I suffer from persistent tinnitus following years of riding a motorbike but not using ear plugs. I don’t suppose going to see Pink Floyd, Motörhead, iron Maiden etc helped very much. Still, my fault.

Anyway the long and the short of it is that I have to wear hearing aids to hear conversations clearly. Its not all bad though - on the plus side I can always turn them off! Riding my bike now means I take the aids off and put them in a box ready for the end of the journey and the ear plugs go in - I protect that hearing I have left.

The problem I have is that the behind the ear hearing aids get flipped off when i remove my face mask and I don’t always realise. So far I have lost three and it is getting tedious.

Now in an ideal world I would have in ear canal hearing aids that have Bluetooth so I can link to my phone and would have noise cancelling capabilities so that I could leave them in my ear when riding allowing me to have the choice of listening to music without having to wind the volume right up - remember I want to protect the hearing I still have left. I know that there are in ear canal hearing aids with Bluetooth and that there are ear plugs that have noise cancelling - but are there in ear canal hearing aids that have noise cancelling and Bluetooth or am I looking for a unicorn?

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

No standing down the front in concerts directly in front of the speaker stack for the last year at least - I wonder if that'll show up in audiologists work load in a few years time.

I also have hearing issues (although probably not as severe as yours by the sound of it) and have been using using ear plugs while riding for many years. They've been helpful, not only in protecting my hearing (I assume they're doing that anyway), but also in preventing me from hearing the various clunks and rattles that come from some of my more antique engines. That's made for a much more relaxing ride (although see below). They do however cut out all noise, including the stuff I want to hear, so no intercom use while I have them in, and similarly, no music or phone conversations or verbal sat nav instructions (the latter two I'm quite happy to miss out on).

I do have a couple of sets of bluetooth ear buds, both of which were bought for playing music while running, but while they're good at that they don't fit under my helmet (or rather they do but too painfully to be usable). So I'd also be interested if ear canal 'plugs' of your wish list type exist. I suspect if they do that battery life might be an issue. Having something that works perfectly for an hour isn't going to be much use on a day long ride. I know there's been custom made ear plugs with built in speakers on the market for a while but whether any of them use noise cancelling technology I've no idea. So, more questions than answers and if anyone else has squared the circle I'll be interested in seeing what they've got.

Only down side of cutting out virtually all engine noise is that you miss the warning signs when things start to go wrong. Not too much of an issue on a modern bike but missing them on my 50yr old travel project bike at the weekend led to this:

So I am not alone - well that means there may be a market which means there may be a product - good news - now I just have to find it. To broaden the question how well do the noise cancelling ear buds work and are they comfortable under the helmet? Also does the software come with a graphic equaliser so that I can boost the treble to compensate for the lost part of my hearing. I am just over the border into benefitting from hearing aids - which may be why I don't realise I have dropped an aid until I am away from the location I flicked it out from.

Are you 100% certain that won't polish out?

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

This whole area of hearing on a motorcycle has been something that's, well bugging me is probably too strong, been frustrated with is probably better, for about 25yrs. Even back in the early 70's I was experimenting with gluing speakers to crash helmets to try and get some as I rode from portable tape recorders. Back then noise reduction wasn't big on my requirement list - just getting sound in would have done, but these days there's a tricky balance to be struck between hearing what I want and not what I don't. I can get each of the elements - silence, ear 'safety', conversation, music, comfort, cost etc, individually but so far not in one 'package'. I wouldn't have thought it was much of a technical challenge these days but it just needs someone to see a market. Maybe there is something suitable around but I've just not seen it.


Re the piston, back in the day a nut and bolt and a quick trade in would have sorted it.

If my understanding is correct noise canceling is an additive process. The external microphone records the back ground, the electronics invert it and it is played over the music. Noise - noise + music = music

My Bluetooth headphones have this feature and it works. I can see the microphones outside the speakers, the units are 1/2 of an inch deep and about the same across the widest part. Definitely not comfortable under a helmet.

On a device in the ear canal I think there are two issues, where the microphone and processor goes on a tiny device and if the tiny microphone would pick up the extraneous noise burried so deep.

Andy