Strange Tales - musings of a sound monkey

the earplug debate
As most of my day-to-day job is studio work, detailed audio editing, and live musical theatre work, I tend to be quite serious about protecting my hearing as much as possible. I routinely carry earplugs round with me as I got sick of getting caught out in my youth by dodgy ‘function DJs’ with long blown PA systems, and I’m a fan of motorsport too so it’s always a useful thing to do. I’ve read the H&S reports on exposure levels and time limits, but I just tend to think - simplest thing, wear plugs. I use Elacin ERs and they are great for still allowing a very clear attenuated signal thru that’s pretty flat so speech and definition don’t suffer a jot. (that does mean I can hear the state of DJs rigs far better than they can!). For the most part it’s rare that the next day doesn’t have some form of editing or production to do so its easier to just wear them and know my hearing is going to be perfectly ok next morning.
I get my hearing professional checked every year so I can see if there’s any fluctuations and holes in the ranges as I get older.
But, the contentious question is…… should one do a live mix with earplugs in? we’ve all been to gigs where the hearing’s been a bit ringy the next day, and as a sensible live engineer, you’d always go for clarity over volume anyday, but CAN you mix in earplugs. I mix for a pub band occasionally and they have a pretty good quality PA and it’s easy to keep it fairly clean, but pubs are pubs and levels can get a bit looser as the evening goes on and the crowd get drunker.
Just as an experiment, I tried it the other night. I had some important editing/mixes to do the next day in the studio and I really couldn’t risk any short term hearing impairment at all. So in went the trusty Elacins and immediately I could hear everything embarrassingly clearly again. I adjusted mixes I thought we’re ok, nipped the plugs out and hey presto, they did sound better. even the most rookie sound personage knows about listening fatigue, even in the studio, but this event seemed to suggest that the ability to do finely detailed mixes degrades with volume far more than I’d ever given it credit for. I thought the mix was ok-ish, but after listening at a neutral attenuation (the Elacins are for all practical purposes flat response except for a couple of peaks at very low frequencies and another at about 1-2k.) I realised how much better I could make it. so, it begs the question, I can’t be the only engineer who’s ever tried this, so do other folk do it?
by the end of the evening my ears felt fresh as at the start, and my mixes the next day were handed over in the confidence that they would be ok and unaffected by any battering from the previous evening. a couple of friends who are long in the tooth engineers also admitted to the practice but I’m now wondering just how widespread it really is?
answers on a postcard or hearing chart please.