Coping with noise -- 1st time shopping for earplugs

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I have no idea what I'm looking for except that I know I need to drown out the majority of noise at work and still hear normal conversation and I can't afford much. Anyone who uses earplugs, I'd love suggestions.

kinda depends exactly how sensitive your hearing is, i assume quite sensitive hence the need for earplugs. i use foam plugs but only because they're all i can find. i suggest buying a few sets and trying them at home with familiar noise levels, they may be hard to find though. i've only seen them at pharmacys / chemists and music shops. if you can't find any,, maybe try earmuffs or a wooly hat, or headphones without listening to music. hope these ideas are at least a tiny bit helpful.
fudo

*edit* foam plugs have proved effective for me btw, just not sure how good they are compared to others.

For casual, everyday use, the downside is you may have trouble hearing when you NEED to.

I play in a band, and rehearsals get quite loud. The guys refuse to do what to me is common sense--turn down vocal effects/reverb, don't set monitors facing microphones, and adjust the EQ for room acoustics. Not bad, except our lead singer doesn't like to sing unless he feels like he's in the middle of a giant stadium--adium--adium--adium... Feedback city. I had no choice but to invest in earplugs.

I like foam earplugs. Wax plugs are actually better, but harder put in and take out. They never fit right. The "memory foam" plugs you can squeeze really tiny and then insert them, and they hold themselves in place after the expand. I have two pair of Flents. I also have a big box of Hearos at home and a pair of Skull Screws that I've lost.

My only complaint is I don't like the way it feels having my ears stopped up, or of having ANYTHING in my ear canal. Having foam in my ears for 2.5 to 3 hours also makes it more likely my skin will break out. Ever have a sore INSIDE your ear? Annoying!

I use wax earplugs (because where I live there aren't any foam ones) but I do prefer earmuffs. Having plugs stuck up in your ears is associated with a zillion of other troubles, including itching, irritation and the need to check them often as they tend to un-plug themselves from time to time. You hear your own voice amplified several times, you can hear your heartbeat and every step you take echoes terribly in your head - especially if you are wearing high heels.
If your workplace allows it I'd recommend Husqvarna-type earmuffs. You might see them here:
Hearing protectors
I often wear one of these and they let me hear what is said to me while blocking unnecesary noise.
When the environment is very noisy I wear earplugs underneath and earmuffs on top of them but I don't recommend this unless in very severe cases because one gets practically deaf, you can't even cross the street normally.

MP3 player and Skullcandy earbuds will block out pretty much everything but voices, if your music isn't too loud. Cheapest skullcandy earbuds that are noise cancelling are about 20$

Ditto that, though I don't wear heals.

The voice thing took me a lot of getting used to. I don't sing very much--not at all lately, it seems--so I really had to work harder at staying on pitch because I didn't have guitars blaring to give me a pitch reference. I can't even hear my own keyboards anymore, which means I have to be that much more confident in my playing. Our practice pad isn't properly treated acoustically, so everything just sounds like mush to me. I've gotten used to it to the point I'm almost a lip-reader.

Honestly, though, once you get used to it, some speech actually gets CLEARER than it would be without plugs. Severus mentioned wax earplugs, and like I said they block out more sound. You only need just a little attenuation, I'd say somewhere along the lines of 9 to 15 dB. Much of what will bother you is ambient noise in highly reflective rooms. Foam earplugs that only lightly dampen the sound will get rid of random noise and help you hear better, much like polarized sunglasses that filter blue and yellow light can help you see better on a hazy day. I find I actually UNDERSTAND what someone says when I wear foam earplugs because they do allow just enough sound for that without a lot of extra ambient noise that makes it muddy.

I like the foam earplugs. They are comfortable enough to wear all the time. They block off the worst of the noise, but you can still hear things. My only problem with them is that I have a bit of ringing in my ears. I normally don't notice it, but it seems to get about 10x worse when I wear them.

I wear industrial ear defenders (as used in noisy factory environments) at home - can't stand certain sounds such as the vacuum cleaner and food blender.

I've recently bought some foam ear plugs. They were very cheap. I carry them with me now wherever I go. If I'm stuck in waiting rooms I like to take a book and read to help the time pass - however a lot of these places tend to have a radio blaring away over a sound system and sometimes parents with noisy kids and I find it impossible to read or at worst I'm overwhelmed. The foam ear plugs just block enough of the sound to allow me to relax and to read. However, I can still hear enough to know if my name is being called etc.

Unless you have chronic tinitus, that ringing is the sound of the neurons in your brain firing. It's always there, and I have a hypothesis about that. Digital audio reproduction intoduces quantization noise which can be fixed by filtering frequencies above the hearing range. The only problem with that is there is a noticeable rolloff at the top of the range. Good audio devices introduce digital noise, random, low level white noise, that fills in the cracks of the quantization error. The techie term for that is dithering.

I think the same kind of thing happens in the brain because you have all sorts of neurons that fire between the aural input and the part of the brain that processes aural stimuli. Because of the quasi digital nature of on/off neural transmission, there is no way the brain can process pressure waves as-is. Thus the neurons fire at random instead of exact, regular intervals, not to mention there are a lot of them, and the result is a perfectly clear perception of sound. When CDs were first released, the general reception was quite poor because digital media handle audio much different than analog. Iron oxide in tape is scattered, better matching how sound is actually produced and perceived. Digital sampling happens at a fixed rate, so recording technologies have to compensate for how we actually hear sound.

When you cut out all external sound, there is nothing to process. The neural firing doesn't actually get louder. You just become more aware of it. I also think that neurons can remain in an excited state after long periods of coping with a noisy, busy environment and need time to chill out. Some days I'd come home from work and need at least an hour or two for the sound energy of the day to burn off. The ringing in my ears during those times was thunderous.

I've relied on Heartech earplugs for years. They're made for industrial environments, where damaging noises need to be blocked but voices still need to be heard. They're reusable formed silicone in cute little rocket shapes, and are pretty inconspicuous as far as ear plugs are concerned.

Great answers, all, thank you. I have been using Skull Candy earbuds and my iPod to drown out the noise, but (and I should have mentioned this in my original post) I get migraines, so music doesn't always help. Plus I work with some abnormally loud people -- one in particular whose work station is about 25 feet away from my perpetually closed office door. Without anything in my ears I can hear him as well as if he was screaming at me from two feet away. What's more is I'm actually slightly hard of hearing. Dude is LOUD.

I've ordered a few different kinds from Amazon based on all your suggestions so that I can find what works best for me. I think having different types will work best so I can see what works in different noise situations.

Thanks again!

I think in that situation if you can hear him as if he were yelling and your door is closed, go tell the dude to quiet down. Hard to work when someone is loud next door even for NTs.

Unfortunately, I have learned in my years working here that asking him to quiet down makes him louder. Even the manager can't keep him quiet.

I like the Chameleon Insta-Mold plugs by Ear Inc. They take an impression of your ear, so you get a custom fit. It's not that expensive for what it is either. Sound is my biggest sensory issue, so I wear them almost daily. It's already paid itself off by how many times they've been used.