Asklemmy

Bro. Hell to the yes. Generic are itchy and irritating. Custom silicone fits perfect. You can get them with different interchangable filters. Mine are for people working at music venues so it dips all sound by 17db but the voice frequency is dipped by 11db. So I can continue to hear people fine but all the loud noises and especially bass and room ambience is gone. I wear them to bed and nearly all the time when I just go outside because I live next to a busy road. Best thing I've bought in the last 5 years.

The filters get expensive if you want to get a bunch of different ones, like there is one out there for gun fire. So guns get lowered but you can still hear talking. Filters for road rumble and wind noise for motorcyclists. People that work at like F1 have specific filters too. It's kinda wild to me now that people are just raw dogging reality with their ears. Ambulance passing, it doesn't hurt. Someone hurling insults at you on the street. Sounds like they're whispering under their breath. Is it expensive, yes(less so during black Friday). Would I pay full price for them again. Also yes.

Any questions let me know. Edit:spelling

I like mine. I have tinnitus and its important to me to be able to dial down loud music and movies, without the sound getting muffled and unintelligible. Mine are custom molded with removable 20db etymotics filters; they came with solid filters too that you can switch when you just want to block sound and don't care about fidelity.

Before these I had some etymotics 30$ musician's earplugs and they never worked very well. With them in I couldn't make out the words a singer was singing, and always felt like I was missing out on the music.

My GF has a pair of 20$ musicians plugs she likes just fine ("downbeats"), and she doesn't feel like they ruin the sound. So maybe custom molded isn't as important as a good filter?

For sleeping, shooting, or settings where hearing isn't important, the foam ones are fine.

Significantly better, and if you have in ear headphones it’s worth it to see if you can get custom molded tips while you’re bothering as this will noticeably improve audio quality and noise cancelling

every musician I know that spent hundreds of dollars on custom molded sound blocking IEMs are saying yes definitely 100%

I am however a man of refinement

Would love to hear recommendations on brands people use

Regular foam 3m earplugs, or the lighter river ones on a string are as good or better than the custom molded ones, when properly inserted. They'll down out loud sounds and you'll still be able to have a perfectly normal conversation with someone standing next to you.

Most people aren't wearing them correctly. Custom plugs tend to have this long tail that goes in to your ear canal, foam plugs should go as deep.

For a couple of bucks for a hundred of these things it's hard to imagine that the expense for a custom pair is even remotely worth it.

I’ve also heard about earbuds specifically designed to tune out noise. Wonder how those work?

If they can fully block sound than yes. I say this with someone with a child.