I came back yesterday from a long weekend. I rode 265 miles the last day, in chunks of 50-100 miles, mostly doing 50-70mph speeds and with the stock screen most of the way up, basically just below eye level. I was surprised and dismayed and puzzled to get indoors and have ringing in my ears that lasted the whole evening. My ears now, 20 or so hours later, aren't ringing but they feel…tired, like I'm a bit stuffed up.
The thing is, I became very protective of my hearing after a Guns n' Roses show when I was about 20 and my hearing took a few days to go back to normal. I have Alpine Musicsafe earplugs for gigs. I don my big Peltor ear defenders when using power tools or watching Top Fuellers. I sometimes even cycle with basic ear protection on windy days. So I almost always ride with hearing protection: usually this means my custom Ultimate Ear squidgy earplugs that are good for a 25-30dB reduction. I'll ride with Doc's Pro Plugs for short trips and when I still need to hear other people; I've been trying the 3M yellow foam fairly-disposables recently because the Ultimates are a little bit firm and start to hurt my ears after a couple of hours, but I'm not mega convinced by the 3M foams' performance beyond noisy hotel rooms.
What became apparent when I got home yesterday was that it seemed to be the high pitched overtones of the engine that did for me, and clearly my squidgy earplugs can't attentuate those frequencies much. My Africa Twin doesn't have that aspect to its sound – its V-twin-into-Remus is a load, throaty rumble turning into a trombone-through-Marshall at motorway speeds, which in any case are a good 10-20mph lower than I'd do on the Pan.
I suffer a lot with wind noise, maybe because I'm tall but also because don't like looking through a windscreen. My Shark Openline helmet is (well) overdue replacement, and I'm always trying to push the wind higher over my head, assuming of course that that's the best thing to do. The stock screen is not bad: I sit in a gently turbulent bubble with the wind rushing just to the top of my helmet, but I still have a lot of noticeable rough whooshing around my head. If I hunker down a bit behind the screen it's much quieter, if rumbly.
The 220 miles battling into a head wind on the way out didn't leave me with the same aural or mental tiredness. The only real difference was that it was cold and I'd fitted the storm collar to my jacket which probably had the advantage of reducing turbulence around the chin bar. There was enough wind around me that my hi-viz vest "deVelcroed" itself within 30 miles.
So what's next to try? I might steal the MRA X-creen from the AT's touring screen (same objective: push the air high as possible). Maybe I can buy a quieter helmet: I like the utility of a flip-front which is why my old AGV has sat in its bag for years. Maybe the Bikequip screen with the curved up end might help? But the engine is the engine and I don't know what to do about that.
) VA hearing aids dont make it go away so I ignore it!
