would not have the fast response times to clip fast rise time noise adequately.

 

[LemmyCaution]

HSO-

You're missing something here.

There are two separate systems at work in a pair of electronic hearing protection.

The first is passive- the muffs themselves at whatever NRR they offer. And these are just the same as any other passive hearing protection.

The second system is the one that amplifies ambient sound, then cuts out above a set threshold. Typically, these are set to not pass through sounds above a level that can damage hearing, but at a level that the electronic system of microphone, limiter, amplifier, and speaker is capable of reproducing. Sounds of this nature are not instantly damaging to hearing, but can do cumulative damage, which is why they are reduced to a safe level by the limiter circuit. Because they are cumulatively, rather than instantly damaging, the speed of the limiter circuit is irrelevant.

On the other hand, impulse noise that can instantly damage hearing is loud enough that the microphone picking up sounds on the outside of the muffs can't even reproduce it, nor can any of the components downstream of the microphone. As such, none of the harmful impulse noise really even enters the amplified circuit because the first component in the chain is incapable of passing it along. Again, the response time of the limiter is irrelevant, because the truly harmful impulse noise isn't reaching it, in the first place.

Provided the end user has set the volume level of the amplification circuit to be within OSHA's guidelines for average time weighted safe exposure, electronic muffs of a given NRR will perform equally well as passive muffs of the same NRR.

The only advantage of passive muffs is that they tend to have a higher NRR than the passive component of most electronic muffs.

 

[hso]

the speed of the limiter circuit is irrelevant.

How confident are you that those components can't pass or reproduce 140dB? If they can't then any miced headphone could be built to not respond above 85 or 90 dB without the need to provide clipping circuitry for shooting muffs. Discussions with Pelton on their new muffs this past summer hinged on response times and circuit off times to cover the 95% under the curve times.

 

[chicharrones]

How confident are you that those components can't pass or reproduce 140dB?

I'm extremely confident about that aspect with those Ryobi over the ear muffs. I'm sure most construction grade would be the same. I can't speak about firearm specific muffs, but I don't know why they would be different.

Here's why I believe this.

With the electronic muffs turned off, they don't allow any sound through the internal speakers at all. With the electronic muffs turned on, there is a volume control for the internal speakers. Even when plugging in those Ryobis to an MP3 player the internal speakers can't reach the sound levels of gunshots. When used at the range and the volume level is turned down to just pick up normal speech, the sound coming through the speakers is still low.

That's my personal experience anyway.

Now, if one's safety glasses don't allow a proper seal of the muffs, well that's a different matter.

Electronically, I think a pair of ear muffs would have to have some high dollar technology to pass through each blast from gun fire. Have you ever experimented with handheld decibel meters or decibel meter apps on a smart phone? They can't pick up the super quick impulse of the firing of a gun. In my experience with these devices they will read to about 95 or so decibels even right next to the muzzle. Either the microphone or the electronics can't react to and record gun fire levels.

From what I've researched, decibel meters for firearms testing is very expensive and that technology is not stuffed into a set of electronic ear muffs.

 

[LemmyCaution]

How confident are you that those components can't pass or reproduce 140dB?

Given that the maximum SPL (Sound Pressure Level) for professional quality electret condenser microphones is typically 120dB or lower, I'm pretty confident.

What that means is that for an input over 120dB, no additional voltage is produced at the output of the microphone.

Analog microphones have a wide range of sensitivities. Some dynamic microphones might have sensitivity as low as –70 dBV. Some condenser microphone modules have integrated preamps so they have extra high sensitivity of –18 dBV. Most analog electret and MEMS microphones have sensitivity between –46 dBV and –35 dBV (5.0 mV/Pa to 17.8 mV/Pa). This level is a good compromise between the noise floor—which can be as low as 29 dB SPL for the ADMP504 and ADMP521 MEMS microphones—and the maximum acoustic input—which is typically about 120 dB SPL. An analog microphone’s sensitivity can be tuned in the preamp circuit that is often integrated in the package with the transducer element.

http://www.analog.com/library/analo...-05/understanding_microphone_sensitivity.html

 

[LemmyCaution]

One caveat to what I've posted above-

While the microphone can't reproduce over 120dB, the amplifier circuit could take that 120dB and boost it significantly. It would not be a true impulse noise but, just as one can turn a pair of earbuds up enough to damage hearing listening to music, the same holds true here.

So if 120dB of noise comes in, and one unwisely has the gain turned all the way up on the circuit, the limiter is going to kick in at whatever the factory sets the limiter for (likely around 90dB), at whatever attack rate the circuit has, but will for a few milliseconds pass the full program output.

Again, this is a very loud sound, but nowhere near the impulse of a gunshot. And the attack rate of the limiter circuit will likely be much faster than the hysteresis of the transducers in the earbuds.

So one should be careful to use electronic muffs with the volume level set to a reasonable level, but otherwise feel pretty comfortable using electronic muffs.

 

[MechAg94]

I like the product. I will have to see if other brands are available.

 

[atblis]

I am going to snag a pair to try. $30 won't make or break me so I'll take one for the team.

 

[hso]

LemmyCaution,

Thanks. That's the technical aspect I was interested in.



Here's a little recreational reading. http://www.sandv.com/downloads/0908rasm.pdf

 

[LemmyCaution]

Really interesting reading there, HSO.

For the layman- the measuring equipment necessary to accurately transduce the firearm acoustic signature in the linked article will run you ~$10000 or more. Not something you're going to find in a pair of muffs anytime soon.