Alpine Musicsafe Pro vs Etymotic ER20

I have been using Etymotic ER20 plugs occasionally for over a year. I decided on these after reading numerous positive revies on them. However, the plug starts to itch in my ears after an hour of use. Last week I decided to test a pair  of Alpine Musicsafe pro plugs during a club night. I had them for nearly six hours in use and didn't feel them itching at all. The attenuation was good and it was easier to have a conversation with the plugs than it would have been without and finally the best part...no ringin ears after the night out!

mp3DirectCut

An excellent piece of software for editing mp3 recordings of a band rehearsal, a gig, or whatever live situation that you will want to edit. A lot of mp3 recorders such as the Zoom H2 is able to save the recording in mp3 format. mp3DirectCut is able to edit the mp3 file directly without the need of decoding or encoding.

Here is how it works for a recording of a band rehearsal:

1. open the mp3 file
2. remove unwanted pauses from the file by setting a beginning and an ending to an area to be deleted. Scroll the yellow dashed line to the beginning of the part to be deleted and press the "Set begin" button. Scroll the yellow dashed line to the end of the region to be deleted and press the "set end" button. Hit the delete button to remove the selected area.  Repeat this for all parts that you want to delete. Note: At this point the software will not physically delete anything, the parts only appear as deleted.
3. Scroll all the way to the beginning. Set a que flag by pressing CTRL+Q. Press "Go to next edit range button" and set the que flag. Repeat for all ranges.
4. Select save split and define a folder. mp3direct cut will now save all the parts defined with cue flags into separate mp3 files.

To equalize the audio levels of all the mp3 files select batch processing select normalize and overwrite originals.

Ear muffs for musicians

I have measured SPLs at our bands practice between 90-100dB(A) - in such level hearing protection is a must. I started of with Etyomotic plugs, but discovered that the treble was too harsh and after a few weeks of using them started to have ringing in the ears.I then moved to various foam plugs but none of them felt comfortable during a 2-hour band practice. The next step was using a pair of regular ear muffs which were much more comfortable than any of the plugs but which distorted the sounds too much.

After the search for the ultimate ear muff I found the Howard Leighting clarity C1 Muff. This muff is optimized for a equal attenuation throughout the frequency range. I definitely recommend this for band practice situations.