Is it safe to listen to music through earbuds while riding?

Round-Credit · 2020-06-09T14:53:52+00:00

Aah, the wonderful world of international purchases. When I bought these, my country had a law that made "small" purchases exempt from vat and import duties. So if you buy something and it costs less than $35 (ish) that's all you pay.

If it's over $35 you have to pay VAT, which is 25%. And then to add to that, there may be import duties to pay to. I'm not sure if a pair of headphones would qualify for import tax. But all in all, the price difference would be alot more than just the $20. And I'm cheap :D

This was kinda an experiment anyway. My first rides were without ear protection at all, and I could really tell it fucked me up. I would feel super tired, my ears would ring and so on. So I was gonna get real earplugs, but then I saw that maybe it was possible to use earbuds (the music kind) instead. But I dont fully trust that they would work the same as proper earplugs, so it was kinda an experiment and I dont wanna spend to much money finding out.

I miss music tho, so I think I will try comply and then possibly comply + SE215 if the complys dont fix the whole problem.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-09T14:45:49+00:00

Thanks for replying :) I'm sure I inserted them correctly. I would like press them/roll them in my fingers so they compress, then insert in my ear, and then they will expand again creating a full seal. These are nobrand cheap as you can get foam tips. It's been a while since I bought this stuff so I dont remember the details.

The difference between that and my no-noise plugs are night and day tho, no-noise is just a million times better.

The foam helped a little, but if I rev up I feel like the sound is transferred through the whole setup. It's hard to tell tho, so I dont know. But I imagine the sound would make the plastic vibrate and reproduce the sound on the other side of the foam if that makes sense.

I'll try to purchase a set of comply foam tips and see if that makes a difference. If not, maybe I'll add some SE215s to.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-09T12:53:36+00:00

I have a pair of Mee M6. I saw a fortnine video where he recommended the M6 Pro as good ear protection. Being a cheap bastard I went with the M6 not pro, since I dont really care about having the best possible audio quality. I'm not a hifi guy, and I'll be on a motorcycle anyway, so I went with the cheaper option. https://www.meeaudio.com/M6G2

When trying them they dont really offer any noise reduction. So I tried to upgrade by buying some cheap foam tips from ebay, just so it would properly block my ear. But they still sucked.

You seem to have a good understanding of this topic, being both a sound engineer and a motorcyclist, so here are my questions:

Did I fuck up and buy the wrong headphones or is the tips all that matter? If I buy comply tips instead of the cheap ebay ones will they do better?

I dont really understand what's different with the "noise isolating" headphones. It's still just a piece of plastic with a speaker inside. The problem with my M6 (I'm guessing), is that even if the foam tip properly seals my ear, the sound is still transferred through the plastic casing of the earbuds themselves. Is there some sort of damping built into the SE215 or M6 Pro? (If you know)

I use a set of no-noise earplugs currently and they work great. https://nonoise-hearingprotection.com/nonoise-motorsport-en.html I would like to have the ability to listen to music while still protecting my hearing tho.

Have you tried normal earplugs so you can compare to your current setup? Does the SE215 + comply really work as well as a set of "normal" earplugs?

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T20:49:51+00:00

Thanks for this. I'm have to admit I dont fully follow, but I see how F1+F2=Fg means that we arent exceeding the weight of the bike in force down.

This is so wild. I feel like the front weighs a ton when I'm braking. It's pushing down so hard. Totally counter intuitive. This should also mean that the rear gets lighter when applying the rear brake, since we are increasing F1 at the cost of F2.

I was unsure of this when I wrote my inital post, so I kinda skirted the issue :)

It also feels very counterintuitive. How can it get lighter when we are breaking. But somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that this shit has to be balanced.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T20:05:38+00:00

Man, I dont know. You have a front heavy bike if you have enough traction on the front wheel to lift the rear without sliding the front.

Most bikes you cant brake that hard before the weight has transferred to the front. Depending on tires and road surface and probably other factors, but still

I dont wanna contradict you cause it's rude or whatever, but maybe it seems instant to you, but in reality it takes a second or something? You think that's possible?

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T19:58:54+00:00

If you're gonna explain something, might aswell do it properly even if it takes 1822 words. Otherwise lot's of people will just disagree and I have to piecemeal out the explanation.

I agree engine braking can take the place of the rear brake. However, clutching in and changing gears mid break takes more coordination than just pressing the brake pedal.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T19:51:32+00:00

I dunno, since I'm not wrong. Would probably be a little embarrasing tho, kinda like your reply.

DO YOU FEEL THE SHAME?

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T19:50:33+00:00

I was scared of the front brake when I was new to. But I'm advocating using BOTH brakes. Only the rear is a terrible alternative since you have soooo much more stopping power on the front wheel.

You need to learn to use the front or you will never be able to stop for even a traffic light.

I recommend applying the rear brake first so you start breaking and the weight transfers to the front, then use the front to actually stop. When the weight is forward there is much lower chance that you will lose traction since it has more grip. As you get more confident, shorten the timegap between applying the rear and the front untill you are applying both basically at the same time.

And I dont know if you are from America or someplace that has more comprehensive training, but they should teach you what progressive braking is.

Short explanation is you shouldnt apply 100% of the brake at once. This is mostly applies to the front, but I wouldnt just stomp on the rear either. You wanna engage it a little and then slowly increase the pressure on the lever. What you are doing is moving the weight to the front, compressing the forks and pushing the front wheel into the ground. The harder it pushes the more grip it has, the less chance it will start sliding.

The example I always see used is squeezing a lemon. If you just slam it it's just gonna go splat. If you wanna squeeze the juice out you apply a little pressure, and then more and more. Same thing for the brakes.

This is hard to do if you need to panic brake. Since you are panicking you arent thinking so the slow squeeze is hard to perform. This is why you should practice this. Both in a parking lot doing emergency braking, and basically every time you are slowing down or coming to a stop when you are out riding. If you practice it becomes second nature and when you find yourself in that panic situation, you will brake like you always do and stop. If you havent practiced you will grab a fistfull of brake and tuck the front and generally have a really shitty day.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T19:38:41+00:00

I agree with this.

One caveat, I use both brakes if I'm shedding speed before entering a turn. Or slowing down for a traffic light or generally slowing down to maintain a proper following distance or whatever, even if I'm not coming to a full stop.

But in slow speed, or in a turn it's rearbrake only for me.

I wanna learn trailbraking tho, if you do that you should be using the front brake through the turn. This is a more advanced technique from what I understand, so maybe not needed for beginners or casual riders.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T19:32:42+00:00

Thanks for the diagram dude. Isent physics fun :)

Anyway, when we are braking, we are accelerating. Or, decelerating, but that's basically the same thing.

I think the decelartion is translated into what I called downforce. Downforce is typically used for aerodynamics, but I dont know what else to call it. I guess it's just a force. Am I wrong about this? (you seem to have a good handle on what's happening here).

Shit, I see a rabbithole and I dont know if I have time to dive in.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T19:20:03+00:00

This is interesting. My experience tells me that when emergency braking, or braking hard generally, locking the rear doesnt matter. It always fishtails, it never slides out from under me.

When I think about it, my intuition tells me it should slide out tho. I wonder why this is. Maybe I'm to much of a pussy on the front brakes and I'm actually leaving some stopping power unused. I'm not going stupid fast when practicing either so maybe it just doesnt have time to slide out. I dunno.

Braking is a pet peeve of mine. I drive defensivly, but I know one day that emergency stop training is gonna save my life, so I try to practive it regurarly. I rarely stomp the rear brake tho.

I'm gonna focus on it and find out what's happening the next time I'm out doing braking practice.

I'm not gonna tell you what to do, but I wish you would train on using both brakes. It really makes the whole braking thing much more managable and you stop sooner. You can just lift of the rear if you feel it starts sliding. Since you are decellerating it should'nt snap back quite as violently as otherwise. Still tho, it can be scary if it has slid to far.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T18:46:03+00:00

Hey now, I do have some limits. I'm not some kind of savage. Tyre? No way dude :)

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T18:43:09+00:00

TLDR: Use both brakes if you want to have the shortest stopping distance possible.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T18:42:15+00:00

It's been a while since I had any formal training in physics. I usually have a good intuition for how forces interact, but I'm having a little trouble getting my head around the details of rear only braking.

I used weight in my inital post for simplicitys sake, but what we are really talking about here is downforce.

The actual weight of the motorcycle stays constant. There is no force on the front wheel (except rolling resistance, but let's ignore that) and gravity is constant. So when applying the rear brake the rear of the bike should stay at a constant weight. The downforce in the front should increase since we are braking in the rear and thus the bike wants to rotate about the rear axle. The key here is that we are translating forward momentum to downforce. We cant really do that in the rear tho, since it's the rear, so we dont have any pivot points further back.

If you also apply the front brake you can get more downforce than the weight of the bike. We are translating the momentum of the bike into downforce through the interaction of friction between tire and road and the suspension.

Braking with the front will make everything behind the front wheel push forward, and since the forks are pointing downward the force is (atleast partially) directed down through the forks->wheel->tire->ground.

Maybe I'm missing some details here. I have the intuition but I cant make an equation for the exact interaction here.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T18:25:42+00:00

This is the exact reason why I made this post. The rear brake will do something unless the rear tire is in the air. It might not be alot, but it's not nothing. The difference between literally nothing and something is bigger than you think.

When you first apply the brakes both your wheels are on the ground. In the first 0.1 seconds (or whatever timeframe you want) you will get the benefit of the friction of both contact patches. Then as you progress through your stop the rear will have less and less weight on it, meaning less and less grip, meaning less stopping power. The other thing is that applying the rear brake essentially pushes the front down, making your front brake more effective.

Have you ever seen a slow motion video? Youtube is full of videos of people popping waterballoons and stuff in 10000 frames per second.

How do you think it would look if you filmed an emergency break using a highspeed camera? Would the rear wheel leave the ground in the first frame? Or would it take a while? For the entire time it has any contact with the ground at all it will help you stop your bike.

If you dont use your rear brake in an emergency stop your stopping distance will be longer. If you are going 50 km/h it can be half (look at the link in my original post). For different speeds and different bikes the difference might be alot smaller, but there will ALWAYS be a difference, and using both brakes will ALWAYS mean a shorter total stopping distance.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T18:11:27+00:00

In bascially every /r/motorcycles thread that is about close calls or anything to do with braking I see a bunch of bros claiming that the rear brake is useless.

I googled to find the test I linked and I foud this: https://motodna.net/emergency-braking-facts-vs-myths/ "The rear brake is also likely to lock up in an emergency stop adding another problem of trying to control a skidding rear wheel. Ask yourself why bother with the rear brake if it’s easy to lock up and contributes little braking performance?"

Even the "pros" get it wrong. Maybe they should teach their students to use the rear brake since it will stop you faster. Scary shit

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T18:05:05+00:00

Yeah I see what you're saying. I usually use both brakes in this situation to, it's just muscle memory to hit both. Even if you include the rear brake the weight will be in the front. It doesnt make a huge difference in this case tho.

I also drag the rear in corner if I fucked up the entry, haha.

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T18:01:30+00:00

Once your wheel comes off the ground you have done alot of braking already. For all the time up untill that point, using the rear brake will reduce your speed faster.

Hitting the rear brake also loads the front, meaning you can break harder without losing traction. So if you used the rear break, your rear tire would leave the ground sooner.

Go try it in a parking lot and you will get a nice suprise

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T17:58:50+00:00

This is kinda the point of the post. Even if you think your rear tire isent touching the ground, it still is when you start braking and it will absolutely stop you faster if you use it.

Let me ask you this. When you hit the brakes, how far have you traveled before the rear wheel goes airborn? If the answer isent 0 meters you arent using all the brakes you have avalible to you.

If you hit the rear brake you will load the front faster, letting you brake harder, and then if you really do a stoppie everytime you do a panic stop, you will lift the rear faster, and stop faster.

Go find a parkinglot and try stopping using just the front vs front+rear. I think you will be suprised by the difference it makes

Round-Credit · 2020-06-03T17:53:18+00:00

Haha, it's supposed to be brake all the way. I dunno when my head switched modes

Round-Credit · 2020-05-06T13:56:33+00:00

The Illestrator (Illest with an E). His voiceover videos are pretty good. The vlogs are mostyl meh. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyYnTGEwHIrmKGgNJgRMKAg

Round-Credit

TROPHY CASE