Sound plays a big role in your life, from music to engines. How would you describe your relationship with sound, and what draws you to these louder hobbies?

Sound is interesting to me. It's one of our basic senses, and we know so little about it. It directly taps into our brains and seemingly random changes in frequency and amplitude turn into music and meaning. Conversations are wonderful in that you can understand a person's inner thoughts and translate your own and have someone else share in the same understanding. It's how we make families and communities.

You can record it now, sure, but for all of human history prior to about 150 years ago it was broadcast by the performer and vanished into thin air. Even then, those first recordings were fragile, few people experienced them, and it was decades before hearing something recorded being played back was common. Those first recordings required adaptation too, instruments were modified to fit the equipment.

We don't know how anything sounded prior to that, spoken accents, birds chirped or dogs barked prior to 1877. It's amazing to me that we can hear someone in 1908 singing an opera, or a Civil War veteran giving his views, and those people have been gone for over a hundred years.
The environment in which we are raised shapes our likes and preferences. If you have fun once a year at a carnival, the sounds will fill you with joy well into old age. If you grow up on a ranch, the sound of horses or cows brings back memories.

I grew up with a musical family and a racing family. Mom played piano and sang, siblings played instruments, and there was always music playing.
I developed a natural talent for drumming which led to a life-long hobby of playing drums and fife in fife and drum corps. Drums are the cheapest instrument offered to kids in school, so drums it was. I took to the drums like a duck to water. School band, marching band, fife and drum corps into my 30s, then for the past 25 years, my own group.
The "fun with cars" aspect was easy too. My father attended early races at Watkins Glen and later raced himself. Austin Healey Sprites produced a distinctive sound that became the soundtrack of my youth. At the tracks, we were free to roam, explore, and watch the cars. Those engines, when Dad and his friends were on the track, called us to take notice.

At what point did you become more aware of how intense these sound environments were on your ears?

In my 20s I could sit in total silence and hear hissing. The damage had already begun.
In my early 30s I was increasingly told the TV was too loud. It's not too loud, I can barely hear it. This is when I started wearing hearing protection more often. But the most common phrase out of my mouth begins to be "huh?"

In my 40s I found myself asking people to repeat themselves and can only understand their voices when I am directly facing them, or if I am facing away from them, concentrating on the conversation.

I became quite strict about hearing protection starting in my 40s and since then I wear them (Isolate) while doing anything noisy, using tools, driving, riding, watching races, at concerts, playing music. They live in their pouch in my pocket, along with my cell phone and keys.

What difference did Isolate make when you first started using them during practice sessions or drives?

The first time I used them, Isolate was immediately better than foam ear plugs in reducing the volume of the offending noise while being able to hear and understand a conversation. I could leave them in the entire session and still converse.

Foam ear plugs, or over-the-ear protection muted everything making it extremely difficult to understand conversations. I had to fish them out of my ears, discuss, jam them back in over and over.

Isolate immediately improved perception while protecting my hearing. Other than the tinnitus that's alway present, I do not hear tones after playing or driving or riding while wearing them, where previously I would continue to hear the noises after the event. I use them while playing fife and drum, while driving my little cars, while riding in my wife's convertible Camaro to block road and wind noise, while at the race track with friends, under my helmet while riding my motorcycle, and while at concerts. For example, we saw Panic! At the Disco with the kids once, and saw Styx in concert last year, in all examples, Isolate saved the day.

Isolate also prevented escalation of a problem! When I lost my first set of Isolate, I continued life as normal either without protection for driving (turned to foam earplugs for fife and drum), but developed ticking from the tensor tympani muscle twitching! I didn't even know this was a thing, but if you stress your hearing too much, you can develop this Geiger Counter like ticking, it can drive you insane. I wore an ear plug for weeks on the advice of my doctor, and it eventually stopped, and now I wear my Isolate whenever I expect to be exposed to loud noises, and it has not recurred.

What would you say to other musicians, bikers, or classic car enthusiasts about protecting their hearing while staying fully immersed in what they love?

I do this all the time. Many times a month during the nice weather months when we're out and about. I recommend Isolate to everyone I meet in these circumstances. I proudly display my set around my neck on the lanyard, and don't hesitate to use them. You can sometimes see people spot the Isolate dangling on the lanyard, being not at all shy, I simply explain what they are and why they also need a set. How you can hear just fine while still protecting your hearing. How you can hear instructions and carry on a conversation without feeling smothered.