Peltor Sport Ultimate Ear Muffs 30NRR vs Peltor X3A 28NRR. Both of these are 3M’s latest upgrades to their line of passive hearing protection ear muffs. They are almost identical in appearance and design, and very close in their noise reduction ratings. I bought both in order to try them out and compare them to see if there are any important differences in comfort and effectiveness in use. Note that anyone working in an environment that requires protecting sensitive parts and equipment from low voltages or static electricity will be better served with any model from Peltor’s dielectric insulated X series including the aforementioned X3A. I find both of them very comfortable to wear, even for extended periods, and have no trouble sleeping with them when my neighbor runs his heavy duty generator which produces an exceptionably strong and constant low frequency hum in the 30Hz to 60Hz range. Not that loud, but loud enough to irritate me, especially when it’s on non-stop for 24 hours or more! In fact this is the main reason that I needed to upgrade my ear muffs because my older ones, while exceptionally excellent for most uses, doesn’t attenuate the low frequencies (100Hz and below) as well as these newer designs from Peltor. FWIW my older ear muffs are the well known Clear Audio design with a very wide price range depending on the name printed on them. Mine are the Browning HDRBrowning Hearing Protector, HDR and Decibel Defence, but the Walker’s EXT and many others are identical except for the name and price. I noticed that a few reviewers on here complain about not being able to adjust the length of the steel support wires. I have posted a photo of my pair adjusted all the way in on one side, and at maximum extension on the other. Maximum adjustability is about 32mm – 1.25”. The steel wire doesn't slide easily in and out of the plastic/vinyl support, making adjustments a little bit of a hassle, but fortunately this keeps it more stable in the long term. The X3A is even more difficult to adjust due to the rubber coating on the metal parts. It’s also important to note that although these ear muffs appear to be almost identical, there are a couple of other differences that are not apparent in any photos unless you disassemble them. The Sport Ultimate weighs 366 grams on my wife’s food scale – slightly under 13oz, and the X3A weighs 255 grams – 9oz. The reason for the difference in weight is that the former have a few strips of heavy duty very stiff rubber glued to the inside of the cup, probably to help damp low frequencies and loud impact noises. But the damping foam in the latter is quite a bit firmer and denser, and both are about 16mm thick. For the more technically minded, I ran a few measurements on both using the Maono lavalier micMAONO Lavalier Microphone 4-3Pin Adapter Lapel Mic Handsfree Clip on Interview Vocal Recording for DSLR Camera, Voice Amplifier, iPhone, Android, Smartphone, Wireless Transmitter, PS4, YouTube Live hooked up to an iPad with two different measuring apps – Decibel X Pro and Audio Spectrum Ananlyzer. I ran the tests a few times in order to ensure that the results were reasonably consistent. Set up was a Styrofoam head my wife uses for her hats drilled and fitted to accept the mic, and generous stuffings of foam to fill the small hole that the wire runs through. I marked the head with a Sharpie so that placement of the various ear muffs was consistent. I used my old vacuum cleaner as a very loud and reasonably consistent source of white noise. The unweighted maximum peak reading of Decibel X Pro was 94.5db for the Sport Ultimate and 91.7db for the X3A. Switching over to the Spectrum Analyzer app and using its FFT plot in order to see how the different frequencies were attenuated, the X3A readings were about 5db to 15db less in the 500Hz range and lower. The differences increasing as the frequency decreased – i.e. the X3A was better at attenuating the lower frequencies, especially from 100Hz and lower. The vacuum noise peaked at 500Hz, hence my reason for that as the reference point. This app and mic combination is accurate and consistent enough down to about 30Hz to 40Hz, so readings below that are probably not accurate enough to be meaningful. Being the inveterate experimenter that I am, I swapped out the less dense foam of the Sport Ultimate and replaced it with the more dense foam from the X3A because I was curious to see if it would make any difference. Needless to say it made all the difference, such that there was now virtually no difference in readings between the two ear muffs when fitted with the exact same acoustic foam. Please keep in mind the circumstances of my little experiment. Not stringent enough to satisfy scientific standards, only continuous and no impact sounds, and because it wasn’t carried out in an anechoic chamber the decibel readings above should only be used as a guide. More complete and accurate numbers are available from 3M’s site. But unfortunately I could only find them for the X Series. Lastly, please keep in mind that your hearing can be instantly and permanently damaged through carelessness. Sadly, although minor hearing loss might not be immediately apparent, once that damage is done there isn’t anything that can be done to repair it regardless of cost. So protect and enjoy this invaluable gift because without it you’ll lose the gift of music.
