Interview with Business Development Manager Jamie Sherwood | By Sean Gonzalez
For many, the holiday season is a frantic time spent looking for gifts for plenty of friends and family. Being in the music industry means I often find myself searching for records, obscure pop culture references, and even artsy antiques that say, “Wow, look at this cool find!” and as an avid showgoer and city dweller, I find myself at house shows, venues, and theaters many times a month.
Want to know what never crossed my mind as a perfect gift for fellow friends who also venture to gigs?
Earplugs.
“Until relatively recently, the loudest sounds on earth were things like thunder and a lion’s roar, so our ears are only designed to take in so much noise,” comments Jamie Sherwood, Business Development Manager for Vibes High-Fidelity Earplugs. Explaining why earplugs are such a necessity, continuing, “In today’s age, when we have things like airplane engines and giant speaker stacks, our ears are constantly exposed to sounds that are too loud for our ears to handle.”
Created by Jack Mann after finding regular foam earplugs rather annoying, Vibes are the product of a year’s worth of research and testing and are now easily accessible. “Vibes are designed to allow air to flow into your ears,” Sherwood elaborates, detailing the product’s design. “The sound isn’t getting blocked, but is instead being filtered. The inner tube in the earplugs is designed to be the same shape as your inner ear canal, so when sound waves bounce off the inside of the earplug, you hear everything with the same sound quality as you would without earplugs on—just at a lower volume.”
Vibes earplugs are easy to wear; the comfort is immense. Yet, these silicone-tipped plugs still grace the ears with enough protection, without losing sound quality. Foam plugs are ever-intrusive and awkward to shove into your ear canals, but with Vibes’ three different sizes and slim design, I had to tell myself they were even there. Without sacrificing any detailed aspects of the six shows the buds accompanied me to, I still got to walk home without my ears ringing and my head blaring.
“Whenever your ears ring after a show, it’s actually a sign of irreversible Noise-Induced Hearing Loss, or NIHL,” Sherwood explains. “When your ears are exposed to extremely loud sound—like metal music—there are tiny hair cells in your ears that become damaged, and when those tiny hair cells are damaged, they distort your hearing, which results in the constant buzzing sensation in your ears.”
Needless to say, wearing Vibes effectively reduced some of the excess noise at shows, but it didn’t affect the tone or comprehensiveness of the music—it just reduced how much my hearing would be damaged later on.
Vibes have also successfully proven their worth to Chelsea Wolfe, I The Mighty, Hail The Sun, Basement, The Front Bottoms, The Devil Wears Prada, Julien Baker, Half Waif, and ‘68.
With New Noise’s genuine approval, if you are searching for a fairly priced step toward protecting your – or your friends’ – ears, look no further than Vibes High-Fidelity Earplugs.
For more information & purchasing options click here.
