At some point during a long string of weddings in 2023, I slowly found myself spending more time standing outside of venues rather than dancing inside of them. Every 15 minutes or so, like someone taking a deep breath before diving underwater, I’d steel myself and go back inside for as long as I could bear it.
No, I wasn’t smoking. I was hiding from the noise. There I was, watching people I loved getting married, and all I could think about was escaping the music.
Like many, I point to my 30th birthday as a kind of fulcrum—a catalyzing moment for all manner of ailments and growing discomforts that had not yet made themselves known. It was around that time that I began to develop a sensitivity to the kind of loud, persistent noises I had previously been able to ignore—to the point where even just a few short minutes of loud noise registered as physical pain.
I left parties early, I moped and winced at concerts, and, no matter the weather, I could usually be found somewhere outside of basically everything. I began to be a bummer.
After countless missed first dances and musical encores from my favorite bands, I finally found silence in the form of individually wrapped, disposable foam earplugs. Now I keep a pair of Mack’s Slim Fit Soft Foam Earplugs in every bag, every coat pocket, and every suitcase, so I can quickly and easily envelop myself with a veil of tranquility—no matter where I am—like my very own personal falcon hood.
Top pick
In our controlled testing, these earplugs blocked the most noise, and they got the most votes from our subjective sleep panelists. They are the same as our top pick earplugs, just individually wrapped.
Sure, I could have solved my problem by investing in a quality pair of earplugs before my year of weddings kicked off. In fact, the very first purchase I made after joining Wirecutter was a pair of Loop Experience earplugs.
With their comfortable fit and tight seal, Loop earplugs work tremendously well at muffling the noise of a dance floor—that is, when I remember to take them with me. Most of the time, I arrive at my destination and realize that I’ve left the small carrying case at home or that the earplugs are still sitting on the counter, where I left them to dry after cleaning. And earplugs at home are about as useful as a parachute to a scuba diver.
Then I discovered that Mack’s Slim Fit Soft Foam Earplugs, our top-pick earplugs for sleeping, can be purchased in a bulk package of 100 individually wrapped pairs. And the bulk package doesn’t cost notably more than a single pair of Loop earplugs.
Each pair of earplugs comes in a sealed plastic envelope, which means I can be sure I am only putting clean, lint-free earplugs into my ears. I have one pair in every coat, and the larger container sits on my entryway cabinet as a not-so-subtle reminder to take a pair on the way out of the house “just in case.”
Noise always seems to creep up at times when the last thing I want to do is think about PPE. And too often that means I find myself suffering in places where, by all logic, I should be having a good time. I use foam earplugs at the movies if I’m sitting right under the speakers. I’ve also used them at sports games, including a Mets-Phillies game in the fall where 40,000 people, myself included, were screaming.
I like never having to worry about losing foam earplugs, cleaning them, or keeping track of their carrying case. Their portability and disposability mean that protecting my ears requires virtually zero foresight.
But what I particularly enjoy about individually wrapped earplugs is that I can give them out to people. When I am headed somewhere loud, I always take a few extra pairs with me, and it costs me virtually nothing to save a fellow beleaguered soul from the shrill, clamoring handiwork of a man named DJ Paulie Walnuts. Having an abundance of earplugs allows me to feel like I can be profligate with them. I am the Oprah of earplugs. You get earplugs, and you get earplugs, and you get earplugs. I have become a foam-thumping earplug evangelist.
Loop earplugs do have a few discernible advantages over foam earplugs. I find that foam earplugs occasionally mute things around me a little too aggressively, such as occasional bits of dialogue during a movie.
I am also aware that the thought of individually wrapped earplugs might feel wasteful. Nobody walks around trying to dream up novel ways of incorporating even more single-use plastic into daily life. However, while the full efficacy of individual action remains somewhat unknown, the effect of individual responsibility to one’s own health is clear. And if being a little more wasteful is what keeps my ears safe in the long run, then it’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.
There’s also the fact that while Loop earplugs are discreet to the point of being almost invisible, bright purple earplugs are decidedly not. If your goal is to wear earplugs unnoticed, Mack’s earplugs may not be for you. I, however, find that any feelings of self-consciousness vanish when I am without any ringing in my ears the next day.
There are a million reasons to protect your hearing, and for a long time, all of those reasons felt too abstract or too far off for me to really put any time or money into addressing them.
What I didn’t expect was the immediate benefit of wearing earplugs—the louder and more unrelenting the noise, the more transparently the earplugs allowed me to hear the subtleties of the world around me. When I’m wearing earplugs, I have no difficulty hearing people speaking to me, and I can pick out individual chords in music at concerts. Almost instantaneously, earplugs allow me to enjoy myself and my surroundings.
Such was the discovery I made the first time I used them, last year at my sister-in-law’s karaoke birthday party. Upon entering the small neon vestibule, I felt as if I’d just walked straight into a wall of sound, and I began to wonder how many times I’d be able to sneak out and take a break before anyone noticed. On a similar night only a few months earlier, I would most certainly have forgotten my Loop earplugs at home.
This time, however, I was prepared.
I tore open the plastic bag and slowly fitted an earplug into each ear. And right away I felt a flush of almost scintillating clarity, a flicker of peace in a room that had been, only a few seconds earlier, almost unbearable. Two little pieces of foam had muted the chaos and given me back the night.
This article was edited by Megan Beauchamp and Maxine Builder.
