20dB Hearing Protection / Headphones - A Fun And Useful Project

The following pictures outline a small project you may be interested in. Listening to music through headphones is great when you are in a quiet environment. As often the case in life though, external sounds may not only interfere with your listening experience but may also cause you permanent hearing loss. Using a loud lawn mower, or working in a noisy factory are just two examples where isolation headphones work great. Not only do these headphones block out 20 dB of the external sound, they also double as a nice way to allow you to enjoy music at the same time.

This photo shows the hearing protection which was converted into a pair of headphones. I built these because while listening to music in a noisy environment I found myself competing with the noise by turning up the volume of the music. This was not good for my ears. This set of hearing protection was purchased at a hardware store in Toronto for $18. The speakers which were put inside originally came from apair of regular headphones. Overall, the isolation headphones sound alright but have some difficulty playing back the low frequencies.

Some sponge and velvet was used to make the headset more comfortable. With the outer velvet removed, you can see another red ring of velvet. I had to glue that red ring on because without it, I found the outer black velvet was slipping off the smooth learther like skin of the original hearing protection. The black velvet was cut from a shildrens shirt purchased at a used clothing store for $2. They were actually the sleeves of the shirt, which just so happened to be a perfect fit for the headphones.

The inner pink sponge is removed to expose the speaker which is protected by a metal shield. The sponge provides a soft feel on the ears for extended listening. The shield protects the speaker from being pressed against by the sponge.

Here the speaker is removed and can be seen. This is a 40mm driver which someone at school was nice enough to give to me. Originally I put in a pair of 30mm drivers and they lasted for a few months until one day the left driver suddenly stopped. The extra green sponge was put inside to eliminate the hollow, sea-shell  sound effect that would be produced without it.