Sounds great

My quest for a good motorcycle sound management system began when I started touring.
Back in the early 1980s, I stuck a couple of earbud earphones under my fullface Bell helmet so I could use my Sony Walkman as I rode my first BMW – a ’71 R50/5 – to Michigan.
It was more of a distraction than entertainment, because the earbuds wouldn’t stay put and I had to crank the volume up too much to get over the sound of the wind noise.
When I made my first ride to the West Coast in 1986, companions Tim and Linda Balough introduced me to foam earplugs. During a break somewhere west of Kansas City on our first full day on the road, I reached into my jacket pocket and fished out the plugs Tim had given me earlier. Twenty miles later, I was a believer. I could hear everything I needed to hear, but just at a reduced, less alarming volume.
The stress of wind noise muted, I quickly discovered I could ride more miles a day and not feel as fried when I reached my destination.
Over the years, I experimented with a variety of earplugs. I found the EAR brand a bit too large for my ear canals and in later years favored the Hearos brand because their smooth finish made for easy insertion.
After swimming at the thermal pool at Glenwood Springs, Colo., I discovered earplugs go in easier and seal better if they or your ear canals are wet, so I got into the habit of giving myself a stereophonic wet Willie every time I put in my plugs.
But I still longed for music to fill those long stretches of superslab I traverse every summer in the West.
I bought a set of Bass Monster helmet speakers from Collett Industries Ltd. in Canada and installed them in my helmet. Added to the wind noise, the Bass Monsters were just too much for my un-plugged ears. But I also found that my Walkman’s output couldn’t drive the speakers hard enough to be heard clearly over earplugs. I’d ride down the interstate trying to hear music that, given the muting of earplugs, was slightly more perceptible than a thought.
Then, I discovered the Boostaroo – a $20 stereo amplifier about the size and shape of a Bic lighter – that kicked the Walkman’s output up to a usable level and also had multiple input jacks, letting me add my radar detector to the mix.
At last, I had a system that seemed to work.
The problem, however, was that I’d just changed the mix – the ratio of wind noise to music – and I was still bombarding my eardrums with too much sound. Our ears, after all, are designed to spend most of their time picking up subtle stuff like the gurgling of a stream or the rustle of leaves in a forest. I’d already noticed a touch of tinnitis – chronic high-pitched ringing of the ears – and worried I might end up with serious hearing loss if I didn’t find a better solution.
A few years ago, I noticed Bob Weis, an Orlando, Fla., audiologist at one of the BMW MOA national rallies. Bob makes custom-fitted earplugs, using an injection molding process that produces a plug that is a perfect fit for each customer’s outer ear and ear canal structure. But what really caught my eye was the option of installing stereo speakers in the custom plugs.
After missing connections with Bob at a couple of rallies, I finally caught up with him at the BMW RA rally in the summer of 2003 at Red River, N.M. For $20, he made me a temporary pair of color-coded (red for right, blue for left) plugs with the understanding that I could send them back to him after using them for a month or so and he would cast permanent medical grade silicone plugs, with or without the stereo speakers.
Later that day, I discovered Marilyn Navia, an audiologist from Miami, who was doing the custom formed stereo plugs – called in-ear monitors – on site.
With another three weeks on the road in front of me, I was eager to get the finished product, so I plunked down $170 worth of VISA plastic and Marilyn shot my ears full of colored silicone. I picked up the finished product later that day, along with a storage case called a Hearing Aid Saver – a cylindrical plastic case about 3” tall and 2” wide with silica gel in the bottom to protect the monitors from moisture damage.
Tim Balough had just had MotoLites installed on his F650, so we went for a ride to try out our new purchases. We did a 90-mile loop east and south to Taos and back and I was immediately amazed and impressed.
Without music, these are the best earplugs I’ve ever used. The noise attenuation is somewhere in the 25 decibel range – not quite as much as the -30 db Hearos, but still quite effective because of the perfect fit.
When I plugged in to my Sony Walkman MiniDisc player/recorder, I was all smiles. On the way across Kansas a few days earlier, I’d been struggling to hear clearly over the wind noise and Hearos with the volume cranked all the way up and Boostaroo-ized. Now, I was actually turning the volume down. Way down, like below half-volume, and still hearing the music perfectly. It is, without question, the best sound I’d ever heard on a motorcycle.
(The MiniDisc player/recorder has since given way to an XM satellite radio receiver and an iPod.)
I can't help comparing this minimalist arrangement with the full zoot stereo system on big touring bikes, notably the BMW K1200LT with its 6-CD player/changer hogging luggage space in the right saddlebag. I have to think I’m getting better sound and better hearing protection without the added bulk and weight of hauling the equivalent of a home stereo system around on my motorcycle. And, it’s an investment – under $500 total - that stays with me if and when the bike is sold or retired.
I gave the system a good workout the next couple of days, riding from Red River down through Albuquerque and across western New Mexico and Arizona to Kingman the first day and then across the California desert and Central Valley to Gilroy the next.
I found my breaks were shorter and less frequent and, quite unexpectedly, noticed my seat stayed much more comfortably much longer. Music as an anesthetic for the posterior? Maybe I could get a grant for some serious study of this phenomenon.